The U.S education system gives much importance on acquiring concepts and applying the same in exploring the most out of it. The system keeps their preferences secondary on scoring marks out of the concepts keeping its boundaries on just memorizing and repeating only. However, the Indian education system in comparison to other countries demonstrates a deficiency in style and approach. The system focuses on content, understanding and memorizing the same which finally is to be presented in paper during examination to secure higher marks.
Focusing on the global context, as the U.S is a huge country, it has innumerous human resources and proportional amount of opportunities thereby students pour into from different parts of the world to pursue education in the U.S. Opportunity to get exposure with the best of the global company such as IBM, Oracle, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook makes obvious choice of pursuing the same level of educational background effectively promised by the U.S higher education system. Although the education system is good in every country yet the work experience makes the difference and the edge of the U.S system lies. Moreover, the Canadian Education System reflects a similar education system as the U.S. proving most of the methods similar to each other in terms of grading and university systems leaving no head to head competition between the two.
With respect to globalised form of education, the U.S educational institutions provide active learning, ability to apply concepts in real time situation and an outcome based education. The system clearly conduct assessment of students less on exams or memorizing content and more on the ability to demonstrate application of their knowledge and skills on a daily basis which otherwise is a lesser phenomena in British education or anywhere else. Likewise, American organizations have much talent acquisition recruiting many employees in India, Philippines and surrounding countries due to which the boundaries and barriers of employment are lifting globally and thereby more youths apply for such global opportunities.
With a closer look when a student joins such system, a student is expected to fit into that environment as soon as he/she has finished their respective academic training. Students are active learner and engaging with the U.S system on a daily basis expects applying the concepts learned in presentation, debate and various other forms of expression challenging other students and professors only with the purpose to hone their knowledge to articulate and ability to speak publicly. Thereby this makes obvious for a student to practice in a simulated situation polishing their resilience and be closer to people in the work force which will prove helpful after they get into a real life working space.
Indian institutes are famous in the international podium but the quality in comparison with international standards requires more enhancements. Case studies, active debate and participation can be adopted frequently which could add tremendous value to the system. Adding industry exposure to students, increasing faculty development programs for faculty exposure are some of the most effective ways to increase the quality of education. As most of the faculty members end up working in a university as soon as they complete their education might have an understanding gap of the industry. Thus, industry experience in the field of their expertise can be an important consideration.
Students in India and South Indian sub-continent has a lot of confidence in what they do, they are smart individuals with impressive and exceptional knowledge, intellect and smartness. These students are mostly shy and lack confidence to go out, speak and present them in explaining a point in a global work place. Since there is already an existence of an exceptionally smart group of talent, the only missing element that could be improved is boosting the level of confidence and ability to present in the global context.
In South Asian context, a student is expected to sit, listen, absorb and then write an exam making them passive learners and that way it harms the confidence level of the students and overall personality. This will require a cultural adaptation, where a culture which demands the teacher to be revered, but the teacher has to evolve to be a facilitator of learning and stimulate confidence in them adding up like a magic dust to the already existing positive attributes of the system.
Ranil Herath
Renil Herath has been associated with DeVry, which operates several for-profit higher education institutions in U.S., for last eight years and has worked in higher education for seventeen years in various countries such as Sri Lanka, Canada and the U.S.
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