Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART I DEMOCRACY AND GLOBALIZATION
- PART II INDIA AND THE WORLD
- PART III SOCIAL NORMS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
- 21 Social Norms, Law, and Economics
- 22 Methodological Individualism in the Social Sciences
- 23 Left Politics and Modern Economics
- 24 Hung Parliament: A Voting Scheme for Preventing It
- 25 Money, Music, and Harmony
- 26 Rules of Engagement
- 27 The Enigma of Advertising
- 28 The Truth About Lying
- 29 Rationality: New Research in Psychology and Economics
- 30 Higher and Lower Education
- PART IV PERSONS
- PART V ON THE ROAD, AROUND THE WORLD
- Index
30 - Higher and Lower Education
from PART III - SOCIAL NORMS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART I DEMOCRACY AND GLOBALIZATION
- PART II INDIA AND THE WORLD
- PART III SOCIAL NORMS AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
- 21 Social Norms, Law, and Economics
- 22 Methodological Individualism in the Social Sciences
- 23 Left Politics and Modern Economics
- 24 Hung Parliament: A Voting Scheme for Preventing It
- 25 Money, Music, and Harmony
- 26 Rules of Engagement
- 27 The Enigma of Advertising
- 28 The Truth About Lying
- 29 Rationality: New Research in Psychology and Economics
- 30 Higher and Lower Education
- PART IV PERSONS
- PART V ON THE ROAD, AROUND THE WORLD
- Index
Summary
One of the domains in which India belongs conspicuously with the developed world is higher education and research. Go to an international conference on physics, statistics, economics, and, increasingly, even English literature; or open a journal in any of these disciplines and you will find an Indian presence in a way that no other Third World country matches, and just a handful of developed countries do. Nevertheless, it is time to rethink our education policy. This advantage in higher education, especially in the sciences, is beginning to get eroded. The deterioration of the libraries and laboratories and the students' lack of access to computers are now causing a competitive disadvantage. Second, India's remarkable achievement in higher education is matched only by its notable failure in primary education.
Suppose you construct a house in which the ground floor has as many square feet as the number of persons who have primary education in the country, the first floor as many square feet as the number who have secondary education, and continue the same way constructing a floor each for high-schoolers, undergraduates, and postgraduates. For most countries, the house will look like a pyramid, tapering off rapidly as one goes higher. In the case of India, the building is relatively like a tower.
In 1995, only 52 per cent of Indian adults were literate. This is in sharp contrast to, say, China's 81 per cent.
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- Information
- The Retreat of Democracy and Other Itinerant Essays on Globalization, Economics, and India , pp. 198 - 202Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010