India Surges On Higher Education : Enter Online Courses

Indian higher education has a good problem in that thousands of the young want to advance their standing in the community by attaining a college degree and the universities are very willing to accommodate this desire by increasing the institutes for that advancement. But as with any enterprise that forges ahead a break neck speeds, problems of failure to deliver achieve desired goals fall short.

Enter digital education.

It's new but effective as a resource to relieve the pressure on universities and colleges as well saving the students money. Some problems do exists as this article points out, but given the push for higher education in India and the United States, this will be a great alternative to the higher cost as well as a new tool to widen the availability of a college education.

India Needs Online Courses
Source: Pawan Agarwal, "How MOOCs Can Help India," Scientific American, July 18, 2013.
July 25, 2013

Digital technologies have the potential to dramatically transform Indian higher education. A new model built around massive open online courses (MOOCs) that are developed locally and combined with those provided by top universities abroad could deliver higher education on a scale and at a quality not possible before, says Pawan Agarwal, an adviser for higher education for the Indian government's Planning Commission.

University enrollment in India is huge and growing.

• It surpassed the United States' enrollment in 2010 and became second only to China that year.
• Every day in India 5,000 students enroll at a university and 10 new institutions open their doors.
• At more than 3 percent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), India's spending on higher education is one of the highest in the world. Yet per-student spending is among the lowest.

While recent expansion has widened access to universities, it has further reduced per-student spending and aggravated already acute faculty shortages. As a result, quality has declined.

India must continue to expand access to higher education while preserving quality and reducing costs. This situation is not unique to India, but given its enormous size and unique position, India's challenges are formidable. Digital technologies, particularly the extensive use of MOOCs, could help.
A decade ago the country began using the Internet to distribute video and Web-based courses under a government-funded program, the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning.

• Developers created more than 900 courses, focused mainly on science and engineering, with about 40 hours of instruction each.
• With limited interactivity and uneven quality, these courses failed to attract a large body of students.
• MOOCs have given Indian academics a better sense of how a lecture could be restructured into short, self-contained segments with high interactivity to engage students more effectively.

It helps that India is full of young people who possess a high comfort level with technology. Indians are among the most aggressive users of MOOCs. Of the 2.9 million registered users of Coursera in March, more than 250,000 were from India, second only to those from the United States.
India still needs to find the right model to use MOOCs in an Indian context. With a decade of experience in this space and a vibrant technology ecosystem, India will most likely find its way soon.