Thursday, June 16, 2011

Mockery of Education…!!

I was reading today’s newspaper and the big news of the day was “cutoff of 100% at LSR college”. My first reaction was, what the hell, is this some kind of joke? If the cutoff is this, what is going to happen to rest?

As one of the speaker pointed out in one of the discussions on this topic, its mainly because of students who are suing this just as a base station so that they can prepare for their IIT dream, killing the options for the real student who wanted to pursue this stream. See even today in top B Schools, most of the students are from Science background. Few blames CBSE for distributing numbers so easily, but I know that anyone who passed out from CBSE will vote against this. CBSE never distributes marks, they are earned by students.

If the college thinks that 100% can be taken as a cutoff, then I believe that very soon they should decide that this holds valid even for reserved category candidates or else it would be highly unfair on the candidates belonging to general category on scoring 96 % and still not being able to get into that college. Also the need to enforce that anyone from Science background student to get admission in Commerce stream, unless the student is there for the entire course duration.

Now even I doubt if the university administration has even considered this fact that not all students applying for admission are from CBSE. There are states like UP and Maharashtra where getting such high percentage is next to impossible, even if they get something around 80%, its an achievement by itself. This really looks a ridicules step which surely is going to increase pressure on general students. Either the administration/ ministry should put in force once education board across all the states or they should not play with future of innocent students.

Even if they say that this step is taken to match the demand supply, I would trash this as rubbish. If demand is rising, its responsibility of system to provide the supply of enough opportunities for studies and quality in education. Only god knows what will happen to next generation of students and how are they going to study or they all are going to end up like teenagers of developed nations where most of them don’t even cross the step of being a graduate.

Amazingly this laid down process in no way considers other aspects of student’s life, their co-curricular activities. Are we again going towards producing just clerks or we want a well educated human being to emerge out of these temples of education.

Why can’t we take a common entrance test by giving the kids a fair chance to perform and compete, is that so difficult?

Well, I don’t think so…we all really need to think and come together to achieve basic motto of education system “ ज्ञानार्थ प्रवेश, सेवार्थ प्रस्थान...!!”

1 comment:

SK#Sumeet said...

The incident just shows the flaws in Indian education system.

First of all, the decision on admissions should not be taken purely basis marks scored in Class XII exam. Our education system gives undue importance to a 'figure' which is nothing more than one of many indicators of a student's knowledge, intelligence, and value for the society. Along with the marks, other credentials, attitude, sense of service etc. should be the measure. However, such behavioral attributes are difficult to assess without subjectivity.
This brings us to another problem in our society. Subjective decisions are treated as immoral ab-initio with a pre-notion that these would be biased. Indians try to patch this up by objective criterion with little usefulness. e.g. the above case of use of a percentage score, or, a flat percentage reservation for the 'less-privileged' castes / tribes etc. This is done to avoid any controversy around the selection process and is with complete disregard to the purpose behind such actions.

Second issue which is with our society per se... is our propensity to be drifted by the sensational news and be unappreciative of the real issue. The real issue here is that there are too many students chasing the same seat. I myself know few people who passed out of SRCC where they need not study there at first place. Admission to such colleges is considered as ticket to a great career. This is right too.. but there are other ticket windows available too. which we forget to knock on because of the aura this particular window has. The students or their parents alone are not to be blamed as there is little help available in terms of career counselling. The result is that you find CAs in MNCs processing cheques and engineers in BPOs picking calls. All for a 'great career'.

Third issue of course is the pathetically low number of reputed colleges & Universities. I believe education should be fully decontrolled. The regulations by UGC & AICTE do not in any way improve the quality of education in our colleges. I graduated from a middle rung government university in my home town. I do not think the level of education can stoop any lower than what I witnessed at that place. That is practically impossible unless the college starts selling degrees (which anyway is happening all over the place).