Most commentators credit India’s technical prowess to socialist rulers who, in a bid to make the country an industrial power, “over-invested” in engineering and other professional colleges. Even as secondary school education languished, they built a slew of super-elite engineering colleges called IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and a network of regional engineering colleges to train workers for state-owned heavy industry companies.
But the government’s “over-investment” in education was not nearly enough to meet the massive demand among India’s middle classes for professional degrees says Shikha Dalmia, senior analyst at the Reason Foundation.
Consider:
The government’s role in providing higher education has shrunk over the years because it simply did not have the money to keep subsidising it. But this is a blessing in disguise, argues C.K. Prahlad, a professor of management at the University of Michigan.
The strong presence of private-sector technical schools gives IT companies a far better chance of addressing the worker shortage than of addressing the shortage of roads, power supply and other public-sector infrastructure.
Furthermore, unlike government colleges, the private schools have a vested interest in delivering graduates with skills suited for the industry. Otherwise, Prahlad notes, they can’t justify their hefty capitation fees.
Source: Shikha Dalmia, Where Did India’s Skilled Labor Come From? Reason, June 2006.
For text: http://www.reason.com/0606/fe.sd.where.shtml
For more on International: http://www.ncpa.org/pi/internat/intdex1.html
FMF Policy Bulletin/ 18 July 2006
