The higher education system in India has found itself under near-constant scrutiny, as the region – along with much of the Northeast – has been one of the countries that has struggled the most with technological adaptation in its higher education system. The historical lag of the higher education system in India is due to multiple factors, including lack of proper infrastructure and poor investment in the industry. The recent history of the education industry in India has strongly suggested that the educational institutes, as well as those who work in the sector, are finally opening their eyes to the issue at hand, as well as embracing the realisation that technology has a lot to offer in working towards viable solutions to the issue.
One such individual is the chief technical officer (CTO) at the International Technological University (ITU), Kranthi K Lammatha. Esteemed in the sectors of information technology, education, and engineering, Lammatha has earned his keep as one of the top minds in his field. As India ramps up to drive significant improvement by introducing tech advancements like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and artificial intelligence (AI), technology begins to disrupt Indian higher education in more subtle ways, including online classrooms and cloud computing systems.
Speaking of his own contribution to increasing infrastructure technology in India’s higher education system, Lammatha says that his work led him to the realisation that the communication and overall accessibility of university systems faced great difficulty. Seeing opportunity in the university system to create a cloud-based system that reduces admissions processing complexity, in addition to allowing streamlined communication between faculty and students, Lammatha has created a system that works towards improving the lack of technological implementation in higher education.
Having had extensive experience in IT technology, software engineering, and online security, Lammatha not only understands the importance of improving infrastructure technology in the higher education system in India, but he is one of the gifted individuals driving the evolution forward. In Lammatha’s view, the higher education industry in India is more than overdue for significant digital disruption, and the positive movements towards upscaling that disruption are gaining traction all the time.
The education industry in India has significantly improved its relationship with infrastructure technology. As of FY18 the industry was estimated to be valued at $9.17 billion US dollars. With this kind of exponential development, it is not overly surprising to find that by FY19 the industry is expected to expand even further to reach $101.1 billion US dollars. Talented minds in the field like Lammatha are working towards improving the industry tenfold. Digitising education has been a plan in active motion for years now, with technological innovations such as the introduction of curated online content, virtual classrooms, and digital materials having made their way into the sector over the last few years.
Innovators in the industry, like Lammatha, are the minds that are changing the higher education process in the Northeast. If all goes according to plan with infrastructure improvements in the education industry, current estimations suggest that by the year 2020, India will have the world’s largest population of university students. That is an extraordinary marker to reach, considering that, until recently, India was considering one of the nations struggling with their higher education system. The only way to go is up.
