Education in India is a costly
affair. Not that it is cheaper outside, but the booming education market in
India has started to become a new headache for the largely proportionate middle
class of the country.
As I write this, a group of
students in Mumbai’s Tata Institute of Social Sciences are protesting against
the apparent hike in semester as well as the hostel fees. Again, just a few
days back when the whole issue of ‘Anti-national’ JNU broke the nation, a group
of media intellects focused on the ‘subsidised education’ and the contribution
of students to the nation. The larger point here being, education and expenses
on education are things which go hand in hand, parallel.
Use whatever adjectives you want
to, but if education is an investment. The more you invest, better are the
chances of your child getting a high yielding job. But like stock market, there
are also chances that you might drop it all.
Higher education in India, particularly
technical education, has become seemingly expensive. Recently the fees of IITs
were increased. IIMs are already expensive and keeping to the bandwidth, let us
not talk about private universities. The assumption is that these universities
offer you placements which ought to cover up whatever you have spent. But many
of us do not realize, what an average middle class family goes though for those
four or five years when the student is in college.
The reason I am particularly using
‘middle class’ is because one would argue that there are scholarships for those
who are in need. But not everyone is qualified for a scholarship. There are
many like me who fall just outside the scale which determines the applicability
of a student for scholarship and things financially aren’t particularly easy
for us.
It’s not however higher education
that I initially wanted to write about. What I wanted to focus more was on
school education. And from what it seems, schools have become far more
expensive then college education these days, add more to parent’s woes.
I wish I had the numbers to back
it, but today almost everyone in tier I and tier II cities of the country opts
for private education. A good school today is a brand and to be a part of it
you have pay.
I am not really in a position to
comment about other cities, but school education in Guwahati has become an
expensive affair. And so much so that admission fees of some schools are way
more semester fees of many reputed universities. And must I stress here,
admission fees not monthly tuition fees.
This tradition that you have to take re-admission every time you pass a class still exists in certain schools and it is kind of hilarious the kind of fees they collect. The picture below is from an admission slip of a reputed private school of the city. So there is an Education Extension Fees, Welfare Fund and Development Fund.
I here failed to differentiate
between the purposes of Welfare fund and the Development fund. And added to
that there is something called Assignment
Fees. I wonder who decides these criteria.
What bothers me further is the
fact that these numbers fluctuate, mostly in the upward direction. Considering
the fact that prices increase or decrease according to the market, but there
has to be a transparent mechanism as to how these apparent increases in the
fees are calculated.
Not sure if there are government
norms and regulations available, but criterions like ‘Assignment Fees’ can’t
just be inserted.
Parent’s today have to shell out
a fortune to provide satisfactory education to their kids and on top of that
they have to enroll their wards to private tuitions and coaching centres. One
might not read about it much, I am sure many in the country are going through
this agony of managing school and college fees.
At least in college you have
groups to protest against these fee hikes, but who takes care of these private
schools?
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