Indian higher education institutions give thousands of PhD degrees in different subjects every year. But if we equally observe the research condition of most of the universities, the research quality, management, resource, and support availability come into question. Experimentation is not encouraged in most of the colleges and universities (except some of the institutions of name). Undergraduate research before the NEP 2020 (not yet implemented completely) was not even known to many of the college and university faculties. Postgraduate research or dissertation is just a canon to follow by the institutions. These problems have several reasons, some of them are huge administrative load along with academics, rigid separation among the departments, not a single research distribution and enrollment system, unavailability of research guide. This study examines the openness and innovative research options available in India and the problems in the Indian higher education system.
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In total, 22 Indian universities made it below rank 800 in Times Higher Education Ranking 2023 - three of which were debutant entries. DTU, Graphic Era University, IIT Indore, IIIT, Delhi, Jamia Hamdard University, JNU, Kalasalingam Academy of Research and Education, KIIT University also have been put under the 601-800 bracket. As per the All India Survey on Higher Education 2017-18 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2018 almost 161,412 students enrolled in PhD programmes which is less than 0.5 percent of the total students enrolled in Higher Education.
UNESCO Institute for Statistics in a 2028 report recorded that of India's 1.3 billion population, there were only 216 researchers per million population in 2015.
The National Education Policy 2020 itself talks about the gaps in the Higher Education System in India.
Some of the major problems currently faced by the higher education system in India include:
- (a)
a severely fragmented higher educational ecosystem;
- (b)
less emphasis on the development of cognitive skills and learning outcomes;
- (c)
a rigid separation of disciplines, with early specialization and streaming of students into narrow areas of study;
- (d)
limited access particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged areas, with few HEIs that teach in local languages
- (e)
limited teacher and institutional autonomy;
- (f)
inadequate mechanisms for merit-based career management and progression of faculty and institutional leaders;
- (g)
lesser emphasis on research at most universities and colleges, and lack of competitive peer reviewed research funding across disciplines;
- (h)
suboptimal governance and leadership of HEIs;
- (i)
an ineffective regulatory system; and
- (j)
large affiliating universities resulting in low standards of undergraduate education (NEP 2020).
In 2021, India’s gross expenditure on research and development (R&D) as a share of GDP stood at 0.8 percent. “India’s R&D spends amongst the lowest in the world” - a NITI Aayog and Institute for Competitiveness study says. India’s research expenditure has been significantly low in comparison to the other countries, the intellectual development of a country can not be ensured without giving much importance to annual research expenditure.