Thapliyal, U. / Educationia Confab
ISSN: 2320-009X
Equity in Higher Education: Exploring the Role of ICT Upasna Thapliyal Assistant Professor, University School of Open Learning Panjab University, Chandigarh, India Abstract The Indian higher education system today faces a daunting challenge of expansion in the face of globalised competition and all this has in turn made the access to higher education even more difficult. With tertiary education at the disposition of the privileged few, and majority percentage excluded from the educational stream, the prospects of youth getting employment are affected. The job and economic insecurity with unfulfilled career ambitions among the disadvantaged group leads to aimlessness and unrest, fear and frustrations. With its unimaginable scope, ICT has become a buzzword. Technopedagogic competencies are being emphasized more than ever before in recent times. “Education for all” being one of the millennium development goals, social equity at all the levels of education is an imperative. In accordance with the recommendations of NKC, Indian government has launched “National Mission on Education through ICT” in 2009 with main aim of providing high quality personalized and interactive knowledge modules over the Internet for all the learners in higher education institutions in 'Any-time Any-where mode'. Yet another aspect associated with the usage of ICT is “Digital Divide” that makes it rather an instrument that needs an intelligent handling. Thus, implementing ICT in higher education for promoting social equity demands a strong infrastructure, proper planning and policy-making, efficient professionals and reorientation of the higher education framework. This paper intends to explore the transformative potential of ICTs in the field of higher education by studying the ways and means through which ICTs promote social equity. Keywords: Social equity, higher education, ICTs
Introduction With its unimaginable scope, ICT has become a buzzword. Techno-pedagogic competencies are being emphasized more than ever before in the recent times. Information and communication technology (ICT) is a key driver of socio-economic change, worldwide. In developing countries, like India, the need for economic and social development justifies the investments in educational reform at all the levels and in educational ICT. But ironically there exists a gap between the national policies of education and the implementation of ICT in education practically. “Education for all” being one of the millennium development goals, social equity at all the levels of education is an imperative. The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) that talks of India as a knowledge economy has clearly acknowledged ICT as a powerful tool for equitable development of higher education system. In accordance with the recommendations of NKC, Indian government has launched “National Mission on Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2013
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Education through ICT” in 2009 with main aim of providing high quality personalized and interactive knowledge modules over the Internet for all the learners in higher education institutions in 'Any-time Any-where mode'. This paper intends to explore the transformative potential of ICTs in the field of higher education by studying the ways and means through which ICTs promote social equity. Social Equity in Higher Education Through higher education, social exclusion needs to be reduced in order to avoid social inequality. Social equity in education proposes that students from different social groups should have a similar range of outcomes as there should be no reason to accept disparities in educational outcomes for between members of social, racial or ethnic groups based on their different social circumstances or preconceptions about their potential abilities. For socially equitable education, the goal should be to close the gaps in educational attainment measured between such groups. The open access movement makes possible to everyone to find a variety of educational resources in the web. It represents a significant option to increase democratic access to knowledge and instructional materials. Open educational resources are teaching/learning materials freely available in the web for anyone to use (Wiley, 2006). The open access adopters see in this approach a way to enrich learning comprehension through reuse, adaptation, and free dissemination of digital educational content. Lower telecommunications bandwidth costs and the emergence of enhanced cable, wireless and satellite systems are now providing greater opportunities for basic access, videoconferencing, on-line interactive learning, and real time interaction between the learner and the providing institution or teacher irrespective of the demographic constraints. Higher Education in India and Social Equity – A Paradox Research in higher education in India showed that the benefits of educational expansion occur essentially for the already privileged sections, with limited participation of the disadvantaged in the development process. The contemporary challenge is to achieve access, equity and quality of higher education simultaneously. Despite its large size, the higher education system in India is far away from the reach of the bulk of the socially economically and culturally underprivileged section of the population and cannot meet the