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Recently we have been hearing a lot about education being seen as a business, and so called student organisations protesting, court cases being fought, outrage against self financing colleges, every issue that happens in a self financing college blown out of proportion, property destruction etc etc. Is education business good ?
The motivation to write this post is a comment by a reader in one of my previous posts about the suicide of a college student in MACFAT, a self financed college.
“I don’t know in what sense it is ‘wonderful college’.Because I spend around 3 years in MACFAST.During my time the management and admin was not that much good also.If the situation is same I think the management and principal have responsibility for the incident. For them it is a business. ” - Thomas
Almost 20 years back, a relative of mine got an entrance rank around 1200. But he didnt get admission for engineering because no seats were left after cutting all the reservations.
In 2001 a friend of mine paid 4 lakhs donation to get admitted to an engineering college in Bangalore. His entrance rank was 12,000. His annual fees, 60,000 Rs. The torture he got from his seniors there is another story.
In 2002 the self financing revolution happened in Kerala. Now in 2008, a junior of mine with an entrance rank 13,000 is studying in a very good engineering college 4 km away from his home. He didnt pay any donation and he his fees is only 38,000. He has no hostel expenses, travelling expenses and he is not afraid of his seniors.
Now this is what engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu do to our students. Check out the PSN engineering college story. Did any of the student organisations go there and protest ? It takes guts to challenge that management. Not something that our little student politicians can do.
Is education business good for our state ? You decide.
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15 comments ↓
Education business, in Kerala is neither good nor bad. It is a business, which should be regulated by the forces of supply and demand rather than government interference.
The college managements should be able to charge whatever they want from students to run the establishment. When asking for any amount is legitimate, all the money that changes hands would be legitimate. Also, if the amount is too high for the services provided, the demand would go down and the management would be forced to lower it.
Also, the government should allow anybody to start any number of colleges for any reason, as long as they meet the national and university standards. If, for any reason they cannot keep up with the standards, the management should be made responsible for the transfer of all the students affected to other good quality colleges with all the expenses borne by the management. This is just a theory though, as more creative ways of enforcement can always be implemented.
Furthermore, no management would want to give the seats in its college only to students who are willing to pay the best price. This will only result in diminishing quality of the institution and it would only makes it more difficult for the management to demand more money. Also, the best students would always be courted by the best colleges so that they can improve the institution’s reputation and this would result in those students getting scholarships or other incentives to attend a specific college.
These all would deem that the government would have to do away with the entrance examination or even make it just a benchmark against with the admission committees can evaluate a student. We all know that a high entrance rank would never translate to high accomplishments, whether it is in academics in college or in the professional world. So the government could alter entrance examination to be like a rating test like SAT, GRE, GMAT etc and let the managements decide who should get admitted based on the score, interviews etc. As I have said before, a free market system would ensure that the managements would make sure that their student population is a balanced mix of people with merit; whether it is their own merit or their parents’ financial merit.
Also, there is one thing that the government can do. It can offer subsidized or cheap education through its network of colleges and can create any kind of requirements. It can offer the education only to the financially challenged students. It can also increase the number of seats in its colleges so that the private managements cannot compete with the government ones without lowering the fees.
So in conclusion, the government policy should be in such a way as to provide a free market solution for the education system, by providing good competition, by strong anti-monopoly regulations and through providing perks to managements that provide cheap education through tax breaks.
I agree to you totally. A free market education system is what we need to excel.
All these govt colleges are ruined because there is no competition for them.
All these private companies succeed cos they are very competitive.
There is one more point that I would like to make here. Most of the time, the quality of an institution is defined by its students rather than the infrastructure, facilities or faculty.
For example, I graduated from College of Engineering, Adoor. There is this College of Engineering, Chengannnur, by the same management (IHRD). As far as faculty is concerned, they are all from the same IHRD employee pool who are rotated every once in a while. As far as infrastructure is concerned, I guess Adoor had better facilities. But, chengannur was more reputed. Since it is reputed, only better students managed to get in there and hence it maintained the quality.
This could be reinforced by the case of Harvard University. The same facilities could be found in at least a dozen universities in the United states. But when it comes to Law or Medicine, Harvard is the best. The main reason is the selection process. Thousands apply to Harvard every year and they go through a strict selection procedure. They go through tests, interviews and other hurdles and only the best of the best manage to get into Harvard and all of them would be among the best brains in the world. So once you get into Harvard and graduate, you’d be commanding supreme respect everywhere regardless of whether you are an idiot (In which case, you are highly unlikely to get into Harvard in the first place).
