4 min readOct 7, 2026 06:20 AM IST First published on: Oct 7, 2026 at 06:20 AM ISTBihar is India’s youngest state, with a median age of approximately 26. That fact is usually invoked in discussions about employment, migration and the demographic dividend. Yet, before any of these comes education. Unless Bihar’s young people can access credible colleges, complete their courses on time and acquire useful knowledge and skills, youthfulness alone will confer little advantage.This is why an unusual experiment now unfolding deserves wider attention. The direction is significant: Expand access rapidly, recruit teachers transparently, improve university leadership and use technology to make a fragmented system more visible and accountable.AdvertisementThe most visible step has been the opening of 211 government degree colleges, largely in areas without convenient access to higher education. Distance is not a minor issue. For a rural family, particularly one educating a daughter, a nearby college can determine whether education leads to a degree or ends after Class XII. These colleges are still young. Many have begun with a few rooms, small faculties, limited support staff and enrolments below their eventual capacity. They cannot yet be judged as finished institutions. They are foundations upon which institutions must now be built.To give them an academic core, Bihar appointed 2,451 contractual assistant professors. The recruitment, drawn from more than 23,000 applications, was completed in about 30 days through a centralised process. Speed attracted attention, but transparency matters even more. Public confidence begins when a qualified applicant believes that merit, rather than influence, will determine selection. The newly appointed teachers are joining colleges without established systems and traditions. Their initiative over the next two years will determine whether these colleges acquire academic energy or remain administrative units with classrooms.Reform at the college level cannot succeed if universities remain weakly led. Bihar is also revisiting how vice-chancellors and pro-vice-chancellors are selected. Nearly 8,000 applications were received for 10 V-C positions through an online process. Numbers alone cannot guarantee good appointments. Careful scrutiny, credible search committees and matching of individual capabilities with institutional needs are essential. Yet widening the field is itself a reform.AdvertisementTechnology is providing the connective tissue for this effort. Samarth, the e-governance platform developed under the Ministry of Education, is being energised across Bihar’s higher-education system. For students, a common digital window improves awareness of institutions, courses, admissions and opportunities that were once confined to notices on distant campuses. For administrators, its modules can connect admissions, registration, examinations, results, employee records and finance. For those responsible for oversight, it can reveal where a process has stalled.The introduction of a uniform academic calendar across state universities follows the same logic. A calendar has value only when classes, examinations and results occur when promised. For students, a delayed result can mean losing a job, scholarship or admission elsewhere. Timeliness is, therefore, an element of educational justice.you may likeThe reforms will ultimately be tested inside classrooms. New colleges must attract students, particularly women and first-generation learners. Teachers must teach regularly and create cultures of reading, writing, discussion and mentoring. Libraries and laboratories must grow. Curricula must connect knowledge with employability without reducing education to vocational training alone. Buildings, portals and appointments create capacity; they do not automatically create quality. That requires faculty development, fair assessment, research support, institutional autonomy accompanied by accountability, and academic leaders willing to take difficult decisions.Bihar also has Nalanda University. Although outside the state-university system, it provides an important beacon. Its evolving “Nalanda Approach” — connecting civilisational knowledge with contemporary challenges — can encourage Bihar’s universities to be locally rooted, nationally relevant and globally engaged.India’s demographic future will be decided not only in metropolitan universities but also in public colleges serving small towns and rural districts. The present effort is the construction of an ecosystem in which access, teachers, leadership, technology and academic discipline reinforce one another. Bihar has begun assembling these parts at unusual speed and scale. The challenge is to turn momentum into institutional habit. A Viksit Bharat will require a Viksit Bihar, and that journey must begin by equipping its young people with credible, accessible and high-quality higher education.The writer is Governor of Bihar