“Education is more than a luxury; it is a responsibility that society owes to itself,” says Robin Cook, an American novelist. But in this today’s era, are we moving away from our responsibility towards education that Cook talks about? Perhaps, yes because education has become a business these days.
Today, it has become a common scenario to see students and their parents struggling for arranging money to pay lakhs of fees for the student’s education. This is what the real scenario of our today’s education system is. While on the one hand, the fee structure of schools and colleges are rising immensely, on the other hand, the quality of education is also deteriorating at a very high speed. The institutions are engaged just in earning profits for themselves.
The Home Minister, P Chidambaram, at the closing ceremony marking 150 years of St. Xavier’s College, said, “I believe that private participation in higher education is important for the spread of education but I am strictly against private business with education.”
In this “business” of education, the fees of various institutions are already rising but let us now ascertain that why and how the quality of education is declining.
If we talk about various schools, today, with more number of schools competition has increased a lot. Each school just wants to be on the top when it comes to ranking. Due to this many schools these days have started adopting a tendency of focusing more on intelligent students. Due to this over emphasis on intelligent students, the average and below average students lag behind as they hardly get any chance to improve themselves.
The ways of business have also been sought out in education by admitting more than fifty students in one class. In these ways of earning more money the proper education of children does not get imparted and the basics of the students remain weak.
Now, if we talk about education at the college level, all of us know that there are hardly any studies that happen in college. Lecturers come and deliver their lecture without any creativity and innovation due to which the students do not get proper knowledge of their subjects and due to this they take help of various keys and guides to pass the examination. Also, if knowledge is imparted it is imparted strictly with the examination point of view. In this way, though students score well in examinations, they get left behind of the practical knowledge due to which they suffer when they go for their jobs.
Thus, to conclude, a need is there to take strict measures to stop this business in education. If it will not be reduced now, the quality of education in India will deteriorate further and as already the quality of our higher education in India is low as compared to other countries, it will become very difficult for us to meet the world standards.