growing demand for higher education, especially from weaker sections of the society including culturally, economically, and educationally backward people. It caters to the requirement of only about 10 percent of youth in the relevant age group (18–24 years), while corresponding figures are more than 50 percent for most developed countries and 20 to 30 percent for developing countries, Chauhan (2008). Further, the absence of equity and inclusiveness in the system is clearly discernible from the fact that the intensity of enrolment in rural areas is low compared to that of urban and too low especially among SC, ST and OBC. On gender front, the access to higher education is also low for female as compared with male, the GER being 15.25% for the former and 11% for the later, Thorat (2006). Many factors can be attributed towards such disparity like financial constraints and lower status of women, lack of proper implementation of ongoing programmes and absence of political will most Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2013
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ISSN: 2320-009X
importantly contribute to inequity and non-inclusiveness in the system. Looking at the ground reality financial provision has been made in the Budget of 2009-10 to improve the situation not only from the point of view of equity and access but also from almost all crucial broad sectors of higher education. Looking at the ground reality, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in India is 12 percent while that of some developed countries is around 70 percent. One of the reasons of such a dismal enrolment may be attributed to concentration of educational institutes in the urban areas while majority of population live in rural areas. This is evident from the fact that in India only 20 percent of Higher Education Institutes are located in the rural areas with more than 65 percent of its population while the remaining 80 percent of Institutions are located in urban or Semi-urban areas which constitute only 30 to 35 percent of population. This invariably reflects gross disparities in access to higher education in India (Ballal, 2009). There has been huge increase in the demand for higher education in India since independence. Taking technical higher education into account, there are approximately 2,400 technical/engineering institutions across India’s 30 states, of which less than 8 percent of public institutions are autonomous. The demand for tertiary education continues. There has been a phenomenal growth in the number of private colleges across India in the last 20 years. Private colleges now deliver 85 percent of all technical and engineering education. The significant changes in supply and demand make it increasingly important to ensure that tertiary education system and institutions are effectively and efficiently governed and managed to meet the needs of industry and society. The demand for higher education increases on account of a variety of factors such as enhanced high school enrolment and growing aspirations of newer groups of the society. However the increase in demand has not been matched by corresponding increase in the education infrastructure in term of educational institutions and other facilities. Due to the demand outstripping the capacity, a large number of aspirants are also denied access to higher education. This has led to a situation where institutions are required to manage more students than they can actually afford, leading pressure on the facilities particularly the State Universities, colleges – aided as well as unaided. As per the World Bank report on governance of higher education in India, 2010 the higher education faces the following daunting challenges: • Expansion of access to higher education and decentralization of powerbase • Equity in educational opportunity and social justice • Consolidation and qualitative improvement of colleges and expanding the base of social relevance of higher education • Linkage of education to employment through knowledge and skill upgrading • Accountability at all levels Ghosh (2009) enlists challenges before the higher education system in India with the following nature: • Access to education- There exist infrastructure, socio- economic, linguistic and physical barriers in India for people who wish to access education. • Quality of education- This includes infrastructure, teacher and the processes quality. • Resources allocated- Central and State Governments reserve about 3.5% of GDP for education as compared to the 6% that has been aimed (Ministry of Human Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2013
