India has been recognised as the world’s second largest post-secondary education system (after China), having enrollment of more than 41 million students. The new education policy 2020 (NEP) projects to increase the enrollment rate to 50% from its current 27.3% by 2035. To achieve this goal, India will have to supplement around 34 million students to the system.
However, on the contrary, recent reports say even prestigious ‘arts and science’ colleges in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are facing difficulties attracting students to traditional programmes. Data from hyper-selective Indian Institutes of Technology for 2021-22 show that 361 undergraduate seats, 3,083 postgraduate seats and 1,852 PhD seats were vacant. A similar situation is inferred from the data curated from the National Institutes of Technology, that 685 undergraduate places, 3,413 postgraduate and 914 PhD places remained vacant. In Andhra Pradesh, 354 programmes were withdrawn from affiliated colleges of the universities.
Starved of tuition revenue, universities and colleges have been making efforts to close the departments based on the supply-demand philosophy. Can we envisage closing time-tested programmes such as basic sciences and Mathematics owing to the lack of adequate enrollment leading to financial crunch as solution? Is there an alternative framework to reimagine the tertiary education space? Do colleges need to appropriate their perception concerning curriculum and pedagogical designs to appeal to the millennials facilitating their enrollment?
Millennials in general are inclined to pursue entrepreneurship rather than work for someone else. Secondly, value for money through return of investment is another perception floating among the demography as a determinant concerning enrollment in traditional programmes. As per the study cited in a March 2024 article by Inside Higher Ed, it is observed that the confidence in colleges is falling, and the perceived value of on-the-job training and shorter-term licensure or certificate programmes is on the rise.
Tamil Nadu has been facing the decline in enrollment in mathematics and basic sciences progressively. This can be perceived as due to the emerging trends to view the tertiary education space from an utilitarian perspective. If such notion persists, the trend would lead to the closure of such programmes. However, the fact that the admissions to engineering programmes (having allied mathematics as an integral part) in ranked institutions is still progressing insinuates that learning mathematics in isolation as a major subject is progressively coming down.
To conserve these domains, it is imperative to use ‘design thinking framework’ to prepare the curriculum and pedagogy with the end-user’s perspective and re-purpose it carefully by appropriating the nomenclature and ‘systems thinking approach’ to reimagine the tertiary education space.
‘Value for money’ as millennial end-user’s perspective could be realised through strengthening placements by offering authentic value-added courses through professional certification bench marked with occupational standards and mapped with their given domain through industry-academia engagement.
Moreover, adopting millennial’s perspective of learning through apprenticeship as pedagogy using internships and projects/project-based learning, creating opportunities for value creation through entrepreneurship, rendering hybrid flexible learning (HyFlex) space to facilitate active learning through engagement would appeal to the millennials and potentially could conserve the enrollment.
We also require a whole-of-tertiary education vision and strategy through a systems-thinking approach rather than cherry-picking populist initiatives to address these issues. We need to envisage new types of institutions with different missions, programmes and modes of study to meet the demands and needs of this diverse cohort of learners and of society.
Consequently, to evolve an institutional model from the perspective of reimagining arts and science colleges, we can draw insights from Neil J Smelser’s proposition (UC Berkeley) which describes the modern research university as a “multi-campus network” of inter-related parts and relationships. It means that the entire post-secondary landscape could be envisaged as ‘ecosystem’ which offers various types of education including skill development to offer professional certification. If the tertiary education space is rendered dynamic in design through an ecosystem model, it would perpetuate itself through appropriation with changing context thus would become resilient.
The ecosystem as a dynamic space could be envisaged as a system where number, type, role and responsibilities of providers, individually and collectively, evolves and modifies over time in response to the changing environment. Ecosystem approach of tertiary education space will keep co-creating the curriculum and pedagogy as it will constantly be communicating and receiving the feedback through community and industry engagement.
Receiving feedback
Ecosystem approach of tertiary education space will keep co-creating the curriculum and pedagogy as it will constantly be communicating and receiving the feedback through community and industry engagement
Footnote is a weekly column that discusses issues relating to Tamil Nadu
(Dr Paul Wilson is serving as Principal and Secretary of Madras Christian College, Chennai)