Is Education Business Now? Are Institutes Doing Less Teaching More Business? Several burning question on education trends are haunting specially on the commercialization aspect.
Non-profit nature always intended with education system, commercialization is never an element as per theory. Education in India has been institutionalized
for a very long time now. The first instances of institutionalization of
education in ancient India
were the Gurukuls. The students went to live and learn at the guru’s ashram.
Here all students were treated as equals, and princes and commoners stayed
together for the entire period of their education. Each then went back to their
professions and the guru stayed back at the ashram for the next batch of
students. The ancient Gurukul system never mentioned of commercialization. Rama and his four brothers at
Guru Vashishta’s ashram, Krishna
and Sudama at Guru Sandipan’s ashram and the Kauravs and Pandavas at guru
Dronachacharya’s ashram are some of the famous guru-shishya associations that
we know of. Of these only Dronacharya is said to have used his position as guru
to avenge his personal grouse against Dhrupad. Later on unlike the other gurus,
he comes and stays in the capital of the Kauravs and therefore gets involved in
the politics of the land. This is perhaps for the first time that a guru does
not see imparting education as his sole mission in life. The impartiality of
the teacher thus gets compromised as is borne by the later happenings in the
Mahabharata; he became more of a courtier than a guru. May it can be termed as indirect educational commercialization.
Today there is a lot of
commercialization in education in India .
The factors have been many. Teaching ceased to be as respectable a job as that
of a bureaucrat. Hence for most people it became the last choice rather than
the first choice. Most people in education see it as a means of livelihood.
There are but a few of them, who are in it for the love of the job, and these
are today the handful of good teachers we remember long after we have left
these institutions. Teaching by itself can be a very rewarding experience so why any one to think about the commercialization attached with it?
Today, however, the government
run institutes are in a poor shape with almost no school or college buildings,
very few teachers and no emphasis on imparting any education. That leaves the
market open for unscrupulous people to set up institutions with poor
infrastructure, high fees and scant respect for teachers. They are in the
“business” of education and have no concept of good faculty and good teaching showing the commercialization in fashion.
Their primary aim is to reap financial benefits from these institutions and to
gain clout which money itself was insufficient to buy. They have managed to
change the dynamics of the whole education sector. Even within these
institutes, the quality of students and of the faculty leaves a lot to be desired.
The students mostly comprise children of the neo-affluent and the faculty are
hired and fired at the whims of the promoter. This is epitome of teaching commercialization. This fails to create a healthy
environment for education. Despite this, these institutes continue to flourish
as they have their own target audience.
It is not as if though there are no good institutions for education in India. The IITs, the IIMs, AIIMS and a host of other Indian institutions stand as testimony to the great tradition of global standards of Indian institutes. How can the commercialization be curbed? It is imperative that the government puts a check on the mushrooming of sub-standard institutes and continues to open such world class educational institutes. Private players should also be monitored more effectively regulating commercialization and sticking around non-profit nature so that the quality of education is not compromised.
Lastly we have to revisit the running of educational institutes in India for the sake of stopping commercialization practices and promoting healthy society oriented learning imparting.
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