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.

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.

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)

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