So, in essence, in a free market environment, a talented young person can easily find quality education at a cheap price. If one management doesn’t want to offer him a scholarship or a tuition waiver, a competitor may do so to woo him. Giving a full scholarship to talented people is not throwing money away, from a business point of view. That is an investment that would increment the quality of your product. And that would attract better talent in turn and the demand could be converted to money by the management.
Students definitely have a role. But they dont have any role unless the management cooperate.
Its like a bad mohanlal film. How ever good he is at acting, a bad script will make a bad movie. His good acting wont save the film.
Our college was dragged into a political fight, and thats the reason it went bad.
Incredible Concept! That is what I would say. That is a nice theory Issac, but not practical because we are not talking about an Ideal situation here. And moreover, even if we made it practical, I would not agree with the free market system.
Look at what it has already done to the Banks and Share markets - things were looking very rosy till last year till the credit balloon burst - and now every market is suffering. The free-market system unfortunately depends on very honest people, but unfortunately our world is filled with crooks, who will sell anything to make money.
Look at todays education in India - see what has happened after the liberalization - India is no longer Asia’s top in education. Now a days there is no value for your certificate - and why is that - because of the consumarisation of education.
And the reason that people like us fall into their trap is that - we not only look at the quality - we look at the external appearance, we look at our own personal ego (My neighbors son is in medical, I want my son also to do medical…) and a lot of other things.
It is not only the educational system that needs to change, people need to change their attitude and stop treating everything as a product (That they can consume) and start attaching some real value (read as - Values - as in - life values, Personal Values…etc).
First of all, eliminate the ‘Kutti’ politics from the campus. then the reservation. i witnessed to a situation like there were 12 seats in total up to 8 is different reservations like backward community, sportz, arts, NCC etc..but the tragedy is those guys who secured admission throgh this reservation-HOLES will quit after a few months. so give it to the deserved ones. and another things is educate the parents first. let the children to choose their carrer, if everybody became doctors and engineers how the world would be?
The big difference which i experienced in the IT industry is like: in India everyone is a COMPUTER Engineer. but ask him to write a good parser, or similar work. a very few can do it. but in USA or any other countries, the computer engineer would be the person who knows the ‘computer science’. there ppl are going because of their own taste and interest, and here ppl are going and securing a seat because of the parents interest.
Our education system needs to be revamped!
@JMJ
Free market economy is not the best economy. But it is the only economy that works.
Also India was never Asias best. But now we have a chance to be the best, if we can cope up with the changes. A controlled system will never be able change fast enough.
In US education is commercialised, and thats the only reason they are the best. Universities there are the research centers for various companies.
@JMJ
Well, the free market economy is not and ideal one. It is the practical one. The socialist economy is a Utopian idea which is rarely sustainable in the long run.
About the credit bust : A free market also comes with individual responsibility. The people who takes the loan also have the responsibility to check whether it is possible for them to make the payments even after the initial interest-only honeymoon. People should not be taking a mortgage for an amount just because it is available. So the main parties that are affected are the lenders and borrowers who stretched their borrowing limit. This bust is the automatic correction by which the market rectifies the old mistakes.
India’s education has only improved after the ‘liberalization’. Trust me, with all the vices of the current education system, your certificate still has a lot of value. If you back it up with your own talent, that is.
And if at all the certificate lacks any value, it is because the student is not being trained to become an engineer. When a student blindly follows the current education system and graduates with a BTech with good results, the best job that he is getting trained to do is to become a lecturer: to teach other students. The student is clueless about the actual work in the real world. It is not to say that she or he would never be able to start working as a professional, but the person would actually need more training just to start the job that he is supposed to be trained for in the first place.
If the same system of offering a vast variety of subjects as electives and let the student chooses what she or he wants, then an engineering education becomes just what it is meant to be, adding value to the students and helps them to do what they want. If someone wants to specialize in designing ECU (Engine control unit) of F1 cars, they will be able to choose a few subjects on control theory and micro-controllers from the electronics department, some programming subjects from computer science department and some thermal engineering and Engines subjects from the mechanical engineering department and come out as an engineer who knows what he is doing.
