A Message for the Educationists at Universities:
Are we  ready to accept the Challenge?

How our society copes with the Fourth Industrial Revolution will depend on the response of our educational institutions — #PresidentKovind

At Davos, in Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2017, there was a unanimous view that the world is going to face a grave shortage of technologically competent young persons as the world moves ahead into the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Over the past two centuries, during the three industrial revolutions, automation reduced human drudgery, increased employment-to-population ratio and  every revolution led to a life of dignity and comfort for a larger part of the human society, in spite of setbacks in many parts of the world due to colonialism. After every one of the three revolutions played out, it was found that the levels of education and technical skill of the countries, which participated actively in the Revolution, had increased steeply as compared with the levels before the Revolution. By extrapolation, the 4th Revolution will need a much larger number of competent and well-educated persons, if the Revolution is not to be stymied due to the non-availability of persons, who can work with the new technologies.

India has set up the largest system of technical education in the world. India may, therefore, be well-equipped to meet the need of technical personnel, if the quality of education in the Indian system can be brought up to the general levels in the west.  

At the Davos meeting, K V Kamath, President of New Development Bank, China, said, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution, unlike the previous industrial revolutions, is unfolding at an exponential rather than a linear pace.” Since the Revolution is expected to move in at a ferentic pace, only those nations, which are ready with a large number of young persons, who are well-trained in design of products, using new materials, new production methodologies and sustainable sources of energy, will be able to take advantage of the opportunity.   

The major part of the technological education system in India consists of affiliated colleges, with most of them working under the Self Financed Institutions (SFI) system. The affiliated colleges enroll 89.3% of undergraduate students and about 72.2% of postgraduate pupils. Hence the large system consists of small and supple systems, each of which may be able to develop the knowledge and skills required by the new technologies of the 4th Revolution fast.

The unemployment in the developed world is today fairly low and the nations are greying. Hence the large number of young persons for managing the new technologies to make the 4th Industrial Revolution a world-wide phenomenon are not likely to be available from the developed world.
India has a young population of more than 350 million persons in the age bracket of 18-35. Moreover over the next decade, 25% of the world’s new entrants on the jobs market will be Indian. Thus India can be a source of millions of young and competent persons, who will be shortly required to sustain the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Mark Andreesen, a well-known venture capitalist said in 2011 that “software is eating the world”. Every company, be it in media, retail, transportation, infrastructure or banking, takes pride in claiming that it is, at its core, a technology company. While technology is multi-faceted, software is at the heart of every new product and manufacturing/ building process. Thus Tesla is today the most valuable auto company. But about half of Tesla’s engineers are software experts. India has a proven competence in software, though it has to build its strength in most of the other fields of engineering and technologies.

In 1985, the quality of higher education in both China and India was much below that in the west. Today in Computer Science and Material Science, the number of published-papers from China is more than that from USA. We can also make a similar progress if we, at All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), universities, industries & businesses and SFI Colleges, are able to work jointly.
Some universities and colleges in India have made successful experiments of working jointly with industries and the society to make technological education more relevant, interesting and of higher quality. Thus Gujarat Technological University (GTU), a relatively new university,  developed frameworks for an effective working with industries and society: (i) GTU Innovation Sankuls for collaboration with industries in every area and (ii) GTU RURAL for studying the use of technological solutions for problems in rural areas. In 2015-16, GTU did successful experiments with District Panchayats  of Ahmedabad and Sabarkantha.

“It is crucial to harness the energy of our young people and use it to make our country a developed society.” - a Twitter message from  #PresidentKovind 
The challenge before the nation is to improve the quality of education at SFIs under the AICTE umbrella so as to to reach the general level, achieved by China in 2005 in its universities of science & technology and in skill-building. If India can do it by 2022, while Indian Institutes of Technology and other central institutions work to compete with Ivy League universities of the world, India may be ready to assume leadership in technology services, as it was able to do in 2000 for solving the problems of Y2K.
The challenge will be met through a ‘people’s revolution’, in Shri Narendrabhai Modi’s parlance, by the hard work of millions of researchers, students and Faculty Members, working in thousands of College, universities and national regulators. They will succeed when the society, the industries and businesses and the administrators in government support them.  Jointly we can meet the challenge.


Akshai Aggarwal 

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