The blog has
focused in the immediate past on the disruptions in education. The posts on
National Education Policy discussed the contours and the likely impact of the
new policy on educational disruption. These posts are available here
and here.
There was also a discussion at certain length on shifting nature of product
bundles in education in this post.
It is without doubt that education is somewhat ripe for disruption. Yet as
everybody awaits education’s own Amazon moment, it is something interesting to
find a piece on how Google plans to
mark its foray in college education.
Google’s aim is
to disrupt the college education not just in the US but across the world.
Contrary to the education system in India, college system in US has strong
barriers of access especially financially thus making many people drop out of
the system. They end up without a graduation degree or earn one pretty late in
life. The individualistic nature of life in the US also adds to the pressures
on the students if they are not able to cope financially either through moonlighting
or through working in their gap years. This makes a college degree relatively
scarce so as to speak. Yet, for all the relative scarcity it is supposed to
manifest, firms and recruiters always complain about disconnect between the education
in the classrooms and the skills essential at the workplace. The recruiters
often talk about the inability of the prospective employees to hone skills that
are essential for day to day work thus earning bread and butter. Theory might
give some foundation but in the absence of practice and experience, theory
becomes disjointed. The new employees often find themselves unable to apply
anything that they have learnt in college thus becoming disillusioned about the
college degree.
Therefore,
without doubt college degree needs an overhaul. Moreover, the college degree in
countries like India is a continuum of bundle of subjects to be taken
sequentially and cleared before being awarded a degree. There is no exit plan. It
is either they get a degree or they do get a degree. In such a scenario, those
students who have to opt out of the process for multiple reasons will find themselves
having wasted their precious years in their lives doing or earning nothing. Those
who finally go through the grill will end up becoming perhaps robots without
applied thinking. They lack the requisite skills to do the tasks on hand and
instead preferring to focus on the bird’s eye view which might be counterproductive.
A way out seems
to be in the minds of Google as it prepares to launch its courses which are
short term and focused on immediate industry requirements. These courses seek
to target those in the audience that cannot afford longer period of education nor
have the financial resources. These could opt for these short term courses
usually around six months or so. Since these are likely to result in placements,
the students would be assured of a certain economic rate of return. Google
seems to promise placements, maybe its foray into the recruitment space
something it can, given its sheer access to data. Google’s selling point seems
to revolve around economic security without a college degree. While these
courses and certificates obtained by clearing these courses are not going to
come cheap, they definitely are way more affordable than the college degrees
with a similar kind of placement profile post completion. There is a good
possibility that Google might seek to bundle these later into a degree package
that can be earned through flexibility.
Yet these kind
of instances are not unusual except for the sheer probable reach of Google. In the
late 1980s and the early 1990s, India was beginning to open up the IT sector. Yet
the number of engineering graduates that were being churned was relatively low.
The colleges themselves were few. The departments of computers science were
just emerging in many colleges. It was at this stage, a number of training institutes
mushroomed across the country offering training in basic and advanced IT
subjects. Since parents felt knowledge of computers was something imperative
for children they did not mind spending money to send their kids to these
institutes. While these bridged the gap between understanding of computer
technology and practice, these were just the beginning of the IT field. Schools
as such had no computer training facilities, so these could fill that gap. For many
professionals, these could offer short insights into a month or two courses on
basics of IT. It was in this environment that India saw the rise of NIIT,
Aptech among others.
These institutes
offered courses part time in nature extending to a year and beyond with some
certificates or diplomas though unrecognized but nevertheless sufficient to
meet the needs of the industry. NIIT or Aptech were basically the answer to the
supply-demand gap to the problem of trained and skilled manpower in the Indian
IT industry till such time the formal education system churned the graduates
out. By the late 1990s, many of those who pursued courses in these institutes
like NIIT or Aptech found themselves in good positions in the industry. While
the career mobility perhaps did hit a glass ceiling at some point, the courses
did offer considerable utility to both industry and employees. They were
supplementing the college education rather than substituting in totality. Yet in
the opportunity that emerged India lost the golden chance to reform the
education system from the static, elephantine movement to a dynamic equine
moves. It is a different that many post graduate courses in management have
basically evolved as some sort of NIIT or Aptech. Thus in practice Indian
education has moved towards NIIT-isation with a strong lock in and without
imparting skills and knowledge that is essential for transformation into a
practitioner. They still venture into abstracts and lack the agility. There is
also short sighted approaches that has affected the industry.
The college
education is now shifting from monolith 3 year or 4 year lock in to an annual
exit plans with provision for re-entry. What could however be taken forward
would be to link with the subjects or skill sets that students manages to
learn. The certificates rather than be of yearly basis or so must focus on
individual subjects or skillsets that gives them some formalisation to what
they have learnt. Accumulating certain amount of credit points from each of
these individual subjects would give them an yearly certificate or diploma
which through three or four years as the case might be lead to degree or later
a post graduate degree. The system is ripe for disruption, is heavily
regulated, what might end up is some player emerging with a plan to meet the
shortfall in industry demand and walking away with it, the degree being
rendered obsolete. The education system must be proactive, take two steps ahead
of industry rather than being reactive which occurs at the speed of the snail.
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