The Future of Education in India...Sandeep R. Sharma

The problem with Education in India is that people look at it as a business opportunity. I don't blame people for doing so. I myself had considered it for a couple of years. Today, I wish to create a system where education right from the childhood to professional level, is free for all - irrespective of the colour of skin or the name of his/her god; the quality being the top most priority. However it would be a huge lie if i said that I don't wanna make money out of it. Obviously i would want to keep everyone around me content. Though the system I have in mind wouldn't cheat students of lakhs of rupees in the name of quality.

Lets look at the basics. Why does a student [his/her parent] pay for education? A child is provided with teachers and a supposedly good learning environment, along with other facilities like library, labs, competitive opportunities, picnics, educational trips and of course lots of friends for socializing.

Not so long ago, I attended one of the best schools in Thane [a city near Mumbai - India] - St. John The Baptist High School, and for all the above facilities we were charged around 25 rupees a year approximately. This was just 10 years ago [mid 90's], the school being government aided. My friends in private unaided schools used to pay any where between Rs. 6ooo to Rs. 20000 a year then. I don't think anyone of us or the parents of students had a problem with the fee. It was worth it.

I never thought much about the fee and quality of education in municipal schools in my city until i graduated. Thinking about the history of these schools and the number of students who have attended these inferior schools run by government in tier 1 cities leaves me depressed. How can such a vast quality gap exist in the same city at almost the same fee?

A few years later, most of my friends and i were in professional colleges [mostly engineering] chugging out anywhere between Rs. 10000 a year to Rs. 250000 a year [leave alone the countless coaching classes and crash courses students take up - i wonder why they call it a crash course]. I don't recollect a single friend saying the fee was worth it. None of these professional colleges - the IITs, VJTI, Somaiya, S.P. Jain, Fr. Agnel or their counter parts in medical courses delivered the quality we expected. Irrelevant subjects, faulty and faithless assessment system [i have seen students miss out on a year or opportunity to study at a good foreign university due to faulty results in final year university exams] , zero [i absolutely mean it] knowledge professors [we had professors with lesser attendance than the most frequently absent student], non-functional or just-on-paper labs were just a few of the problems we faced through out the four years of higher education. I wonder on what basis is the fee charged. There wasn't a single subject that I couldn't have mastered on my own or in a small study group of friends, without the help of any professor. In fact we would have utilized the study hours in a better manner.

Its really sad that at the end, hundreds [hundreds at least under Mumbai university- the ones i surely know about] of students feel they wasted a good part of their youth in these wastelands termed as colleges. I call them wastelands cause I strongly believe that they offer nothing at all. I learned more while surfing on the net, reading up articles on free educational websites, e-books, patents and chatting to fellow students around the world than i did in the four years of engineering [of-course a major part of the chat was non-academic :)]. Students studying mechanical engineering for four years took up jobs in IT companies - building softwares instead of machines, even worse - working in night shifts in BPOs [call center]. And these aren't just one or two cases. I am talking about hundreds of engineers.

However the scenario in the medical colleges is slightly better with respect to the quality. I guess many people would not completely agree with me on these statements. Try taking to a fresh engineer from Mumbai university.

Anyways, coming back to the issue - what can be done to improve the quality and make it affordable to the masses?

1. The government should provide free education to each and every child up to H.S.C [grade 12]
2. The current assessment methodology has to go away - we are sick and tired of mugging up things. The present assessment forces students to memorize pages after pages without being genuinely curious about anything. We don't want knowledge banks that can't think. What's the use of a person who knows the entire atomic chart upside down, but can't think of innovative chemical processes for eliminating pollution? The assessment methodology has to change to one that promotes questioning out of curiosity, rather than answering by mugging.
3. Improve the quality of teachers across India - very few teachers adopt practical, hands-on and activity based learning. Reading out of a text book, dictating definition and loading the students with homework can't be the way forward. We need lakhs of teachers who can inspire the students. We need them to make the students fall in love with the process of learning. Learning can't progress without it being fun and as addictive as a game. The stress should be more on learning rather than teaching. We need private players for grading the teachers. Merely a B.Ed. is not enough.
4. Provide compulsory and free counseling to each and every child.
5. For higher education, the students should be given credits, which they start to repay once they start earning. These can be low/zero interest loans which will be equal for all categories - open and reserved. This will partially help in resolving the issue of reservation. This would imply that the student studies today without pay a single paisa and pays later at a rate proportional to his/her pay which would again depend upon the quality of education received.
6. Lastly - needless to say, the red tape and the corruption needs to be thrown out. We need a super transparent system. Let the students have free access to databases, checked answer paper - still better - have online tests [if its online the assessment can be more dynamic and well regulated - a weekly test across all the colleges under the university, which lets the student know where he/she is with respect to others every week.]

These are few of the numerous ideas that i keep talking about with my friends, colleagues. While writing this I went down a depressing memory lane and the the vision for future that i have had are super optimistic considering that I live in India. May be I dream too much. But I dare!