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Towards creating a knowledge economy

12 March 2010

Education for sometimes now has been grabbing media attention. Some­times for good reasons and other times for bad reasons.

If the recent signing of the performance compact be­tween the Ministry of Educa­tion and the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB) is anything to go by, tertiary education in Bhutan is almost going to witness three dimensional re­forms. RUB under the perfor­mance compact has pledged to, among other things, start 14 masters programme and at least one doctoral programme by 2013.

To an average Bhutanese, this spells the opportunity to continue higher education in a truly Bhutanese academic environment. To an insider, this means firing on all cylin­ders since only one out of the 10 something RUB colleges have been offering full time postgraduate courses. A few have been offering PG to in-service candidates.

It is indeed “landmark in the history of the country and a pledge to expand the intel­lectual horizon of the coun­try” as outlined by the Edu­cation Minister. Never in the past has so much effort been made to start so many mas­ters programme at one go. Not to mention bringing in innovative programmes and enhancing priority needs of the country.

These programmes, as and when implemented, will surely pave the way for Bhu­tan to become a “knowledge economy”. The compact will also give RUB the much need­ed legal teeth to act as an au­tonomous government pub­lic sector with its own voice over human resource plans and policy matters as regards finance. This is really a god­send.

If Bhutan is to be a knowl­edge economy, it cannot af­ford to dilly-dally. We surely cannot expect to be a knowl­edge economy with a huge dependence on a pool of for­eign intellectuals. Our edu­cational institutions must be world-class incubators of innovation and knowledge creation. It must build a stock of competent, confident and forward-looking Bhutanese professionals in order to at­tract knowledge-intensive in­vestment and boost economic growth.

What we have achieved so far is as a result of the finely talented professionals who have been educated in in­stitutions of higher learning abroad. What we now plan to achieve will have to increas­ingly come from the very people who study here. Be­cause what we get in terms of numbers of foreign-educated professionals in civil service, corporate and private sectors will come down gradually to a point when we will have majority of them educated in Bhutanese educational insti­tutions.

However, investing in post­graduate studies alone does not make a knowledge econ­omy. We will have to equally consider the state of primary and secondary education from the start since the sec­ondary school system acts as the input channel for higher education.

Going by the recent devel­opments in school education and many more plans for the betterment of school educa­tion in the offing, it augurs well for the creation of knowl­edge economy.

Next best hotspot for in­vestment would be in training programmes for the teachers of Bhutanese schools.

We still have teachers who best remember that the only training that they availed was when they were trained to be teachers. Thousand and one thing in education have changed since these people got recruited as teachers then.

Government will have to look at this aspect in order to raise a critical mass of com­petent students to feed the higher education.

All these challenges not­withstanding, the recent de­velopments have brought a sense of belief in the Bhuta­nese populace that the pres­ent government is serious when it comes to education.

How much of these plans come to fruition time and quality of students passing out will surely tell.

By Netra Binod Sharma

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Posted by Bhutan Observer · Filed Under Opinion 

Comments

One Response to “Towards creating a knowledge economy”

  1. B B Mishra on March 13th, 2010 6:11 pm

    Well analysed and a balanced view. I liked the part where the author relates the quality of basic school education as instrumental in realizing the quality of higher education. They are indeed inseparable.

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