Credit - based higher education system - status, opportunities and challenges

Credit – based higher education system – status, opportunities and challenges

After Government of India opened the doors of free primary education, a challenge left is how to deal with the the problem of providing higher education to the vast Indian population. Credit based education is one way out of this dilemma.

Indian education has developed a lot post independence. Where British left us was a shameful situation. Nehru knew the importance of higher education and in his vision of a developed India, he made sure all opportunities were available to the very best of minds – irrespective of their financial capabilities.

Status

With coming of liberalization, the world became more open and the structures of economy began to change. Market led approach was given a path instead of welfarism. The education sector was also opened to diverse challenges, with increase in population demand increased, and it was difficult for economically weaker sections to provide education to their children. Education has been commercialized by the private players, giving it a competitive edge. Although, this is better as at least it would bring in the best to our country, even at the cost of competition.

Opportunities

The economy became more integrated with the world. With accelerating development of economy, more lucrative jobs were available. People saw to it that they can take credit on education now, to get a better positions in future. More people are able to spend, more private institutes cropped up. It brought a lot of job opportunities as well, for teachers and other staff. Apart from rich and poor, the middle class has been benefited a lot as they now got a escape from the trap of ‘can not’ situation to ‘can try’.

Challenges

Any good thing comes with a lot of strings attached. When the people got the possibility of taking credit, the educational institutions increased the fees. The market forces work in full swing in such cases. Had government kept a control on this, the fees would have gone under the table and would have created a chain of corruption and non compliance to ethics. Although, still a portion of donation seats work under this scheme, but it increases the revenue for institutions and hence providing better facilities to all.

People migrate for better opportunities, had we not given better salaries to our teaching staff, they would have left for greener pastures. But on the other hand this increased the fees of the institutes further. Similarly if our institutions didn’t offer world class facilities and education to the students, both the students and their prospective employers would migrate away.
Apart from these issues, credit based system always kept a pressure on the minds of students, what if! loan could not be paid back in case of failure in exams. Ultimately leading to problem of depressions or suicidal cases.

The credit based system will be marred with lemon’s problem. Higher fees institutes are better is a common notion, and hence undeserving institutes will sky rocket their fee structure, to ‘be in race’. It also gave problem of false paid rankings by institutions to prove their worth. Ultimately, adding to the burden of poor students.

Such a system had an imbibed notion of cleaning out poor by creating umpteen problems of documents, guarantee on loan, mortgage, etc. Thus the system automatically weeds out the poor.

Every coin has its two sides. Had there been no such facility available, many of our distinguished scholars wont be able to come on the brim of masses. They won't have stood a chance. The credit based system has given an option, of which earlier people had none.