Last week, a TV channel suddenly found that engineering and medical seats are being sold for money. Oh my... How did they find out the secret that whole of Tamil Nadu knows? Kudos to their investigative journalism. Any parent with a ward who completed secondary education can vouch for this instead of a fancy degree in Journalism... can't they? All they had to do is approach any college and ask for a seat, they would have got the menu card with the prices.
What was absolutely hilarious was the reaction by the University chancellors, administrators and more importantly UGC? They reacted as if they were hearing about this for the first time. What else can be the height of hypocrisy? The famous belief is that the uneducated get hoodwinked... but, what about those who are educated. Do they volunteer to be conned and barter their spines for college seats? Where should the line be drawn? Is it the fault of the Regulators, Administrators, Parents or Students?
Tamil Nadu has the reputation of being one of the more developed states with strong educational infrastructure, which obviously is being built through muscle, money and power instead of values and ethos. We have loads of graduates being churned out from educational factories. Education is an individual right and nobody can blame but does it warrant unscrupulous means... hook or crook?
I believe it is the mis-placed belief that education would solve all our problems. Education apparently provides security for future. This is what we can call typical "Middle Class" thinking.
What do we use our education for? To work for somebody else, probably a globalized company - in a high technology sweat-shop (without the sweat, of course).
What can we expect five years down the line? A couple of promotions or a pink slip due to recession. We are happy as long as our increments are equal or greater than inflation.
A fancy car and a house on loan would be enough to satisfy our flimsy egos. Where exactly is the security that we believe that education endows, when we are perennial borrowers? Hey... if you are educated, you get more loans... and, you stay a borrower and keep paying your interests for life. A couple of insurance policies, preferably unit linked or the SIPs would be our savings... only until we find that share market takes a plunge every other year. Last but not the least, Education also makes it easier to blame the government, all and sundry in TOEFL-standard English.
Without belittling the value of education, I would like to highlight the lack of application of our education. We continue to be a developing country and would continue so for a long period because of this emphasis on education - without any enterprise. It is the use of education that I am concerned about. An enterprising society takes the responsibility of its development. History shows that enterprise more than education or a combination of both takes you higher than others.
How many of us think about our own enterprises? Have you ever thought what would have happened if Bill Gates didn't think about discontinuing education? He wouldn't have 100,000 educated ones working for him. What if Narayanamoorthy sat on his educational achievements and didn't start his own company? He wouldn't be employing thousands of educated ones. Try to find more about Warren Buffet and you would understand what enterprise really means. Most of the times, it is our insecurity about loss of income, status and power which makes us the run-of-the-mill employees - no different from "Gumasthas" that East India Company had before our independence.
Education provides us with the tools that go blunt because we don't use it. It is just that we don't have the courage to take that additional risk; to take that another step; to be enterprising. Let us get out of our comfort zones to venture out. World is full of opportunities and our education will help us find the right one.
Let us not teach ourselves and our children to be educated by buying degrees, but being successful by being innovative, enterprising and dynamic. Let us not be party to a scam where your education depends not on your merits but the depth of your pockets. Let us educate ourselves to be enterprising; to take risks; to be dynamic; to break those very barriers which has kept us down.
We are educated already... time for us to be Entrepreneurs. Education cannot be a bachelor. Let us marry it to enterprise to bear prosperity, self-respect and responsibility.
All the best.
Pras
About the Author
Has a bit of education and a bit of enterprise. Wishes he had more of both. Writes at http://prasadha.blogspot.com.
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