Kapil Sibal is India's new Union Minister for Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Earth Sciences for the Indian Government. Sibal is a top, outstanding Indian politician, attorney and former lawyer with a law degree from Harvard Law School. This is significant because he shows tremendous promise toward changing the educational structure of India's educational system, including education spanning from primary to post-secondary colleges and universities.
India's educational system is characterized by a limited number of elementary schools that are poor and many times located in unclean and unhealthy facilities. It is not uncommon for Indian regulators to be accused of taking monetary bribes in exchange for their approval to establish educational institutions and colleges in poor facilities. The corruption is not limited to government officials, many colleges are frequently accused of admitting students to courses that are in high demand in exchange for "capitation fees" or in laymen's terms monetary bribes.
Elementary and high schools are inaccessible by the majority of the population and have extremely low graduation rates. High rates of illiteracy and substandard teaching and exemplify India's broken educational system. This leads to dysfunctional higher education systems that are governed by poor regulations, lacks the government support needed for advancement in higher education practices and further encourages the delivery of poor educational standards.
Sibal, has made a commitment to change the structure and academic opportunities available in India to meet the educational needs of Indian students. His focus is to replace the countries incohesive regulators of higher education with a single governing body as an act of regulatory reform to offer the best education to the population of India. Within weeks of taking office the new minister opened communications with the United States regarding his desire to open India's educational market to U.S. universities and allow foreign universities to set up campuses in India. Sibal, has also made it clear that dishonest practices and institutions offering mediocre and poor academic programs will not be tolerated.
Indian families are presently spending $20 billion dollars (approximately $4 billion annually) to send their children out of the country to get a college education. Sibal's intentions are to improve the condition of higher education in an effort to keep that money in India by opening up the educational sector to increased opportunities for investment. Historically, India's government and laws established that educational institutions will only operate as non-profit entities. Sibal's intention is to reform government requirements to allow for institutions to make a profit under the guidelines that profits will be reinvested in education to create sustainable and viable businesses.
At this time a child's opportunity to attend school or college is limited by their ability to pay to go to school, to pay for transportation, housing, and educational costs. Sibal's commitment is to establish a loan program so that every student and every child can attend school regardless of their ability to pay, as long as he gets a loan. Sibal's plan includes providing a free government education accomplished by funding educational programs through an increase of more than 12% (from 7% to greater than 19%) funding, this is the largest funding initiative in the history of India. India's educational advancements include the employment of more than 9,000 teachers, building many schools, training teachers, investing in research, developing skills and educational reform across the board.
Sibal's educational reform program highlights removal of government control by placing authority over an independent accrediting agency and governing body to act as an independent regulator. Sibal's commitment to structural reform will deliver equity through inclusion of all children and students, will invest in quality to deliver excellence in education and will aspire to create access to educational institutions by expanding and growing the number of schools and trained teachers.
