New Delhi, August 3: A white paper released by the think-tank of a top business school has said that India must invest in education and human skills if it really wants to become the world’s top three economies in the next 15 years.
What does the white paper say?
“Robust higher education focus leading to skilling and employability will help India to become a true services economy,” the white paper released by the MBAUniverse.com said.
MBAUniverse.com, a think tank and network of leading B-schools in the country, has released the white paper during the 10th edition of the Indian Management Conclave (IMC) here.
Functioning as a digital platform, MBAUniverse.com connects top 100 B-schools with prospective students and other stakeholders and today, it is working with 90 out of top 100 Indian B-schools.
The paper further said that Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) target of 35 per cent by 2025 and 50 per cent by 2035 is the need of the hour, which only matches that of China and is still half of the US GER.
“Population of India will reach 1.40 billion in 2025 which will require more colleges, universities, faculty and higher Gross Enrolment Ratio,” Amit Agnihotri, one of the authors of the white paper, said during the Conclave.
NEP proposes to increase current GER
Agnihotri said that the draft National Education Policy proposes to increase the current Gross Enrolment Ratio of 25.8 per cent to 35 per cent by 2025 along with other key requirements which would contribute substantially to achieve the five trillion dollar economy goal.
The white paper further stated that the number of universities in the country needs to grow from 950 to over 1,200 by 2025 to sustain the GER growth.
“Brick and mortar educational institutions will have to ride the digital highway that Digital India promises to build, reshaping their focus towards the distance, online and continuing education in addition to campus programmes,” the white paper stated.
The paper suggested that India should double its GDP, like it did between 2000 and 2006, when the GDP doubled from $476 billion to $949 billion. “This period saw a strong spurt in management and engineering education,” it added.