NEP 2020 And Reforms In Professional Education: Need To Move Faster
· Free Press Journal
In the process of growth of a country, technical & professional education plays an important role. These include programs like architecture, engineering, agriculture, medicine, among others. These courses are aimed at creating “specialists” in diverse areas who can take forward the country in different domains of innovation and progress.
NEP Recommendations:
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While acknowledging the contribution of the said streams, the committee felt that these programs are also meant to create future Indian professionals with adequate life skills and hence these should be integrated with the “general streams of higher education”. This means that in future stand-alone specialist institutions should not be encouraged and by 2030, these need to be totally integrated with mainstream higher education. Further, the general recommendation like multiple-entry multiple exit, integrating liberal education, etc. are also applicable for such education.
Nothing much was, therefore, spoken at length about many of these special streams of education; for example, not much is mentioned about two of the most important branches of technical education i.e. “engineering” and “management”. Nevertheless, the committee has made recommendations on certain other streams of professional education as under:
NEP 2020 And Reforms In Professional Education: Need To Move FasterAgriculture and Allied Subjects: This is a very important discipline. The committee observed that enrolment of students in agriculture and allied sciences is hardly 1 per cent of total registration in HEI sector against the fact that these streams cover around 9 per cent of total HEI institutions. The committee, therefore, recommended reforms in this area of professional study including upgradation of curriculum so that agricultural growth can propel prosperity of India. The committee suggested that revised curriculum should include coping strategies to tackle challenges faced by agricultural sector like declining productivity, application of indigenous means to boost agricultural production, integration of technology for improving productivity, amidst others.
Healthcare Education: Recommendations of the committee in this domain include restructuring its curriculum and duration to meet the needs of the contemporary world. For example, every medical professional having an MBBS degree must possess four skills needed for any medical professional. These are “medical”, “diagnostic”, “surgery”, and “emergency” skills. Further, every MBBS student must know the basic aspects of indigenous medicine including Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy (AYUSH). The reverse is also recommended. The idea is that all medical professionals are aware of the basics of other allied streams as well.
Legal Education: The committee made certain specific recommendations to make legal education globally competitive. Law education should take care of Constitutional values of justice and improve practical jurisprudence. One of the important recommendations includes “bi-lingual approach” to legal education system so that lawyers in future are in a position to practice in at least in two languages: “English” and “local language”.
NEP 2020 Set To Revolutionise Indian Education, Teachers At The Epicentre of ChangeCurrent Stage of Implementation and Looking Forward:
As stated earlier, the committee has made specific recommendations only as regards the three branches as above and did not make any specific suggestions for other streams of technical / professional education. The most important recommendation was, however, integration of professional education with the generic stream of higher education so that in future the country would see “generic HEIs” with special branches of specific disciplines of professional education. The general recommendations are anyway applicable to them. Special reforms appear challenging in this area as the technical & professional education domain is so well entrenched in our system that it is difficult to make changes as suggested in the committee’s recommendations. The pace of implementation is quite slow on the ground.
Some of the present developments are as under:
Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has formed a committee to look into the curriculum including the structural aspects and integration of academia industry coordination in agricultural education. ICAR also has plans to launch vocational short-term courses for agricultural education. Nothing concrete seems to have emerged till now.
NEP 2020 And School Teacher Education: Slow Process Of ImplementationMedical Education has also seen some incremental modifications like focus on ethics and communication etc. and proposed introduction of National Exit Test (NExT), a common final year examination intended to serve both as licensure and post-graduate entrance test. But the desired integration between different streams of medical education is yet to take off. There has been no radical change.
Legal Education has seen some changes like implementation in few Universities of 4-year degree courses with research and 5 years of integrated course and some increased integration with industry through different kinds of internships, etc. But there has not been any significant change.
NEP 2020 And Indian Culture/Knowledge Systems: Quicker Implementation NeededFor these streams of professional education, the main objective of the committee recommendations was to make the curriculum internationally competitive, structurally flexible and more industry / future skills oriented and diversification by way of teaching through Indian languages so that the streams become more students friendly. Considering this global objective, progress appears to be slow. Much more work needs to be done on the ground. Let us hope things will move speedily in the days to come as reforms in these steams are crucial in achieving the country’s goal of becoming Vikasit Bharat.