Education is becoming expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome, and possibly a minefield of unscrupulous activities. Schools, according to an Assocham survey, earn Rs 1,200 crore through the sales of forms in Delhi alone. All over the nation they extort a few trillion rupees from aspiring parents for a three-year unnecessary pre-schooling.
Systematically, a nation which does not find enough funds to ensure primary education is trying to make education more cumbersome. The desire for good education has led to the introduction of pre-schooling for three years so that parents could prepare their children for a ‘good’ school. The fee per child per month varies from Rs 1,000 to Rs 5,000, though in most cases teachers are paid a paltry Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000 a month. It provides an immense earning opportunity for those setting up such schools.
Now the Planning Commission has come out with an idea, vigorously being pursued by Delhi University, for increasing the duration of the bachelor’s degree to four years from the present three on the specious argument that this would increase employability.
How it would do that, no one has answered except saying that one extra year invested in the university — mostly that would be internships, often unpaid — would help students specialise in some area.
The Education Policy of 1968, which recommended three-year degree courses, had given similar arguments for scrapping the two-year bachelor courses. Universities in Delhi and Calcutta were the first to opt for it. It did not help the students. They found that the curriculum studied in two years had been stretched to three.
Neither were those who had obtained their degrees in two years less smart nor were those who got their degrees in three years extraordinary.
Policy planners stretched the duration of obtaining degree by one year and successfully put off the number of job seekers that much longer.
They quietly increased the cost of obtaining the degree by one third. There was little faculty addition. Facilities remained all these 40 years at abysmal levels and quality did not improve. Many aver that it has led to reduction in teaching quality in many cases and increased investment.
It only means that a two-year degree course is as good as a three-year one. Then why did this nation go for a three-year course? The US and Europe had given up the two-year degree under pressure from the education lobbies, which had got into private business hands. India wanted to ‘integrate’ with the West.
Now, again, the private businesses and universities in the West have started four-year bachelor’s courses to add to their coffers. India is opening up higher education to foreign businesses. The longer the duration of courses the more profitable it is for these businesses.
In fact, the lobbying for four-year courses has come at a time when, some of the Government universities in the US like Texas Tech Univeristy have introduced a medical degree that students will be able to complete in three years, rather than the usual four.
Union Minister for Health Ghulam Nabi Azad also plans to introduce it in India for the rural health sector. The arguments of the Texas University and Mr Azad are the same — the nation faces a shortage of primary-care physicians, and medical educators. In the US, as in India, medical students graduate with debts averaging $1,56,000. In India it varies from four lakh rupees to seven lakh rupees.
And who is opposing it? The private doctors’ body — Indian Med-ical Association.
Mr Azad and Texas University understand that durations are not important but what can be imparted in the shortest possible time matters more.
This is a case for considering how to reduce the duration of higher education, which is being stretched for no valid reasons except one that suits the businesses.
Adding each year to one’s education is an expensive proposition for those aspiring to get degrees.
The nation is not calculating money wasted in such thoughtless addition to number of years spent at universities or institutions of higher education.
India does not have enormous funds to invest in education. It has to look for opportunities to reduce the duration. Such cut in time-frame is possible as the syllabus in almost all subjects is loosely tailored.
In subjects like journalism, UGC is insisting on two-year post graduation, while at many universities it is a one-year course and it should be so. The country has to reduce the PG course as a practice to one year.
Thus with a two-year bachelor’s and one year of PG, higher education in 95 cent of subjects can be completed in three years — a saving of two years and billions of rupees.
Similarly, pre-schooling should mandatorily be fixed at one year. After three years, they learn the same when children reach grade one. India need not go by the practices in the West. The West is suffering today for such extravagance.
India has got the opportunity to look at the issue afresh and make education cost effective. The world is going through a severe monetary and financial crisis. India can take the lead in showing that the best could be provided in a shorter time-frame.
Schools and universities should be seen as sacred places. Whether it is Government or private, money has to be spent sparingly. After all, schools and colleges are not for profiteering.
