Kalyan Raman کلیان راماں · @kalyanasc
6th Sep 2017 from TwitLonger
Is an abnormally high GER in higher education as in TN necessarily a good thing?
I recently came across a blogpost where the author argues that it's good thing. You can read the post here: http://hawkeyeview.blogspot.in/2017/09/tamil-nadus-upper-funnel-education.html
The author says that TN has had a deliberate strategy of being overgenerous with evaluation of its high schools students, as evidenced by a very high pass percentage and a distribution curve that is not only skewed to the extreme right but peaks after 95% (even at 100% in some science subjects!).
It also has an extensive network of general education and professional colleges that can absorb a high proportion of this output of high school graduates, so that 45% of the people in the relevant age group 18-22 are in college, getting college education. This is said to be the upper funnel strategy, which is normally used in the context of a sales cycle, where people are targeted at the entry level. It is understood that
It is also agreed that the quality of education they receive is, for the most part, very low. What this means is that most of the graduates, up to 85% in some disciplines, do not possess the skills and experience that they are expected to have, going by their college degree in a subject. It obviously means that most of them do not find employment where such skills would be required. This is also a feature of the reality around us that can hardly be disputed. It is also borne about by studies done on recent engineering graduates in TN, where around 85% of them were found unfit for employment.
Yet, in terms of "social" criteria - defined as exposure to college education - this very high GER is said to be good thing, despite the grievous shortcomings, amounting to failure of the higher education system, as outlined in the above paragraph.
The beneficial outcomes aer is summarized by the author as below:
"This fantastic strategy has caused (a) a state with abnormally high self-esteem where almost all people have college degrees and most have professional degrees (b) the false positives - i.e. people who fail to secure professional jobs still be useful to society by finding other ways to survive as a college graduate and (c) a generation of highly valuable "graduate educated" parents to the next batch of TN children entering school."
Let me present an alternative, critical look at the system, based on what are widely agreed as features of the higher education system in Tamilnadu.
First, I don't agree that these students are at the upper funnel.
In that case, they would remain prospects, and nobody pays anything to be a sales prospect. The fact is, they are actually entering a transaction and buying something when they enroll in a college, paying good money ~80% of the time, without any subsidy
Second, the prospecting is not done by society, that is by an education system that is State-owned and managed. In fact, an overwhelming proportion of colleges in the state are privately owned and managed, both in the general education and professional education categories.
In terms of management, Tamil Nadu colleges are dominated by the private unaided colleges, forming 88.5 percent of all colleges in the State, followed by 5.8 percent owned by Government and 5.6 percent that are private-aided. (2012)
In 2012, 78.8 percent of the students were enrolled in private colleges, 11.5 percent in private aided colleges and 9.7 percent Government colleges.
Of 552 engineering colleges in the state, 521 are self-financing colleges.
So it can be safely generalized that in 80% of the cases, students enrolled in the higher education system in TN are transacting with private commercial entities.
Let us look at the nature of these transactions for what they really are i.e. commercial.
These private colleges target students, some of whom may not really be qualified to pursue the course of study they are enrolled for, in terms of aptitude and ability. We have the misleading generosity of the State Board to thank for this.
Next, due to poor infrastructure and lack of adequate teaching resources, the quality of education delivered is poor, leading to the kind of ineffective and unemployable graduates that we talked about earlier. The poor infrastructure and lack of teaching resource derive straight from the need for profiteering. This is done across the board by private educational institutions as is overcharging of students. Admitting students of poor ability and aptitude is also oriented towards swelling the top and bottom-line. If the student pays good money for a course of study that he will never be able to hack, why should it be the management’s problem? They are only interested in maximizing occupancy and meeting their business goals.
Why are private colleges and universities allowed to operate like this? There is no proper State-level policy to regulate private sector participation in higher education. A state with 550 engineering colleges still prefers to depend on AICTE for performing quality audit on its colleges. The more important reason is that the managements of all private colleges and universities are politically connected. Sometimes, they are merely the benami face of the political system.
Looking at all this, it is hard to escape two conclusions:
On the supply side, there is a nexus of the state, the political system and college managements to maximize extraction from the public in the name of providing an education.
On the demand side, hapless students are being subjected to transactions that can only be termed criminal deceit, also in the name of providing education. The students are simply not getting what they have paid for.
Both combine to produce this abnormally high GER. Once you have flooded the job market with graduates who would take up jobs as sales assistants in sari shops, then you are setting an entry-level benchmarks for those jobs. People would be too scared to skip a college education because the prospect of not getting even that job is frightening indeed.
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How anyone can look at the tragic outcome of a giant confidence trick played on students and parents by a nexus of private commercial interests and corrupt agents of the state and portray it as socially beneficial is baffling to me.
I think it’s a very vile and untenable strategy and its long-term social effects are likely to be really adverse for individuals and for the cause of education itself.
Thank you.