By Utsav Chaudhary:
Gone is the era when securing an 85 in your board exams guaranteed a seat in one of the top colleges of the country. After 2 decades, the tables have turned & even scoring a 95% won’t land you up in a college of your choice. This is the Indian education 2.0. The commencement of a highly commercialized education.
The above situation of lack of admission opportunities even with high scores has been working as a catalyst to the commercialization of Indian education system. Scoring less than average marks or not cracking any of the entrance examinations gives private colleges a chance to grab hold of these children and demand enticing perks as fees and God knows what.
A big campus outside the city, a fancy name & courses in all the fields of study that one can pursue are on the menu of these institutes. These colleges become the best bet for those whose dreams have been tarnished by the cut-offs and low marks.
These big budget colleges then go on to spend a bomb on advertising and get super stars to endorse them. Walk in admissions in these colleges have proved to be a lucrative move. Though evolution of private colleges have been a boon for the students, top Government colleges remain a preference any day. Only situation forces a person to join a private institute. Well mostly!
Since the virus of commercialization has entered the education system of India, how can the top colleges not be a part of it? Coaching institutes for entrance exams into the top notch colleges of India have also been set up across the nation. The rivalry among these institutes is already quite intense & the level of competition is rising up every year. Acquiring a commendable sum of money from a candidate and training them without any assurance of cracking the exams is probably the most innovative idea flowing through the market. Again, loads of money is spent on advertisements in which they portray these exams as docile which in reality require arduous efforts.
Education is now a way of minting money in India and is growing hastily every year. Having a commercialized sector for education surely has some drawbacks and can be misleading at times but the other side of it is where the sun shines more. The people who get rejected from other colleges can now (if they can afford) get education at these colleges. Training people for the toughest & most confounding exams can be looked upon as an act of generosity. Even though education is a business but it has only helped improving the literacy rate of the nation and has been a great step towards eradicating unemployment. At the point of dejection of a student, this line might hold true with private colleges now in contention “The room of education opens at all the ends; one has to grab an opportunity as it comes.”
What are your views on the commercialization of education in this manner?