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Making of aknowledgesuperpowerLinking student data to UID willyield a goldmine of insights for

MHRD, for educational policymaking and regulation

Shubhendu ParthManaging Editor

eGov

he education sector inIndia, particularly thehigher education seg-ment, is going through a very exciting phase. Not

just is investment pouring in, the country’sministry o Human Resource Development(MHRD) is driving major policy changes thatwould have a long term impact on the overalleducation sector in years to come.

Sample this: While HRD minister Kapil Sibalrecently indicated that India’s higher educationenrollment will move up to 4.4 crore rom thecurrent 1.4 crore by 2020, an Ernst & Young-FICCI report suggests that the segment will grownearly 13 percent annually during this period.

Te report also predicts that India’s highereducation spend that is currently pegged at ` 46,200 crore would grow at an average rate o 12.8 percent to cross ` 150,000 crore in the next10 years. It also highlights that the country’shigher education system has the highest insti-

tution to student ratio—25,951 institutions or1.36 crore students.

T Compare this with the world’s other two larg-est nations and we are in or a mega surprise;the US has just 6,700 institutions or over 1.78crore students, while China has 4,000 highereducation institutes that serve the needs o its2.53 crore students.

Interestingly, experts suggest that India stillneeds to set up 1,000 more universities to meetthe needs o three crore students that it expectsto enrol over the next decade.

Going by the existing interest o private sectorinvestments in the segment, and the doubtsraised by the Centre itsel in the case o the 44“deemed universities” earlier this year, the nationneeds to put in place a stringent mechanism tomonitor the per ormance o these institutions.

Te good news is that MHRD has already signed a memorandum o understanding (MoU)with Unique Identifcation Authority o India(UIDAI) to bring school children under itsumbrella and track their progress at every stage.

While the primary objective o this arrange-

ment is to make Aadhar number an identi-fer on all per ormance records— rom mark

sheets and merit certifcates, to migration cer-tifcates—and help prospective employers andeducational institutions avoid akes, the initia-tive will also enable the government to create astrong tracking mechanism once these students join higher education institutions.

In act, smart data mining and analysis willalso help the MHRD map the per ormanceo each o these institutions—in terms o howtheir pass outs are getting placed and where,

the specialisation and trends in each o theseorganisations—parameters that could help acentral agency grade these institutes.

Te initiative assumes urther signifcancewith the introduction o the ContinuousComprehensive Evaluation (CCE) that aimsto change the existing examination systemin schools, to a more holistic process-drivenmonitoring system that includes both summa-tive and ormative assessments.

Link all these data to a central manpowerrepository, map it using a GIS plat orm and

the country is on its way to set up a power ulhuman resources planning tool.