Journal Articles

MUCH of higher education is now seen as instrumental – as training rather than preparation. The focus is more on learning to work rather than learning to learn. It is argued that the ‘escalation of economic globalization has driven a demand for instrumental education – that which can be clearly tied to the goals of production, productivity and employment’ and that ‘academic majors and programmes that directly affect the economy…are increasingly elevated over other fields of study.’ India seems, at first glance, to exemplify this trend quite robustly, with a sharp rise in the number of professional education institutions in disciplines such as engineering, medicine, nursing, and so on, mostly in the private sector, specialized ‘deemed to be universities’, and the growth of self-financing courses in our universities.