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Resource Development, 2007).There exist drawbacks in general education in India as well as all over the world like lack of learning materials, teachers, remoteness of education facilities, high dropout rate etc (UNESCO,2002). Emergence of ICT in Higher Education in India With ICT revolution all across the world during the end of millennium, the year 2000 saw a remarkable development in the application of ICTs in India. In order to boost e-commerce in India, the government of India passed the Information Technology Bill in May 2000 that propelled the use of ICTs not only in the corporate world but the education sector also became aware of its potential. Government of India has realized the relevance of technology in classrooms. For example, National Mission on Education through ICT was launched in 2009 to bring sustainability in education. The main aim of the mission is to provide high quality personalized and interactive knowledge modules over the Internet for all the learners in higher education institutions in 'Any-time Anywhere mode'. The scheme seeks to bridge the gap in skills needed for the use of computing devices for the purpose of teaching and learning among urban and rural teachers in the Higher Education domain and empower those, who have not been able to reap the advantages of the digital revolution. “Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is one of the most potent forces in shaping the twenty-first century. Its revolutionary impact affects the way people live, learn and work and the way government interacts with civil society. ICT is fast becoming a vital engine of growth for the world economy. It is also enabling many enterprising individuals, firms and communities, in all parts of the globe, to address economic and social challenges with greater efficiency and imagination. Enormous opportunities are there to be seized and shared by us all”. (G8 charter, 2000) In particular, re-engineering of the technical education and training system of the country, with a focus on ICT education, was proposed under the umbrella of a National Program for Human Resource Development in IT (NPHRDI). Actions emerging from the policy include creating public awareness; documenting best practices through a clearinghouse; identifying and developing institutions of excellence; promoting technology-mediated learning; supporting capacity-building initiatives for faculty, curriculum and content development, research; and promoting private-public partnerships. (Reddy and Sinha, UNESCO Meta Survey on Use of Technologies in Education in India, 2003) Some of the notable initiatives of use of ICT in education in India include: • • • •
Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) uses radio, television, and Internet technologies. National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning: a concept similar to the open courseware initiative of MIT. It uses Internet and television technologies. Eklavya initiative: Uses Internet and television to promote distance learning. IIT-Kanpur has developed Brihaspati, an open source e-learning platform (Bhattacharya and Sharma, 2007).
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Premier institutions like IIM-Calcutta have entered into a strategic alliance with NIIT for providing programmes through virtual classrooms. India is making use of powerful combination of ICTs such as open source software, satellite technology, local language interfaces, easy to use human-computer interfaces, digital libraries, etc. with a long-term plan to reach the remotest of the villages. Community service centers have been started to promote e-learning throughout the country (Bhattacharya and Sharma, 2007). Moreover, over the years Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has been emerging as a potential alternative to ensure greater accessibility to higher education beyond geographical and political boundaries with all its advanced tools like teleconferencing, email, audio conferencing, television lessons, radio broadcasts, interactive radio counseling, interactive voice response system, and CD ROMs and it can also facilitate many such academic and administrative activities with e-orientation (Sharma, 2003; Sanyal, 2001; Bhattacharya and Sharma, 2007). Through broadening the international dimension of educational services to greater and expanding meaningful collaborations with internationally acclaimed institutions in higher education, e-learning vis-à-vis ICT can really make higher education easily accessible, affordable and qualitative leading to upliftment of the socio-economic status of people and eradicating social inequality. Role of ICT in Promoting Social Equity in Higher Education In the developing nations like ours, National policymakers struggle, on the one hand, to create conditions that support these policies and programs that cope with them and harness their effects to support economic growth and the public good. Education is among the public sectors that most effects—and is most affected by—these developments in ICTs. The improvement of educational systems and increased educational attainment are seen as primary ways that countries can prepare for these global, technology-based changes and within education, ICT is seen as a way to promote educational change, improve the skills of learners, and prepare them for the global economy and the information society. A third, parallel and related development—sometimes referred to as the “information society” (European Commission, 2000)—is the set of broader social changes resulting from the convergence of computers and communication technologies, their assimilation throughout society and their use for communication, collaboration, and the sharing of knowledge. As ICTs—including laptops wirelessly connected to the Internet, personal digital assistants, low cost video cameras, and cell phones—become more accessible and embedded in society they offer the potential to restructure organizations, promote collaboration, increase democratic participation of citizens, improve the transparency and responsiveness of governmental agencies, make education and health care more widely available, foster cultural creativity, and enhance the social integration of individuals with different abilities and groups of different cultural backgrounds. National education policies and plans have often lacked explicit causal connections between these investments and the desired economic and social impact stated in national goals. This is an important missing link in the structure of ICT-based Vol. 2, No. 9, September 2013
