Business is definitely good, it helps in increasing the countries’ economy, and so is Education, as it can help anyone climb the tough stairs of success; but what happens when one has to pay, double the amount of money spent on education than on hard-work, achievements and success? The rate of literacy goes down. That’s exactly what happens as nowadays running a business of “Education” could be counted as one of the trends amongst established entrepreneurs. Even though the Indian Constitution laid down our fundamental rights which included Right To Education, under Article 21-A, in the Constitution of India to provide free education to children of age 6-14 years with free and compulsory education in 2009. Most Education Institutes fail to understand the part of “Right to FREE Education” till today.
Making money through education is quite beneficial to all educational institutes but that’s certainly not helpful to parents who wish to educate their children for their bright future and cannot afford all those high prices. And why should they even pay more than what’s required when it’s their fundamental right to free education? It's just simply increasing corruption. A money making racket.
If looked at from this angle, where a school or a college cannot run without funds and that’s why education has a price tag-it is understandable to pay for education to a certain extent. But again making that same excuse, using it as a business tool by adding Tuition Fees, Library Charges, Development Fees, Training/seminars/Workshops, Examination fees, Books, Education Tour Charges, Educom System Charges, etc, etc. is just filling their bank accounts and not empty minds.
Some of the reputed educational institutes love the phrase, “Under the Table”, they would go to any extent to grow their business of education through bribes and connections. Their way of getting 100% in academics every year, is by throwing out students who are weak in studies. Their targets could be mostly the poor ones who are late in paying their fees or the last benchers who are deemed mischievous.
As the saying goes, “Some of the brightest minds in the nations can be found on the last benches of the classroom”- Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Yet these last benchers are considered as the bad ones or a bunch of idiots. In order to save the reputation of these educational institutes and not let their ranks go down, they usually expelled these last benchers and take in kids from wealthy backgrounds. Instead, why not educate these children who are weak in studies? Why not pay attention to their learning disabilities? Isn’t that’s how an education system works? To teach and learn respectfully as it’s our fundamental right? Instead, today, education is considered as a business strategy, a way of increasing their own incomes and yet we adhere to such practices as we are forced to accept the charges of each subject and pay for our own education.
Private institutes use Education as an excuse and take out a huge amount of money to run their institutes. They lack morals, integrity, and ethics with modernization growing out immensely. As these private institutes keep on establishing, the job requirements for qualified teachers also increase which further leads to an increase in education charges. Students find it extremely difficult to cope up with the curriculum as the teachers just rush in to complete their portion, syllabus which should take up to 4-6 months is completed within 2-3 months or even lesser. They find an excuse to give most of the portion for self-studies. So what exactly is the reason for taking tuition fees when there's no proper facility in teaching itself? But still, the prices for this education won't decrease.
Such institutes are not anywhere ahead in increasing the literacy rate but just in the greed of increasing their business opportunities. This all results in parents sending their kids for coaching classes. It's hilarious to even think of how much more money are we going to pay only on education itself. But with comparison to paying for coaching classes and paying for colleges, parents prefer sending their children to coaching classes only and applying through universities rather than colleges. As most of these classes pay special attention to students and help them in their difficulties, parents find no harm in sending them for classes as they see their children learning, understanding and taking in education the way they should’ve been in the first place.
Parents usually have this illusion of, higher the prices for education, higher the ranks of their kids would be. But it's not compulsorily going to be like that, as these high prices institutions usually strengthen the ones already strong, bullying the weaker ones. Smart ones are given more importance and the weak ones are called bad nicknames which create a mental block in learning.
So in which way is education prospering here? These institutes should really take a step back and think about whether they are helping the education system of their country or are instead the reasons why students are literate but not educated? If this current scenario of using education as the business continues in the future; then along with with climate change, rising unemployment, and slowing economies, the coming generations are going to have another problem to deal with.
- Mihika Menezes
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