Getting efficient about education

This government really seems committed to fixing our education policy and systemic beliefs.  In the last week, I came across two cool pieces of news.

1. The govt. plans to truncate P.G. courses to one year: This is really a great step.   This allows us to double the post-grad infrastructure and also reduces the economic c0st for a person who wishes to do pursue higher studies.

2. The IITs are being asked to expand into universities and offer medicine, law, social science and even literature.  Fantastic!  The IITs have the infrastructure (land, facilities), brand (which brings in funding, teachers and students) and a culture that are unrivaled in India.  Why restrict them to being engineering schools?

One can argue that these two moves hold the potential of diluting education and institutions in the country.  Not necessarily.  It may, in fact, force us to think of efficient ways of delivering high quality education and better leveraging the assets we have – rather than bemoaning the dearth of infrastructure.  If we are to push for a higher level of education, we will need more such ideas to free up capacity and create institutional leverage.