The quality of an institution is defined by its students rather than the infrastructure, facilities or faculty. Do you wish to disagree?
Take my example, I graduated from College of Engineering, Adoor. There is this College of Engineering, Chengannnur, by the same management (IHRD). If you look at the faculty, 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. This perpetuated the quality and hence it maintained the higher status over Adoor.
This could be reinforced by the case of Harvard University. The same facilities could be found in at least two or three 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.
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.
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.
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.
Idea of free market in education is good where the students will call the cards rather than the colleges as it is now.The author has mentioned in the article “talented young person” but I would like put the question here, is there a fool proof method to gauge the talent available today? Entrance examinations can be cracked by coaching, if not through at the first chance repeating again the next year and acadamic performances do not show the real talent.
Comment by Aravind — June 4, 2009 @ 9:32 am
I probably agree to this post. You did hit the bulls eye this time, Avalanche!
Comment by The Nomad — June 4, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
@Aravind. True. Now there is a lot of competition among the consumers (students) rather than among the product side (the colleges) . When there is enough competition from colleges too, that is the only way to get what we want achieved.
About gauging talent, yeah entrance exam is a sham. Got to get rid of it and each college can evaluate students in whatever way that they wish to do it. The onus would be on the colleges to find the bright talent. And the priority would be on what kind of raw material would enable the prospective student to be a premium professional when he comes out of the college. I am not an expert there. But experts can always work that out.
Also, the product has to change so that the raw material (the freshman student) that enters the college gets what he needs (or even wants) rather than some bureaucrat at the University thinks what he needs.
Comment by Domestic Avalanche — June 4, 2009 @ 9:56 pm
hmmm…..the author is very much liberal i get that..so open the indian educational system to foreign universities right? OK then i guess a foreign degree can be “brought” cheap since it is being done in India say for half the rate isn’t that the idea? I am sure the fess for such institute would be in dollars and well who can afford it the rich and affluent i suppose so it is much like the expensive schools in the hills right? certain things like education is a birth right it is upto the govt to ensure such things are provided and cheap education in a free system???? u r kidding education is a costly affair u need to burn to learn only the govt can provide heavily subsidized education i certainly believe that things like education health should be a state monopoly heavily subsidized like in the Scandinavian countries…so all can afford and teh setup of more institutions like iits,aiims.iims,nlsis and the likes
Comment by jkeverywhere — June 5, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
@jkeverywhere,
I would again ask u to take a closer look at the US System. They’ve got a very good mix of State and private colleges. The trick not in monopolizing it but to get the mix and match right. Thats all
Comment by The Nomad — June 5, 2009 @ 10:48 pm
@jkeverywhere
It is not about opening up for foreign universities, although there should be nothing that stops anyone, even the foreign universities to open shop here.
Do you think the value of a foreign degree as opposed to an Indian degree (Let us compare London School of Economics MBA and Kerala University MBA) depends only because of the name and if LSE starts a branch here and prints degree certificates by the shovelfuls, it will have the same value? It is not just the name. Actually, the quality of the degree is comprised only of two components
1)Quality of student(s)
2)Course content/faculty/material/facility
I explained the first part, and of course, I agree the name of the university contributes to having quality student body as I explained. So, we have to think of how to implement the second part. I will talk about it.
Again, I totally disagree. Education after apoint (let us say highschool) is not or should not be birth right. It should be earned. Either by merit (through scholarships, etc) or by your parent’s financial merit (by paying up the fees – whatever it is )
Also, yes, education is a costly affair, but government need not be the nanny that gives it to you. As Nomad said, study the American University systems and see how it works, for almost everybody’s benefit. (We’ll discuss about it)
Comment by Domestic Avalanche — June 6, 2009 @ 3:02 am
@the nomad and @domestic avalanche
Gentlemen It would be very nice if both you read the stats and understand actually how many Americans enter college compared to that of Indians. Nothing can be generalized What is in America is successful cause it was in America . In India we may need a different approach . We all gloated about the US economy and we saw how it crashed. Likewise opening Indian shores to foreign universities would be a disaster. MBA and the likes by Harvard in India goood…imagine degree in History by Oxford we end up reading Arthurian legends and how Diana ran away with “Dodi Al Fayed” rather than How Akbar got to marry all those beautiful Rajput Princesses……:)
Comment by jkeverywhere — June 6, 2009 @ 11:09 am
@Domestic Avalanche.
