The Future of Education

A good education is one of the greatest assets one can possess. However, this year, education systems worldwide are facing an unprecedented challenge as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Physical education has taken a backseat to digital education. Education systems need to adapt to the change and adopt technology on a global scale to make education accessible to all. Naturally, this is easier said than done. At the recently held CII Global Education Conclave on the "Role of Technology in Education of the Future", Dr Naushad Forbes, Co-Chairman of Forbes Marshall and Former President of CII, in the keynote session, talks about the future of education as it grapples with the challenges posed by Covid-19, and the possible impact of digital education on hiring

I have long believed that education and particularly higher education, is in the industry's direct interest. That is why it is so important for all of us to be concerned about the quality of education that gets provided. The fact is that at the end of the day, the quality of students we hire in our companies is the single most important thing that determines our success in the long run. I have been asked the question "Who will you hire?" Would I hire someone whose learning was entirely digital or someone whose learning was entirely physical? As I go along, I will come back to this question.

CHALLENGES THAT EDUCATION SYSTEMS FACE

I will be talking in two parts. I will start with a background on the challenges that I think concern any attempts at reform in higher education systems. There are three challenges, them being, Quality, Access and Equity. These are the challenges that the new education policy has tried to address, and as has every other reformist move, not only in our country but also worldwide. I will then reflect a bit on how technology can help us in meeting the challenges of Quality, Access and Equity.

QUALITY

If we look at the Quality challenge first, especially in higher education, people will typically talk about excellence. If they ask you to define excellence, the phase that people use quite often in India is that "Excellence is in the water of the institutions". I was fortunate to be associated with Ashok Mishra when he was the Director of IIT-Bombay, and you could see and taste the excellence there. When an institution achieves excellence, you see it in the faculty, you see it in the students, eventually, you even see it in the buildings, and finally, you see it in the water that you taste. You could occasionally, even see it in the administration of these institutes. I would like to make a comment on what it takes to achieve Quality. Many institutes aspire to be great research and teaching institutes. I think that's a mistake. I think it's possible to be excellent institutes at whatever you choose to do, and if institutes choose to be excellent at teaching institutes in themselves, especially at lower levels, then that's fine too. They should set out to be the best in that aspect in a world-beating manner. I'll give you an example of this.

The institute that I went through, Stanford University, wasn't always a world-class university. For the first 60 years of its existence, right through to the 1950s, it wasn't even a national University in the US, far from being an international one. It was actually a regional university. It was a University that catered largely to bright students from the state of California, and it was a conscious choice they made in the 1950s and 1960s to become firstly a national institute of repute, and then an international institute of repute. As they did that, they decided that the way that they would do this is by emphasising research even more than teaching, and this meant making very harsh choices in the 1950s. Really good citizens who were really good teachers were passed over for promotions in the interest of people who were better at research and were world-class researchers. It was a very harsh and difficult set of choices that they need to implement to build that excellence step by step, over decades. The reason I am giving you this example is that when we choose to say that we want to be world-class in our institutes, in combination with research and teaching, it requires that one makes those crucial choices, and it requires that these choices show up in every aspect, to really provide the right incentive for the institute and all the people in it to move in the right direction.

"There are three challenges: Quality, Access and Equity. These are the challenges that the new education policy has tried to address, and as has every other reformist move worldwide"

ACCESS

Let us talk a little bit about Access. The world increasingly sees education, not just primary or secondary education, and even higher education as a necessity for all. If you take the 25 richest countries in the world that make up the OECD, their gross enrolment ratio in higher education is currently around 75%. The US is currently at around 90%. If you take India, we are currently at 26%, which itself has risen dramatically over the last two decades, and the new education policy sets a target of having a gross enrolment ratio of 50% by 2035. In India today, we have 37 million college students. That's a large number of students, it is second only to China, which has 45 million students. Think about it-37 million people are participating in higher education in our country as we speak. The question that comes up is how do you achieve excellence while ensuring access and giving everyone an education? The way in which people have tried to do this is through a very diverse education system. You have some world-class research and teaching institutions at the top of a pyramid, and you have broader and broader institutes that provide access as you go down the pyramid. The most dynamic systems provide students with the ability to move across different institutes. They can perhaps get a degree from a world-class institute at the undergraduate or graduate level while going to a community college or going to a continue education programme to learn a particular skill, and that combination in a heterogeneous and hybrid system is what seems to me is the way in which the world has tried to address this question of how do you get both quality and at the same time provide access.

EQUITY

The third aspect is Equity. The question we have to ask is how do you provide equity while addressing the issues of quality and access? The way in which the world has tried to address the equity question is first by focussing on making the system as meritocratic as possible. You try to become a meritocratic system as the foundation for equity. You start with a need-blind and missions process, where you admit anyone who is bright enough to get into the college regardless of their ability to pay and then you ensure that they can be helped such that they can go to that college regardless of their economic background. But that's not enough because we know that social disadvantages can persist and they need to be addressed as well. So you try to address social disadvantages through various affirmative action programmes that then build more diversity in the student body itself in the hope that over time, it would result in greater equity of access across the population.

