Mushrooming Higher Education Institutions: Quality of Education and Employability-Juniper Publishers
Juniper Publishers-Social Sciences
Opinion
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action”
-Herbert Spencer.
Education is vital to development, empowerment and
strengthening of the country and its citizens. It is one of the most
powerful weapons to fight the evils of widespread poverty and inequality
and thereby ushering a path to sustained economic growth. The world is
witnessing the rapid expansion and diversification of Higher Education
sector owing to academic, political, and commercial developments
associated with globalization, such as the rise of market forces in
Higher education sector and the umpteen opportunities for the skilled
professionals and graduates. The privatization of higher education has
increased the enrollments in the Higher educational Institutions (HEI),
thereby increasing the flux of the graduates in the labour market. But
the irony is that not all graduates are employable.
The data is evident that the 14 percent of the
graduates and 12 percent Post graduates in India are unemployed. Such
transformations have, therefore, raised question about the Quality of
higher education. Although the quality of HEIs was indubitable when they
had fewer students and the fewer institutions but with the increase in
HEI’s and the enrolling students, questions about quality of education
and graduate employability are the pop-ups, seeking clarification. This
brings academic quality of HEIs under scrutiny and hence the policy
makers have recommended external as well as internal quality assurance
systems in HEI’s. The external quality assurance systems are managed
through accreditations by different bodies like National Assessment and
Accreditation
Council (NAAC). But the Internal quality Assurance cell (IQAC) has
a bigger responsibility to monitor and manage quality of higher
education. The IQAC needs to redefine and realign teaching and learning
to cater to the demands of the employment/labour market and to achieve
this the key factors would be the leadership support, stakeholder
involvement, strategic alignment of IQAC and an effective management
information system.
All institutions are expected to have quality
assurance mechanisms in place as a way of assuring stakeholders about
the high standards of their programmers and their achievement through
outcomes. The key aim of quality assurance is to monitor performance as
well as to ensure the achievement of quality outputs. To achieve this,
the IQAC should seek suggestions and feedback from all its stakeholders,
primarily, Student, Teacher and Recruiter and should revise the
curriculum regularly based on these suggestions. The nature of jobs is
changing rapidly and regularly, making few jobs and skills obsolete and
rendering the graduate unemployed.
The HEIs need to address the issue of skill
obsolescence, in order to arrest unemployability. One of the key
contributions of HEI’s to develop employable graduates could be to not
only provide knowledge and skills but also to develop the right attitude
to learn, adapt and grow. Having the right attitude would prepare a
graduate to not only survive in the current situation but also find the
way in the future, thereby leading to the sustainable growth of an
individual. Employers want graduates who can quickly adapt to the
workplace culture, who can use their abilities and skills to evolve an
organization and can use higher-level skills to facilitate innovative
teamwork.
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