One of the most brilliant post. I agree with what you said in the first few paragraphs. What you have described are cast-iron facts where you compared the institutions.
But I disagree with this statement : “India’s education has only improved after the ‘liberalization’”. This is isn’t true. Because India’s liberalization is done in Economic-reforms which is right-wing, economic liberalization causing privatization of institutions and development of them.
In my opinion, 99% of the kerala eng. college and private management runs the institution not for the sake of education and prosperity of the country but for the sake of profit. They have a joint consortium which decides the fees. The consortium is really very powerful and it is similar to the Bilderberg group.
With the economic liberization, lot of private colleges come up, boasting about their facilities. Some offered classess like free-yoga and meditation, Personality development classess. etc. But, for your information, The teachers in most of these colleges are B.Tech graduates who passed out in the previous years. I dont think they have got good research experience. In my experience it is pathetic. I have a couple of good examples to exemplify that.
There is not even a single, active research going on in any of the private eng. colleges in Kerala. There is no environment for researchers. The reason is that it is costly. That might be one of the main reason why most of the eng. college never boast about any researches in their brochures.
What about personal freedom, If you are a catholic, and if the college management is catholic management, you are even forced to attend the friday mass and annual retreats. If you utter a single word against the management, what is gonna happen is reduced marks in Internals. 100’s of examples.
The interview procedure is much simpler in pvt. Eng. Colleges in Kerala(for 50% students). The interview is a negotiation meeting on capitation with the chairman of the college and the candidates parent. The interview is an assessment of the size of the pocket and it is definitely not the talent of the student. 1000’s of examples.
By the right-wing economic liberalization in education India, we have got 1000’s of such eng. colleges. This doesn’t fortify your argument that, it improved India’s education. It of course created products with college degree which are zero intellectual, industrially non-usable.
If you consider the left-wing liberalization, where there is more freedom for students and comparatively less fees. These institutions are doing better than most of pvt. colleges. It should be noted that Pioneer institutions in India like, IITs, NID, JNU are examples of left-wing liberalization in Education.
The point you suggest, which implies on free market, economic reforms has nothing do with improving the quality of education. It merely implies the infrastructure development.
Comment by Tony Jose — June 6, 2009 @ 8:02 pm
jkeverywhere- point well taken!!
Comment by The Nomad — June 6, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
@jkeverywhere
Another reason why a lot of Americans do not enter college is because they can get reasonable jobs without a college education and many don’t bother. I have some cousins here whose kids follow the same pattern. They even just dropped out before graduating from highschool.
On the other hand the kid of another cousin decides to do medicine and has joined Ohio State university for premed (4 year degree with bio oriented stuff) and she has full scholarship. And it is not even like she is the absolute best in her class. She is good, but not the greatest ever or so.
To your second point, I absolutely agree. If we end up having to read about Diana and Al Fayed, it would be a shame. That would be a possibility because the universities have monopoly on the course content. The students are supposed to blindly follow. This results to the situation that Tony mentioned where students come out as “products with college degree which are zero intellectual, industrially non-usable.”
There is of course a solution. I will write about that on Monday. Please be patient.
Thanks guys for the ardent support by vigorously continuing the debate.
Comment by Domestic Avalanche — June 7, 2009 @ 12:18 am
Its heartening to see the author responding to comments cheers to Domestic Avalanche Keep it coming ….This is healthy debate and the need of the hour…more of them please…. and of course looking forward to your solution
jk…
Comment by jkeverywhere — June 7, 2009 @ 9:56 pm
My solution… will be out tonight/tomorrow morning. And I promised Tony to talk about how managements can generate revenue other than student fees. About that later, maybe thursday or friday.
Comment by Domestic Avalanche — June 7, 2009 @ 10:42 pm