| |9 April 2019HIGHERReviewto five years. This gives a student sufficient time to devel-op their profile to reflect their interest in the field. The Focus of the Indian Education System versus For-eign Institutes, `The Gap':As far as the STEM education goes, Indian education sys-tems seem to focus only on rote learning, for example, students learn various block diagrams, algorithms, and derivations but rarely do they implement them to the deeper extent. Engineering curriculum does have the in-frastructure but the institute needs to take steps to en-sure that there are different workshops or seminars where the students learn to use these vital tools that the rest of the world seems to be familiar with. Indian students seem to have a lack of knowledge and expertise, until and unless, they gain it with their personal interest, beyond the curriculum.Majority of Indian universities do not explore the cre-ative aspects of the concepts being learned, students are expected to write the answers in a certain way, approach a problem in a certain way. But hands-on, practical educa-tions that are intended for the students to learn and grow are a very important aspect.In foreign universities, some courses do not even have a final exam. Project-oriented courses would definitely help students to explore and research that will get them better equipped with the fundamentals of any course or concepts. It is not all about scoring good GPA marks or grades. The education system needs to change to get rid of the mindset that marks are the only thing that is important to strive and accomplish.Infrastructure and Facilities:The facilities that foreign institutions provide for the re-search and project work for a master's study is enormous compared to the institutions in India. These institutions do charge a premium as fees but provide cutting edge labs and equipment. Top companies collaborate with the uni-versities for research, thus providing students with vast exposure and experience, during the course of study, add-ing to their credit.The Indian institutions can take a leaf from this book and hike the fees, but provide cutting edge facilities. If the return on Investment is excellent, no student will hesitate to pay for a high-quality education.What leads students opting to study abroad is the pleth-ora of opportunities available there after graduation. In the sector of high-end technology, Europe, USA, and oth-er western countries are way ahead of the pack in terms of the quality of research, job and internship opportunities. Every graduate aspires to work on the latest cutting-edge technology and contribute to its development. Innovative Steps need to be taken by the Government of India:There is a need to establish more institutions of higher learning allocate a larger share of the budget to quality research and overhaul the infrastructure of the current in-stitutions. Research and economic growth of a country go hand in hand and to become a superpower, India has to invest substantially more than a meager 0.8 percent of its GDP on R&D and Education system.In summary, a change in the structure of the entrance exams, the admission criteria and providing cutting edge lab and research facilities will persuade Indian aspirants to pursue their graduate studies in India instead of migrating to foreign universities.There is a need to establish more institutions of higher learning allocate a larger share of the budget to quality research and overhaul the infrastructure of the current institutions
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