India's Vision - Education to All

Govt. of India has allocated huge financial resources to achieve the goal of providing education to all.It is a wise decision as the future world power will be in the hands of the country who controls global education system. India has a fare chance of becoming world leader in this respect due to large population with considerable human resource in education field.

However, educational institutes in India are far lagging behind foreign institutes in adopting new educational systems, advances in web technology and student centric approach.Unless we change this scenario, it is difficult to attain our objectives.

It is absolutely urgent and necessary to evaluate and understand how foreign schools, colleges and universities are modernising their educational systems through web technology and e-governance, focussing on interactive learning and expanding global reach.

With WEB 2.0, there is a paradigm shift in web technology. The users have become the masters of websites and not the website owners.This has reflected in business and customers are controlling business. Just as customer is the most important element in business, student is the most important element in education. Students should be given central role in e-governance of educational institutes.

At present, the status of web echnology in educational field in India is far from satisfactory. Very few institutes have their presence on web. Those who have their websites, they are mostly designed as information brochures which deal with history, building photos and course information. Many a times, these websites are only to fulfil statutory requirements, not updated and hide factual conditions. The websites of foreign educational institutes give prime importance to faculty-student interaction and have main focus on students - Current students, past students and future would be students. They are closely monitoring progress in web technology and are renovating their systems to remain in line with student's changed expectations.

Adoption of web technology can reduce the cost of education through networking and sharing, can enhance quality of education and develop a capability of global reach. Educational institutes in India should give a serious thought to this changed requirements. If they do so, it will be possible for India to excel in this field also and achieve goal of Education to All on global scale instead of limited to India.