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educational reform policies and programs. The national policy framework that promotes social equity in higher education through the use of ICT should: • Mainstream social advancement opportunities for disadvantaged groups as an immediate priority to minimize economic disparity and bridge the digital divide. • Facilitate participation of the citizens in local and national government, and policy making as a broad national agenda. • Provide incentives to the private sector and NGOs or other such organizations to generate and share locally relevant and local language digital content and online services so as more and more students find easier to pursue higher education. Conclusion With the haunt of globalization social equity seems to be the toughest challenge. Higher education, and in particular technical and engineering education, is critical to India’s aspirations of strengthening its reputation as a major competitive player in the global knowledge economy. Issues of fair access and affordable participation in higher education are critical if India is to empower its people with educational opportunities that allow individual potential to be fulfilled, and allow more Indian graduates opportunities for employment and to compete in an international arena. Therefore, it is rightly said that “The governance of higher education needs to develop a fusion of academic mission and executive capacity, rather than substitute one for another” (OECD, 2002). As the nation moves deliberately towards a major expansion of its higher education system in a variety of modes and levels, it is necessary to ensure that ICTs with a tremendous expansion potential serve as the anchor for promoting social equity. It has now become necessary to recognize that other underprivileged sections such as rural population, low wage earners, and first generation learners also suffer from inequity problems. The development of an all-inclusive policy for higher education becomes a complex phenomenon. The practices also, should not lead to intensification of intercommunity, inter-caste, inter-religious, inter-lingual and inter-State tensions and conflicts. Hence the foundation for widening access to higher education should begin with integration of ICT in the educational process right from the secondary and uppersecondary school as a backward link to guide and streamline the access process to a larger variety of post-secondary education avenues. References [1] [2] [3] [4]
Ballal, H.S. (2009). FICCI-Higher Education Summit, Nov 6, 2009, New Delhi. Bhattacharya, I., & Sharma, K. (2007). India in the knowledge economy – an electronic Paradigm. International Journal of Educational Management, 21(6), 543-568. Chauhan, S. P. C. (2008). Higher Education: Current Status and Future Possibilities in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Analytical Reports in International Education, 2(1), 29-48. [5] Cross, M., & Adam, F. (2007). ICT Policies and Strategies in Higher Education in South Africa: National and Institutional Pathways. Higher Education Policy, 20(1),73-95. [6] European Commission. (2000). eEurope: An information society for all. Brussels, Belgium: European Commission. [7] Ghosh, A. (2009). Enhancing the quality and accessibility of higher education through the use of Information and Communication Technology. Retrieved from http://www.iitk.ac.in/infocell/announce/convention/papers/Strategy%20Learning-01 Ashish%20Hattangdi,%20%20Atanu%20Ghosh.pdf
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[8] G8 Charter on Global Information Society, Okinawa, July 22, 2000. Retrieved from www.dotforce.org/reports/it1.html [9] OECD (2002). Education Policy Analysis. Paris: OECD. Retrieved from http://www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/9602041E.PDF [10] Reddy, U., & Sinha, V. (2003). Meta Survey on Use of Technologies in Education in India. Thailand: UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, [11] Sanyal, B. C. (September 10- 12, 2001). New functions of higher education and ICT to achieve education for all. Paper presented in the Expert Roundtable on University and Technology for Literacy and Education Partnership in Developing Countries. International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris: UNESCO. [12] Sharma, R. (2003). Barriers in Using Technology for Education in Developing Countries. In proceedings of international conference on Information Technology: Research and Education, ITRE 2003, 512-516. [13] Thorat, S. (2006). Higher Education in India: Emerging Issues Related to Access, Inclusiveness and Quality. Nehru Memorial Lecture, University of Mumbai, India. [14] Wiley, D. (2006). The Current State of Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/document/32/0,2340,en_2649_33723_36224352_1_1_1_1,00.html [15] World Bank Working Paper no. 190. (2010). Governance of Technical Education in India Key Issues, Principles, and Case Studies. DOI: 10.1596/978 0 8213 83414
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