Online lifeline for Indian education

With the cash-strapped Central and state governments, who run a combined fiscal deficit of 11-12 percent of GDP ill-positioned to substantially augment bricks-and-mortar education capacity in the forseeable future, online learning aka e-learning has emerged as the great white hope of Indian education. Hemalatha Raghupathi reports With 21st century India’s ramshackle higher education system able to accommodate a mere 9 percent of its 100 million youth in the age group 18-24 (cf. 80 percent in the US and 20 percent in China), and dim prospects of the Central and state governments who run a combined fiscal deficit of 11-12 percent of GDP, substantially augmenting bricks-and-mortar education capacity in the foreseeable future, online education aka e-learning (i.e learning over the internet and/or via satellite technology) has emerged as the great white hope of Indian education. Although currently e-learning is in a nascent stage in India, hamstrung by an internet penetration rate of a mere 4 percent, it’s projected to grow in leaps and bounds in the next decade. According to Netscribes, a Kolkata-based knowledge consulting and solutions firm, the e-learning market broadly comprising ICT (instruction and communication technologies) in schools, online tutoring for K-12 students and broadcast of graduate and postgraduate study programmes, generates an aggregate revenue of Rs.1,602 crore per year. It is expected to rise almost ten-fold to Rs.11,750 crore by 2012. Online education or delivery of high quality education via sophisticated 21st century communication technologies, is being enthusiastically embraced by a rapidly growing number of Indian youth fed up with obsolete curriculums, faculty shortages, crumbling infras-tructure and capacity constraints which characterise Indian higher education. Moreover the 9 percent of youth who scramble into India’s 431 universities and 21,000 colleges don’t necessarily acquire meaningful education. According to a McKinsey-NASSCOM study of 2005, over 75 percent of engineering graduates stepping out of the country’s 2,240 engineering colleges, and 80 percent of arts, science and commerce college graduates are unemployable, and require intensive supplementary training before they can join the workforce. Consequently, the prospect of students in remote small towns and perhaps even villages, being able to access study programmes and lectures of best teachers over the internet or via satellite technology is exciting news for the great majority of India’s 89 million educationally under-served youth, and 2.75 million graduates who require upskilling to become employable. “The only way to reach acceptable quality, job-oriented education to India’s 100 million youth under 25 years of age is through technology-enabled distance learning. Since the conventional Indian education system cannot quickly scale up, and most higher education institutions are suffering severe faculty shortages, online education can be used to effectively distribute high-quality content delivered by the best faculty to millions of students countrywide. Technology-enabled distance learning is truly transformational and has the potential to radically alter the profile of Indian higher education by boosting enrolment and improving industry-readiness of graduates,” says Shailesh H. Mehta, founder chief executive of GurukulOnline Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd (GOLS), a Mumbai-based e-learning company which offers a wide range of online study…