Quantity, commercialisation and sheer money drives growth,also greedy money-seekers!
Education Policy making is in Limbo! Higher education or any other stage of education is highly profitable! There is a very short introduction to education,universities and colleges before me.
Great names have been here for ages.Yes,even if we leave out the old names, honorary names, Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum and also the legendary Alexandria Library,we have universities in modern times, from Bologna(1088)to Oxford (and surprisingly, with due pardon, my own Oxford College (New College)1379!). So, universities are as old as we can look for.
But today with millions of students, from China and India alone, many millions, in total, over 150 million in over 17,000 institutions; twenty million in over 4,000 universities in the USA alone makes for a huge number.In fact, today mass university education is what we should call as higher education. And as for India,there are states like Tamil Nadu where an equal number of colleges, engineering and other technical colleges which charge what is allied capitation fee colleges!
In some of these states now private education is big business.And surprisingly too, the big education businessmen are rated higher than even the incumbent government ministers! Some of them, we are sorry to say so, are also the most ill-suited one, some plain illiterates and bad men of society! But what to do?Society and politics are changing fast in these new states, Tamil Nadu,you have some bizarre scenes.The founders of these self-financing,capitation fee-seeking universities,please note these are universities,some of the founders may not know many of the critical information we like to convey here.They don’t care!They are yet men with lot of clout.
Twenty first century colleges and universities
Some of the founders of the new twenty first century universities were once cinemas actors, of course as villains or side actors or simply musclemen to heroes and others have still more shady backgrounds!What to do?Simply bear with them.Why?Even one or two have started political parties and sure they would soon plunge into politics!So,you have to please them at one point or the other. It is money, big money and black money that is going to decide politics till such time; let us hope,that politics would become more cleaner than what it is today.You see it is democracy and democracy forbids your freedom for free expression and also your right to speak freely!
So, education today is many things to many people.It is not surely, a search for knowledge for knowledge’s sake! So, we have a stage in our own evolution as a nation when we have to put up with so much nonsense as knowledge.If you drive through one major road in Tamil Nadu interior,the very length is paved with huge buildings, all schools or colleges,one college is also reputed to have got the largest number of women’s colleges. In this age of gender equality you have to be careful not to offend any sections’ sentiments. Also, this is the age in India of highly sensitive quota politics! Also, in tune with the changing times,we have to consider the many new Acts,the very important Right to Education Act is the one new beneficial law which requires every eligible student to be admitted into schools! This is a very critical legislation where you can’t deny admission to schools in their own neighborhood.
All the accumulated socio-economic and cultural inequities have created layers and layers of injustice,in the name of castes and economic inequities and only by sheer democratic state politics and polices only we can redress the modern equities and correct the age of customs too.Today as we write, we read that there are now more ‘out of school children’ than we imagined with the new legislations in place. Also, there are young girls driven to human trafficking, under the immoral trafficking acts,including the Devadasi system against which laws have been passed but not implemented, we read in the states of Karnataka and Goa!
So,for Indians,more so Indian education policy makers,there are issues and more issues than what we choose to read books and researches written and published in UK and USA!
We in the Journal of Education,are of the strong view that our education policy making is caught in a limbo!Democracy throws up the most incompetent and unqualified!May be it is the price we have to pay for living in such times of mass awakening!