Rising STEM research demands revitalised education

‘Across various sectors, there is a struggle to find students who are skilled’
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Higher educational institutions in India face significant challenges. While private engineering colleges, the newer Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and universities have expanded access to education over the last few decades, studies show that a vast majority of students graduating from these colleges lack the basic skills that are required by industry. Research institutes have also voiced concerns about the quality of students who wish to pursue higher studies. While industries and premier research institutions have managed with top students from these colleges, there is a problem now. Across various sectors, there is a struggle to find students who are skilled, and it is alarming that the number of students pursuing higher education has dwindled. At this rate, institutions, which are already grappling with the issue of faculty shortages, will face even greater challenges in the years ahead. Large sums of money announced for initiatives such as quantum computing, cybersecurity or artificial intelligence could go underutilised in the absence of qualified talent. This widespread problem threatens the socio-economic fabric of the country.

Quality of training is an issue

The root cause lies in the quality of training in teaching institutions. Many faculty members are products of their own institutions and are often pressured to chase papers and patents for their colleges to maintain their rankings, often at the expense of scholarship and pedagogy. This results in poor-quality graduates, with a domino effect on industry standards, research output, and faculty quality. While upskilling programmes, outreach initiatives, internships and online courses could address the problem to some extent, these efforts are not scalable enough to meet ever-increasing demand for skilled professionals. This article offers some broad ideas, based on the experiences of the writers, which may be of help. These suggestions call for a rebalancing of current efforts and a more imaginative use of existing resources.

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Premier institutes such as the IITs, the Indian Institutes of Information Technology, the National Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), and other centrally funded institutions recruit about 5% of India’s undergraduate students. For instance, IIT Bhubaneswar admits fewer than 60 students annually for its computer science programme. In comparison, the private KIIT University admits over 2,000 students a year for the same discipline. Similar comparisons can be made between IIT Madras and private institutions such as SRM and VIT. This means almost all the students in the pipeline to industries and research institutions come from colleges where 95% of the students study. The proposals in this article aim to strengthen this pipeline and foster greater collaboration between research institutions and teaching institutions. To make the distinctions clear in this article, institutions with large undergraduate programmes will be referred to as “teaching institutions” and those focused on research (such as premier institutes) as “research institutions,” even though they engage in both teaching and research. The ideas in this article are for research institutions, teaching institutions, and the agencies that monitor them — all geared toward improving research, pedagogy, and incentive structures. These proposals echo the objectives of the National Education Policy (NEP) and the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF).

The first idea is to stop ranking teaching institutions and their faculty members based heavily on research output, such as papers and patents. Given the lack of a robust research environment in many teaching institutions, this emphasis on research output encourages participation in predatory conferences and publications. India, unfortunately, is a country with a large presence of predatory outlets. As a result, limited resources are diverted from improving pedagogy to producing low-quality research, further degrading student learning outcomes. Ranking teaching institutions separately, based more on their teaching quality, could alleviate some of this pressure.

Change focus

Until the quality of students entering the pipeline improves, faculty at teaching institutions should focus more on pedagogy and less on research. While this may reduce research output in the short term, it will significantly enhance the quality of education and research in the long term. Teaching institutions should lay greater emphasis on faculty development programmes, mentorship, teacher evaluations, and newer courses, online and offline. Collaborations with research institutions on teaching methods and pedagogy should be strongly encouraged. One way to achieve this is by creating a dedicated teaching track within the academic hierarchy at these institutions, such as ‘teaching assistant, associate and full professor’. Faculty members interested in pursuing research should be encouraged to collaborate with their counterparts in research institutions. Funding agencies can incentivise and mandate such collaborative projects. The ANRF’s Partnerships for Accelerated Innovation and Research (PAIR) programme already calls for such initiatives.

For this idea to succeed, it is important that faculty promotion criteria in teaching institutions are based on pedagogical skills, assessed through appropriate metrics. This can be incentivised through State and Central government funding to establish centres of excellence in pedagogy, such as centres of excellence in research, and by mandating pedagogical components and inter-institutional collaborations when evaluating grant proposals.

Explore joint agreements

The second idea is for research institutions to establish joint degree agreements with teaching institutions. These agreements should be stronger than one-off workshops or outreach programmes. For instance, top-performing students at teaching institutions could spend their final two years in research institutions, receiving a “hyphenated degree” bearing the insignia of both institutions. To make this feasible, the curricula at teaching institutions must be aligned with those of research institutions, in content and pedagogy. Faculty from research institutions can engage with their counterparts in teaching institutions through regular workshops, on-site visits, and hands-on training in the best pedagogical practices. Resources must be allocated to support these partnerships as they will help reverse the decline in the quality of teaching in undergraduate-focused institutions. This initiative can begin with one research institution partnering with one teaching institution for a couple of degree programmes, and expand gradually.

Such joint agreements would yield three major benefits: improved student quality in research institutions, enhanced teaching and curriculum quality in teaching institutions, and revitalisation of the teaching institutions themselves. Variations of this model already exist on a small scale. For instance, select third-year civil engineering students from NIT Surat spend their final year at IIT Bombay and are automatically admitted to the M.Tech. programme. Similar student-transfer programmes exist between community colleges and research-intensive universities in the United States, significantly improving both access and quality. Many Indian teaching institutions already have agreements with international universities, so there is no reason why such agreements cannot be established in India, and even within the same city. These agreements would not only facilitate student mobility but also promote faculty exchanges between the two types of institutions. The ideas proposed in this article, which advocate a rebalancing of current efforts, can produce two key outcomes: a much needed refocus on pedagogy that will raise the quality of undergraduate education; and an improvement in research output as a result of less pressure on faculty. These proposals do not require major additional resources, but only a willingness to embrace creative thinking. While science and engineering have been used as examples, the ideas here are equally applicable to fields such as the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Revitalising the country’s teaching institutions is critical to producing a larger, higher-quality talent pool, capable of driving innovative research and scientific discoveries.

Venkatesh Raman is a professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, and the past President of ACM India. Rajagopalan Balaji is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA and a Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellow. Murty Bhallamudi is a Professor of Civil Engineering at IIT Madras. The views expressed are personal