Education 2047 : April 2025

Education 2047 #Blog 38 (23 APR 2025)

If you walk into a faculty room in a Tier 2 or Tier 3 higher education institution in India, chances are you'll hear a familiar complaint: "Our students are not good." When I ask how this judgment is made, the most common response is: "They scored poorly in exams."

To me, that response reveals more about the system than the student. Our obsession with exam scores has long been a proxy for intelligence, capability, or potential. But if we scratch beneath the surface, we’ll realize we’ve been measuring the wrong things all along.

Marks Measure Memory, Not Merit

What do conventional exams really test? The ability to recall pre-determined information. A student who can memorize well may excel in written tests, but does that make them capable of applying, evaluating, or creating new knowledge? I argue no.

Higher education should not be about remembering facts—it should be about challenging ideas, solving problems, and generating insights. The real “good students” in higher education are not those who can reproduce textbooks, but those who—with some mentoring—can create, innovate, and critically evaluate. Unfortunately, our current system rarely recognizes or nurtures them.

We’re Teaching in a World That No Longer Exists

Let’s face it. The classroom is no longer the epicenter of learning for adults. The world outside—with its chaos, ambiguity, and complexity—is the new classroom. And it’s far more instructive.

Why then do we continue to teach as if content must be delivered by a teacher and notes must be written by hand? Students no longer make mnemonics. Why should they? Information is available instantly. In fact, storing knowledge has become less valuable than thinking critically about it. As educators, our role is no longer to inform but to transform.

Adults Don’t Learn by Listening—They Learn by Doing

We often forget this: learners in higher education are adults. And adults don’t learn like children. They don't learn through memorization or passive absorption. They learn through experience—by applying knowledge, facing consequences, reflecting, and iterating.

Thus, assessments must evolve. Testing memory through exams is futile. What we need is authentic assessment—of skills, of problem-solving ability, of creative synthesis. Ask any employer today, and they’ll confirm: cognitive flexibility, critical reasoning, and collaboration are far more valuable than memory retention.

Not Apathy, But a Systemic Lag: Faculty Development Matters

Many faculty members themselves are products of the very system that glorifies memory and undermines innovation. Their reluctance to change often stems not from apathy but from a lack of exposure to heutagogical practices and the absence of institutional support to upskill.

Faculty development must go beyond pedagogy training. It must initiate faculty into new roles—as coaches, provocateurs, mentors, and co-learners—who inspire students not by lecturing but by challenging them.

Institutional Leadership Must Lead the Shift

For this transformation to take root, leadership at the institutional level must take responsibility. It’s time colleges and universities reimagine academic ecosystems—from rigid schedules to open-ended inquiry, from teacher-led syllabi to learner-driven exploration. The comfort of conformity must give way to the courage of creativity.

Technology: The Inevitable Partner in Our Evolution

From counting on fingers to using calculators, from memorizing roads to relying on GPS, humanity has continuously outsourced its cognitive load. This outsourcing is not intellectual laziness—it is progress. Each tool we create liberates our minds from routine so we can engage in higher-order thinking.

The current wave—AI tutors, online courses, real-time translation, collaborative learning environments—is not an intrusion but an evolution.

Online education is no longer an alternative—it is mainstream. Intelligent feedback systems, digital portfolios, and virtual labs now offer more insight into student learning than any written exam ever could. Faculty must adapt, not react. And students must be empowered, not policed.

Equity in Cognition: Rethinking What 'Good' Means

Too often, students from vernacular-medium schools, rural regions, or economically weaker sections are dismissed as “not good.” But these students often possess immense potential—they simply haven't had the privilege of being assessed on skills that matter.

When provided with a learner-centric environment, many such students outperform their conventionally privileged peers. True equity in education lies not in uniformity of content but in diversity of opportunity and authentic recognition of talent.

Comfort Zones Must Be Dismantled

Faculty must now create discomfort zones in academic institutions. Classrooms, as they exist today, are comfort zones. Examinations have become comfort pillows—where students are not challenged, and educators remain unchallenged.

It’s time to replace the comfort of content delivery with the challenge of curiosity. Let students confront ambiguity, tackle real-world problems, and reflect critically. Let teachers provoke questions, not just provide answers.

The Denial Among Educators and Policymakers

No one seems to worry about the quality of education in this country more than Indian parents. Educators and policymakers often look the other way.

Educators fear that embracing change will dismantle their traditional roles. Policymakers, meanwhile, are still chasing outdated metrics like Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), without asking: What kind of learning are students being enrolled into?

This is not just a structural crisis; it's a philosophical one.

Closing Thoughts: Stop Blaming Students. Start Redefining Education.

When institutions say, "We don’t get good students," I counter with this: "What makes you think you've built a system that can recognize or develop them?"

Instead of blaming students, we should be blaming the outdated structures that continue to dominate our education system. We must build ecosystems that recognize that:

Learning happens beyond classrooms.
Information access is not the problem—engagement with it is.
Assessment should test thinking, not memory.
Technology is an ally, not a threat.
Educators must shift from instructing to mentoring

We don’t need to ‘fix’ students, using classrooms and exams. We need to fix systems that fail to recognize their potential. Let us stop waiting for change to trickle down from policy. Let it rise from discomfort zones, from reflective classrooms, and from teachers who dare to believe in what students can create.

* * *

About the Author

The author brings a rich career at the confluence of education policy and technology foresight, currently serving as the Pro-Chancellor of JIS University, Kolkata. Formerly an Adviser to AICTE and a Scientist at TIFAC, he has spent decades observing and influencing technological transitions in the education landscape. He was a co-author of the seminal Technology Vision 2035: Roadmap for Education, which envisioned the transformative role of emerging technologies in shaping India’s future learning systems.

The views expressed in this blog are entirely personal.

Your thoughts and feedback are most welcome in the comment section below.

Previous blogs

§ The Great Educational Reversal: Responding to AI's New Role in Learning

§ Architects of Viksit Bharat: Why Universities must Recognize Achievement over Graduation

§ Liquidating Cognitive Stagnation in UG Education- The 'SPRINT' Model Blueprint for Change

§ Architects of Viksit Bharat: Why Universities must Recognize Achievement over Graduation

§ The Digital Macaulay: A Modern Threat to Indian Higher Education

§ Why Instant Information Demands a Fundamental Rethink of Education Systems?

§ From Pedagogy to AI-Driven Heutagogy: Redefining Leadership in Universities

§ NEP 2020: Can India’s Education Policy Keep Pace with the FLEXPER Revolution?

§ The Liberating Manifesto: Empowering Faculty to Break Traditional Boundaries