Indian Education System
A Profile of the Indian Education System
Gretchen Rhines Cheney, Betsy Brown Ruzzi and
Karthik Muralidharan
Paper prepared for the
New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce
November 2005
©National Center on Education and the Economy, 2006
A Profile of the Indian Education System
Gretchen Rhines Cheney Betsy Brown Ruzzi and Karthik Muralidharan
November 2005
India, with more than a billion residents, has the second largest education system in the world (after China). Experts estimate that 32 percent of its current population is under the age of 15.1 But counter to the image of India as a youthful engine of economic growth where many urban-based citizens work in some of the best technology-centered jobs in the world, males in India complete just 2.9 years of schooling on average, females just 1.8 years.2 And for the small proportion who do persist through primary and secondary schooling, the quality of instruction varies widely, depending on the region of the country and whether one is enrolled in a State-supported public school or a fee-based private school.
Despite the highly inefficient delivery of public services, high levels of teacher absenteeism and non-teaching activity, many Indian students remain motivated to succeed on the college entrance exams. The high level of competition for entry into the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and other top institutions is enough to spur millions of students to achieve at remarkably high levels, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics. The increased demand for higher education is not currently being met: only ten percent of the age cohort is actually enrolled in higher education. But in a country with such a large population, ten percent enrollment amounts to 9 million students, resulting in 2.5 million new college graduates a year. These numbers driven by the private sector opportunities abroad, and increasingly, back
in
Gretchen Rhines Cheney, Betsy Brown Ruzzi and
Karthik Muralidharan
Paper prepared for the
New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce
November 2005
©National Center on Education and the Economy, 2006
A Profile of the Indian Education System
Gretchen Rhines Cheney Betsy Brown Ruzzi and Karthik Muralidharan
November 2005
India, with more than a billion residents, has the second largest education system in the world (after China). Experts estimate that 32 percent of its current population is under the age of 15.1 But counter to the image of India as a youthful engine of economic growth where many urban-based citizens work in some of the best technology-centered jobs in the world, males in India complete just 2.9 years of schooling on average, females just 1.8 years.2 And for the small proportion who do persist through primary and secondary schooling, the quality of instruction varies widely, depending on the region of the country and whether one is enrolled in a State-supported public school or a fee-based private school.
Despite the highly inefficient delivery of public services, high levels of teacher absenteeism and non-teaching activity, many Indian students remain motivated to succeed on the college entrance exams. The high level of competition for entry into the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and other top institutions is enough to spur millions of students to achieve at remarkably high levels, particularly in the areas of science and mathematics. The increased demand for higher education is not currently being met: only ten percent of the age cohort is actually enrolled in higher education. But in a country with such a large population, ten percent enrollment amounts to 9 million students, resulting in 2.5 million new college graduates a year. These numbers driven by the private sector opportunities abroad, and increasingly, back
in