So, treating education as a consumer product is exactly the practical solution. But that will do away with the universities and colleges deciding a fixed syllabus. Such monopolies and restrictions are hindering potential of a lot of individuals.
This should be complimented by strong industry involvement in education. The internship concept is catching up now a days and it provides a very strong tool for the student to achieve a real world relevant training so that when he or she passes out, the resume will already have experience on day one. The internship should be of two or three months period and students should be able to do it from S5 onwards. At that time they would already have the basic concepts that would help them to perform certain tasks at a company and the companies can utilize this as a way to evaluate different candidates who can be potential employees and also to get some work done at a cheap price.
About values: A free market does not do away with values. A person cannot achieve success in any avenue, whether it is business or in a corporate environment, without the core personal values. But in the current system it develops neither any values nor competence.
@ADMIN “Universities there are the research centers for various companies.”
It is a win-win situation. Students get paid or get their fees paid by the companies and they get to do some industry relevant actual research that produces high quality stuff rather than copying some old project from some friend or from internet to get the requirements met . The companies get their work done and could possibly hire these students if they are satisfied with the performance.
@Renjith “Our education system needs to be revamped!”
Amen to that!
Hi Guys
I am not saying that one system is better than the other or the other system is bad. I am saying that the Indian public is not yet ready for a free market system.
Till today people have been told that you have to study so many subjects to get a PHD/Degree/Diploma/Certificate. Now suddenly - you tell them you can choose what to study - How many children/parents will be able to take a decision. And guess who is helping them take the decisions - the same college who want to sell their seat.
To promote the free market culture - the UGC started approving Deemed Universities. And what is really happening - People are giving money to get admission into these Deemed universities - who decide the syllabus that the students will study, they conduct their own exams, and give their own certificates.
It is just that the people in India are not ready for such a huge change. People like you and me may be able to make that decision, cause our parents are well educated.
Like Ranjith said “Our education system needs to be revamped!” before we can make it free market.
One more point I would like to make in regard with improving our education system - We are used to getting so much bad quality stuff everyday - why would any one bother to ask for better - or - why would any one bother to give anything better - be it roads, be it buildings, be it service, be it food, be it education…
There is absolutely no motivation for a private individual to improve… and unfortunately the Government of India lacks commitment and resolve to do things the hard way - they are a bunch of appeasers than leaders…
@JMJ
You are under estimating Indians. We adopted to the huge change that happened when our economy opened up. Look at our outsourcing industry, we have adapted to the changing needs of the world economy faster than any other nation and has grown to be a trillion dollor economy. Among the 10 richest people of the world, 4 are Indians.
We are ready for any change. We can absorb anything. All we need is freedom. Manmohan singh freed our economy and our growth rate shot up from 3% to 7%
The same will happen to education also. Free the collges from the govt regulations and see the magic.
Hai guys
education is always a business now. all the self financing institutions sustain only to make money. the political parties in kerala play game in the begining of the academic year so as to allow the lobbies in other states to get the students.
Hi friendz
I would like to point u out a thing which appears to be a trap for students who make their decision. A student who passes out from high school was able to choose groups like commerce, Ist group, IInd group, Arts..etc in our good old pre-degree system. But now in the +2 system, there is a group called science grp and it appears to be helpful to ‘write entrance for med or engg’. Here, he/she doen’t get chance to think of a specialisation. Like If one don’t want to go for medical education, he can avoid the biology part …etc. Anyway, the target is only ‘entrance’. But it will be better if he can choose from a variety of subject in he can specialise, rather than for engg./ medical field. Today there are a vast veriety of Degree/Diploma cources in many interesting and offering subjects. But people doesnt even know abt these, and simply ends up their choice between these two.
I agree with you totally. There is no need to go for +2, instead students can go for a diploma course. Its far better than leanring english, physics and chemistry and biology.
(The above said is applicable only for students who are planning to go for computer or electronics)
Apart from computer and electronics, now there is courses like Fashion Designing, Film/Media, Printing, Textile, Automobile, Diary, Pharmacy, and a lot of medical related technical courses. these are diploma or vocational courses and doesnt require engg background.
Education businesses are promoting this type of courses now. But most of them lacks what is called ‘quality’. It should be improved and it will happen only if more people gets into this fields and more reputed institutes start this type of courses.
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