The education system in India today stands at a stage where if we don’t make major changes soon, it is going to come back and haunt us in near future. This education system is currently facing a crisis of preparing job-ready workforce.

In the words of Vikas Gupta, MD, Wiley India, “The situation warrants an immediate plan of action. The idea is not to just start this essential conversation but to lay down a route that can be easily followed. The process starts by defining a well-strategized Skill Roadmap”.

However, the future is not all the bad. Technology, like all other fields, can help us in many ways in transforming our education system.

In this tech-generation, education is not just limited to classrooms. Young millennials are looking for newer ways of learning and are finding alternate methods that can be applied on a large scale.

Few characteristics of quality education system could be.

• Learning should be accessible anywhere.
• It should be available anytime.
• Education should be results-oriented and should focus on applications.
• The learning method should be personalized for an individual.

From the above points one thing is clear, that education degrees are not just limited to universities. Alternate education platforms are doing equally or even better job in training students in their specific field of interests.

Alternate education systems are also getting popular because every student is not the same when it comes to learning. Different students have different approach towards learning and grasping things.

Some people grasp faster as compared to others, some others learn by applications as compared to books. It is due to this reason that we can’t confine the learning method to university and classrooms.

One of the most troubling issue for our country today is un-employment. Though it holds true that there aren’t enough jobs as there are number of youths for the jobs. It is, however, also true that majority of that un-employed ‘pool’ is not ‘fit’ for any kind of job. It’s because our learning method doesn’t focus on what a student will do after university.

Key skills like communication, professional manners, practical management is missing from their syllabus. This leads to manystudents staying unemployed.

Solution

In classrooms, we can start by increasing the use of technology. Tech can be used in a lot of ways to make learning more interactive and accessible.

Several ed-tech tools can be used by professors to enhance teaching and find newer ways of testing students.

Other than this, we need to have a serious look on our colleges.

The thing we need to understand is in most of the colleges today in India, there is not any quality check that determines whether a student is actually ‘ready’ for professional world.

One way to overcome this issue is that someone from outside the college takes a quality check before a student leaves the college, something like any education organization or any government entity. “The exit exams will guarantee the passing students of a comfortable transition from academics to Industry” says Vikas Gupta, Wiley India.

What this ‘quality check’ would do, is that, it will test every individual based on things they have learnt and what they are going to pursue after college. For e.g. if someone has studied management and wants to get a job at any tech startup, they would be tested upon skills that are needed for managing a tech startup.

We can also try and make collaboration with subject based industry which will help in students learn practical aspects of the subject. Regular internships is one example.

To make students ready for this ‘professional world’ we would have to keep a serious check on our learning model. We must make sure that:

• Learning can’t be in any isolated environment. It must be open, it must be social.
• Technology will help us in making education more affordable and accessible.
• Learning cannot and should not be one way. It’s a two-wayprocess.
• Learning should involve applications, projects, real life scenarios and simulations in addition to traditional assessments.

  To achieve this, we can use technology in a more effective way.

We can go for AI-enabled adaptive learning tools. Such tools can help in a personalized learning platform for students depending upon their fields.

We can try and encourage professors in adopting newer ways in order to enhance learning and engage with students more.

Other than this, we must make serious transformation in our traditional classroom model of learning. We can go for something like flipped classroom models.

The technology will help us in making learning accessible and available anytime and anywhere.

About Vikas Gupta:

Vikas Gupta is an award-winning thought leader who is recognized name in education industry. Vikas is particularly interested and fascinated about making learning easy and accessible with the help of technology.

With a career spanning over 20 years, Vikas has been a forerunner in leading many innovative products and business models in the space of technology-driven learning solutions, research and faculty development, professional certifications and skill development.