Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi government's National Education Policy (NEP) is a "step in the right direction" to improve critical thinking among children.
Speaking at Bengaluru Tech Summit, Murthy was responding to Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath's question about the need for degree from a well-known college in the future.
"A lot of companies in the West are not insisting on conventional degree to the extent that some companies claim that you don't need to mention where you graduated from on your job application to these companies. Do you feel a use case can be made for the process of education in India to be more fragmented in nature, you don't have to go to one particular college to get all your educational needs but you get it from 5 or 10 places and you go to experts for different things," Kamath asked Murthy.
"I must congratulate Modi government in forming NEP, it's a step in the right direction. Given that Dr Kasturirangan was the chairman of that (the NEP steering committee) and people like Manjul Bhargav (an Indian American academician) are part of that, I have tremendous hope that it will show us a path towards becoming better. The need of the hour is to plant a seed in the minds of the primary and secondary school children to have independent thinking, active listening, critical thinking, Socratic questioning, relating what is learnt in the classroom to the problems around us and thinking of solutions to our problems.
"The moment our education gets transformed to this model, my belief is that then your college degree will start mattering less. But even then, you would need a degree for certain kinds of stuff. Graduate, undergraduate degrees, PhD are required but they wouldn't be as important," said Murthy.
Introduced after a gap of 34 years, the policy aims to address the challenges of the 21st century while empowering India's youth to lead the nation into a brighter future. By focusing on holistic development, flexible and multidisciplinary education, technology integration, and inclusive practices, the policy strives to empower the youth with the knowledge and skills required to lead the nation into the future confidently.
Murthy illustrated his statement with an example of his friend in the US.
"A friend of mine is a famous orthopedician in the US and his undergraduate degree was history. Why was it that a fellow with an undergraduate degree in history could get an admission into the MD programme there? The reason is that system of education encouraged all the things I talked about. I'm confident NEP will show a path towards making our children much more competent in this kind of education and the demand for these degrees will reduce," said Murthy.
When asked what he would advise his son Rohan to study if he was 17 at the moment, Murthy said, "I hardly spent any time with my children due to work at Infosys. Thanks to my wife, who was of course a better engineer than me, she brought up our children with all the wonderful qualities I talked about. Curiosity, analytical thinking, relating formal education to understand reality around us."