fixing education-3

Observations and review (cont)

This is a short critical review of higher education in India. Higher education includes graduate and higher studies. This comprises of the simple, obvious and mostly useless (career wise) science and arts studies, and professional studies like engineering and medical. The scenario works differently for both.

First the non-professional higher studies. You pass 10+2, so the next step is to go for graduation (if you are not too poor, otherwise you would be a laborer by now). Till now, the education has been unable to give you any significant livelihood earning skills. So you choose any college in close vicinity, and any course that remains trouble free. So it could be commerce, sociology, maths, botany, whatever. You don't expect to get any career out of this course, and a slow-decent pace of study, may be with some coaching, takes you through. After graduation, you start applying for various government sector jobs, and for higher studies. As the former doesn't exist much now, and needs a big bribe, a post-graduation is a good option. If its professional (MBA/MTech/MCA) a career can be hoped. If not, you go into research-teaching, or something else (which can include an unrelated job/business, or preparing for competitive exams for government jobs)

Professional education. If you have enough awareness (or enough money), you could work hard to earn a ticket to short cut routes to great careers. After 10+2, you could secure admission to a good (so called) engineering or a medical college. After graduation, you could go for something like a CAT entrance or the UPSC exam. Shortcuts to glory-career- and everything else you don't need. Most boys and girls who have the awareness, make the brave choice of trying for the shortcuts. In some regions of the country, taking multiple year drops for them is also popular.

Higher education is a bit less unequal than primary and secondary. Merit and hard-work works to some extent, though you can have a unfair advantage if you are rich or belong to reserved category. Professional education works event better. Engineering and MBA work best, because of an activity called 'campus recruitment'. IITs and IIMs are the best among the bests, and that is arguably, only because they have at their disposal, a huge talent pool fighting for admissions.

The one that works best is professional education, from a decent institute. But the problem is the huge demand supply gap (-a hundred competitors per seat is common) and is mostly too expensive for the average Indian (who earns the per-capita income, 30k right now)

The next parts talk about the wish-list and practical solutions.