Management & Engineering education - Capacity first, Quality next - are we at the tipping point?

Having attended the edge conference http://edgeforum.in/edge2011/index.html, I got many ideas from the speakers and some thoughts stirred in my mind too. There has been for sometime an argument that it is important to create capacity for management and engineering education as the gross enrolment ratio is low, students find it difficult to get seats, and most importantly the number of young people and number of people with a variety of skills required in the near future determined by the national skill development mission/corporation

is huge.

The recent Parthenon report on 'Private Universities in India: An investment in national development, discusses among other things that in a sector where brands are critical assets, private universities spend between Rs.50K- 125K
to aquire one student. The good news is that this reduces to Rs.25K in the eighth year.
We get educated to find jobs. Is this peculiar to India? I understand that in many countries higher studies are taken up to enhance knowledge more than anything else. In India where resumes are read,and interviews are held to find ways to reject candidates in view of the number of applicants, any degree/badge can set you up at an advantage!

The present scenario is that many B schools are finding it diffult to find students and the marble/granite lined engineering colleges in South India are running like the fourth week of a flop film. Have we arrived at the tipping point? Does it make sense now to focus on quality education, real placement support and such global quality metrics or can we continue to survive doling out degrees for a cost?

My own guess is that we have reached a potential inflection point and the argument that we must first create capacity is no more valid since plenty of seats are available. Focus on building well rounded or T type human resources is what educational institutions need to concentrate on for the sake of society and hopefully for thier own survival!

As it is, as one speaker said at this conference 'More jobs are being created for Robots than humans'. The addendum I would like to add is that it is far cheaper to hire a human robot than a machine robot! Sadly,We are not creating people with passion or those with critical thinking skills or with creativity... Robots. That is another story that will need to change soon