Education in India has become one of the most profit making venture today. It is very unfortunate that today it is seen as a business opportunity rather than being a noble profession. And this industry is such huge that it will surpass the GDP of most of the developing countries quite easily. Be it schools, colleges or the coaching classes, everybody is seeing this as the best way to earn white money. And this is one industry which will be least affected by recession.
Children as small as 3 year old are being targeted by the coaching classes. According to one survey, only the coaching classes amount to about more than Rs. 400 millions. And this is just the recognized coaching classes. If we take into account the private tuition classes, then this amount will rise 5 times at least. So, why this madness? Does a 3 year old child really need an instructor outside the school to learn things? Didn't our previous generation achieved the successes without these private tutors?
According to me, the teachers in the schools are not as sincere nowadays as they used to be earlier. And they are not alone to blame. The entire scenario is such that in order to survive in this competitive market, they have to resort to other means of earning than just the schools. Almost every teacher in school has some connection with the coaching classes or he/she is taking private tuition. And when they can earn more than 2 times they earn in schools and that too by spending half the time, why wont they be inclined to do that.
This was about the schools. But the case with private Universities is even worse. Most of the private colleges charge huge amounts from the students apart from the enormous aid they receive from the Government and the alumni. But, they are never able to show their respective spending. I would like to quote one personal incident that occurred a few days back.
I appeared for the SNAP test which is one of the few entrance examination for MBA. SNAP is a management entrance test for admissions to Symbiosis group of colleges. The test took place on the 21st Dec 2008. Like previous years, this year too loads of students took this test And as it is the case with all the popular entrance tests, all the management coaching institutions published their answer keys on their respective sites for SNAP too. So after appearing in the exam, like all the students, i also verified my answers with the answer keys of the popular classes like IMS, TIME and Career Launcher. And when i calculated the marks i was getting marks in the range of 83-87. And so i was elated, since that would have cleared my way for admission to the reputed institutes like Symbiosis. I also bought forms of two colleges, which costed me Rs. 2550. But, something very strange occurred when the results were declared on the 10th of Jan. When i checked out the result, i was getting just 66.5...
There are four sections in SNAP - quantitative aptitude and data interpretation, logical reasoning, verbal ability and general awareness. If the classes predict wrong answers for English, then we can understand, because the questions are sometimes ambiguous, but how can anybody predict wrong in maths, logical reasoning and general awareness. How can 1+1 be 2 for somebody and something else for somebody else. And not only me, but there are hundreds of students like me who had lost marks in the range of 5-25 from what they were expecting. Since this was the case, we expected that the cut-offs would go lower this year and so there was a ray of hope. The last date for filling up the forms for the colleges was 9th Jan. But, to our sheer horror, they changed the last date to 15th. Now, this was clearly done to encourage more students to buy the forms. We reported all these to the test takers and requested them to at least publish their answer keys. But there was no response from them, as was expected. Many people told me after that that this has been going on since years with the private colleges. Some also said that they do so to increase their intake of management seats at the cost of more eligible candidates.
There are so many cases to talk about on this topic, which i will write in other posts some other day. Signing off with a hope that things will change and education will remain a noble ethical profession as it should be.
Children as small as 3 year old are being targeted by the coaching classes. According to one survey, only the coaching classes amount to about more than Rs. 400 millions. And this is just the recognized coaching classes. If we take into account the private tuition classes, then this amount will rise 5 times at least. So, why this madness? Does a 3 year old child really need an instructor outside the school to learn things? Didn't our previous generation achieved the successes without these private tutors?
According to me, the teachers in the schools are not as sincere nowadays as they used to be earlier. And they are not alone to blame. The entire scenario is such that in order to survive in this competitive market, they have to resort to other means of earning than just the schools. Almost every teacher in school has some connection with the coaching classes or he/she is taking private tuition. And when they can earn more than 2 times they earn in schools and that too by spending half the time, why wont they be inclined to do that.
This was about the schools. But the case with private Universities is even worse. Most of the private colleges charge huge amounts from the students apart from the enormous aid they receive from the Government and the alumni. But, they are never able to show their respective spending. I would like to quote one personal incident that occurred a few days back.
I appeared for the SNAP test which is one of the few entrance examination for MBA. SNAP is a management entrance test for admissions to Symbiosis group of colleges. The test took place on the 21st Dec 2008. Like previous years, this year too loads of students took this test And as it is the case with all the popular entrance tests, all the management coaching institutions published their answer keys on their respective sites for SNAP too. So after appearing in the exam, like all the students, i also verified my answers with the answer keys of the popular classes like IMS, TIME and Career Launcher. And when i calculated the marks i was getting marks in the range of 83-87. And so i was elated, since that would have cleared my way for admission to the reputed institutes like Symbiosis. I also bought forms of two colleges, which costed me Rs. 2550. But, something very strange occurred when the results were declared on the 10th of Jan. When i checked out the result, i was getting just 66.5...
There are four sections in SNAP - quantitative aptitude and data interpretation, logical reasoning, verbal ability and general awareness. If the classes predict wrong answers for English, then we can understand, because the questions are sometimes ambiguous, but how can anybody predict wrong in maths, logical reasoning and general awareness. How can 1+1 be 2 for somebody and something else for somebody else. And not only me, but there are hundreds of students like me who had lost marks in the range of 5-25 from what they were expecting. Since this was the case, we expected that the cut-offs would go lower this year and so there was a ray of hope. The last date for filling up the forms for the colleges was 9th Jan. But, to our sheer horror, they changed the last date to 15th. Now, this was clearly done to encourage more students to buy the forms. We reported all these to the test takers and requested them to at least publish their answer keys. But there was no response from them, as was expected. Many people told me after that that this has been going on since years with the private colleges. Some also said that they do so to increase their intake of management seats at the cost of more eligible candidates.
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