Reform education

Sir — This refers to the articles, “A reality check on India’s higher education” (September 1) by Devesh Vijay and “Educational reconstitution of the Indian society” (September 1) by JS Rajput.  Crammed in stuffy classrooms and faced with pressure to perform well in boring and rote-based studies which neither nourish nor helps in employment, students do not get to see what life is because of shallow understanding of the subject.  They pay the price later in life. 

Two recent surveys reveal that 80 per cent of engineering graduates and 93 per cent of business school graduates are unemployable. In failing to impart practical skills, the Governments and the ever mushrooming higher educational institutes do not realise the gravity of the outcome. All fond hopes of innovation, entrepreneurship and the much-vaunted ‘demographic dividend’ will come to naught if the graduation, pursued by the student  after spending so much money, is utterly useless and does not give him/her self-confidence to face the world and achieve something in the industry one is entering.

The need of the hour, therefore,  is to make a radical overhaul of the prevailing curriculum tailored to meet the needs of the industry as well as the society. Only then will the students will have a promising future who can truly contribute in building the nation’s economy.