I think these are some of the key challenges that all education systems worldwide try to wrestle with, and certainly what our own system too has been trying to wrestle with. Let's turn then to some reflections on what we can do to help us meet these challenges. We live today in a world where the commonest phase in the English language over this past year has been "You're on mute". We live in a world where students are more comfortable with a key element of knowledge that their professors, by which I am referring to the technological platform that they are using for interaction.

"Lectures lend themselves to virtual teaching, and the transmission of knowledge can be done wonderfully through virtual teaching. It can help greatly with access"

TECHNOLOGY: BOON OR BANE?

So, how can technology help us improve quality, access and equity? First of all, lectures lend themselves to virtual teaching, and the transmission of knowledge can be done wonderfully through virtual teaching. It can help greatly with access because we can actually provide access now to all students, regardless of which institutes they might be enrolled in, we can provide access to students across not just institutional borders, but national borders. However, this does raise some fundamental questions. This is fine in the short run, but if anyone can access any course that the institute is offering, then who pays tuition fees and to which institution. If it's been done at the margin, then great. But if it's the core of the student body, then who is going to pay? I think that is a good question to think about. Because a world where you have no boundaries will certainly trigger this question. Already we have heard many students protesting across American and British Universities against being charged full tuition fees for entirely online education in the current pandemic era. It is a real question.

Using technology to do everything online can help equity. There are both good things to say about equity as well as bad things to say about equity. But we also should have concerns. If I think about what has been happening in the past eight months, and you look at children from poorer families. You have children from well-off homes whose parents are well educated, who have been spending time with their kids as they learn online. But for students who come from poorer families, whose parents are less educated, we hear reasons like "the connection failed" or the "internet is down" so that they can get offline and play. They don't have parents around who are ensuring that they stay glued to their screens. I worry if we might have an age cohort which drops off the system as a result of what we have seen in the last few months. I am not convinced that we are concerned enough about what this gap in education is going to do to the next generation going forward. I worry, especially at the school education level, about the impact of technology on equity and I do not see an alternative to getting younger children into a classroom, in the long run, to ensure that they get educated properly.

I want to come back to the question of transmission of knowledge, and the purpose of eduation. Education, especially higher education, is not only about the transmission of knowledge. It is also about the search for knowledge. Any great institution is not just concerned with the transmission, but also for the search of knowledge. And it seems to me that the search for knowledge is less well served by virtual teaching. I think that you have to have a close contact between a professor and a student as a way of enabling that search for knowledge to happen. Or then again, does it? Can the search for knowledge happen even in a virtual format, and can it happen now without regard to distance. Because it can happen now without regard for distance, then we are really on to something here.

PHYSICAL + DIGITAL

We will eventually get beyond this pandemic, even though it seems to be never-ending as we speak. We will at some point be able to move around again and meet strangers and congregate physically in large groups. So, what combination of Digital plus Physical can truly deliver quality access and equity, where you can combine the best lectures in the world from the best teachers in the world through international collaborations, with intense physical interaction? But this does not have to be done for lectures. We can have lectures virtually. But whenever we are together, can it be for intense physical interaction? This will give students an opportunity to make friends with each other and with their faculties, which is an essential part of why we go to a college. I hope, also, that as academics teach courses live, they ensure that they are constantly learning how they can teach their courses better. As they teach online, what do they really miss? I hope that they can write those elements down because if you can capture what you really miss as you go along through these months and the pain that you are put through, and then focus our physical education on addressing those elements, I think we will truly end up with something that is very powerful and it will be a great combination of Digital plus Physical.

"I worry about the impact of technology on equity and I do not see an alternative to getting younger children into a classroom, in the long run, to ensure that they get educated properly"

WHO WILL YOU HIRE?

Let me come back to the question of "Who will the industry want to hire?" Will it be some who is entirely digitally educated or someone who was entirely physically educated? Even though I was educated as an Engineer, I like to think myself of some kind of economist. And if you are an Economist, the standard answer for any question is ""It Depends". It depends on which university you have been educated digitally, and which university you have been educated in physically. If you say to me whether I would pick a student who is physically educated at IIT-Bombay or Stanford or Yale or IIM, or whether I would pick a student who is digitally educated at the world's best universities, I would pick the student who has been physically educated at one of these excellent institutes. But if you ask if I would pick up someone who is educated physically at a median institution today or educated digitally at the world's greatest institutes, I think my answer would be different. I would at least try hiring some students who were educated digitally. I think the combination of physical and digital is where the potential lies, and if we can really crack that combination of physical and digital, then I think we will have something that's truly powerful.