Sunday, October 16, 2011

Indian Higher Legal Education Needs Reforms

Higher education in India is suffering from many deficiencies and irregularities. These include lack of practical training, academic nature of education, absence of skills development, corruption, lack of research capabilities, etc.

Universities and colleges are engaging in all sorts of undesirable behaviours and practices and this is affecting the higher education and research oriented courses like PhDs. Indian government is also not very much enthusiastic in curing these deficiencies and eliminating the irregularities.

This guest column is analysing all these irregularities and illegalities happening in the higher education field in India. Law minister Salman Khurshid and HRD Minister Kapil Sibal must urgently intervene to save higher education in India in general and higher legal education in India in particular.

There is no second opinion about the fact that legal education in India needs urgent reforms. This is more so regarding higher legal education in India that is in really bad shape. Despite many suggested measures, higher legal education in India is still in a very poor state.

This is also the reason why continuing professional legal education in India has failed miserably. Further, this is also the reason why PhDs in India are almost extinct as far as legal education is concerned.

Naturally, higher legal education in India is in doldrums. Vast spread corruption has destabilised the higher education in India. These are serious issues that must be resolved by both the education minister and law minister of India.

Higher legal educational reforms in India must comprise of many essential elements. Transparency to support for higher legal research and education in India are essential components of the same.

These days news of international cooperation in the field of education between India and other nations is in abundance. However, that is just stressing upon the outer shell without curing the diseased inner core of decaying educational system of India.

India needs to urgently take care of the fallacies and deficiencies of its educational system that is not serving any purpose except brain drain. The sooner we do this the better Indian education system would be.