Teaching and learning have metamorphosed in the past few years or a decade. When I say teaching and learning, I do not mean only in higher education but also school education.
The earlier methods wherein teachers taught through monologues has been now replaced with interactive learning. Parents prefer to send children to schools with experiential learning. Vis-à-vis yesteryears, when a quiet classroom was considered a good one, today a noisy classroom is thought to be better than a quiet one. Today, a teacher’s job is not just to disseminate information but to pique the students’ curiosity so that they ask relevant questions because a questioning mind might undertake research in the future.
So, what is research about? It is searching for new knowledge and finding solutions to problems in society…What better way to use one’s education than to resolve an issue plaguing society?
According to the Union Minister for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh, “India’s scholarly output increased from 60,555 papers in 2010 to 1,49,213 papers in 2020,” according to a press release by the Press Information Bureau. India also ranks third globally in the number of Ph. D.s produced annually. In a similar upward trend, the number of patents granted by the India Patents Office to Indian scientists has more than doubled in the last four years.
Since 2022, China has emerged as the world leader in academic publishing, surpassing all other countries in the number of scholarly articles published in a year. It became the first country to publish over 1 million documents annually, contributing to around 19.67% of all academic papers published annually. This marks a significant shift, as the United States, which had previously held the leading position, now accounts for 17.04% of all published papers in a year.
When considering the global landscape of academic publishing, four countries—China, the United States, India, and the United Kingdom—stand out, collectively contributing to over 52% of all academic papers published annually. Additionally, the top 10 producers of academic papers together account for over 87% of all published articles over the past year, highlighting the concentrated nature of scholarly publishing among a select group of countries.
At Symbiosis, in many of our dual degree programs, students from universities in developed countries come to India to study the problems faced by citizens and devise solutions with Indian students. Thus, education becomes not just a means of bringing students together but also nations.
With the constant rise in research publications each year, education will find its optimal utilization as solutions are devised to help society.