Private Schools And Institutions
Knowledge is one of the very important resource for global competitiveness and is responsible for overall development of the nation. The system of education in India inherited a poor educational infrastructure from colonial masters. The colonial policy focused neither on mass education nor on higher education. As a consequence, the country had to begin from scratch soon after its Independence. In order to meet the requirements of professional and technical manpower in a developing economy, the government set up the some public schools and some higher education colleges like Indian Institutes of Technology, regional engineering colleges, medical colleges, arts and science colleges and some universities. The number of higher education institutions from the time of independence have increased by almost 4 times but the percentage of increase in the public institutions and private institutions are something around 10% and 90% respectively. Private schools and institutions are independent institutions and are administered by private people. Below are the common reasons of why people prefer private colleges over government colleges.
Now that we have seen why private institutions are dominant in India Now almost no private institution believes in moral values of educating the society and each and every one is trying to squeeze profit by compromising on ethics at every level.
The major problems and exploitations of private institutions are as follows.
o number of institutions and intake by location
o background of sponsors
o affiliation
o single and multiple discipline institutions
o size and composition of faculty at different levels and qualifications and
o infrastructure (extent of campus, presence of major facilities such as library, labs, etc.)
Further, the major issues relating to self financing colleges are examined in terms of
o admission criteria and procedures
o fees
o quality
o performance
o performance evaluation and
o functioning of regulatory authorities
The private unaided engineering colleges and their enrolment have been located in economically prosperous places and where already government has invested cause mostly private institutions operate for profit and mostly its easy to find all the necessary infrastructure. But the intake of the students doesn't localize to those regions where the institutions are set up and varies largely. The most important aspect of the private institutions is the funding of the college i.e background of sponsors. This sponsors are mainly divided into three groups.
1.) Religious funding
2.) government funding
3.) Industrial funding
A majority of them own many educational institutions as a group or chain of institutions and the number in these chain of institutions keeps growing over the years and Similar growth can be found in terms of transformation of single discipline engineering colleges into multiple discipline institutions by adding management and applied courses which are market oriented cause the main motto of the most of the private colleges is not the quality but trying to gain profits.
In most of the sites of the institutes there's very limited information available on teachers, and over all it can be said that fresh graduates and post graduates at a lower salary manage the teaching in most of the institutes and there's no real motivation and inspiration to the student. The infra structure is very poor for most of the institutes as they bypass most of the government rules for setting up a institute by mostly bribing people who come around for investigation and hence research qualification of the faculty is limited or non existent at all. Only a very few or handful of colleges have some quality infrastructure. As far as the extent of campus, presence of major facilities such as library, labs, etc., vary a great deal across colleges.
The most important part of an institute is admission criteria and this varies a lot among institutions and mostly these institutions share with government for admissions. Its something like 75% of the seats are filled up by the government and the rest of the seats are termed as management quota and all the time these management quota seats are sold for a price based on the demand. If people are willing to pay the cost of the seat goes high. We can't even guess the amounts which people can pay for these seats. Once the college established itself and gain some popularity it slowly reduces the seats allocated to the government and will ultimately be independent cause now there's no need of the government for admissions.
Secondly the fees structure as these are private institutions these expect to run the institution and pay the faculty based on fee provided by the student. From the private institutional perspective, these institutions charge commercial fee rates and “capitation†fees and are neither accounted by receipts nor follow a transparent admission procedure. In addition, the private institutions collect exorbitant and compulsory fees of many forms and kinds in the name of transport, canteen, library, text books, mark sheets, caution deposits; degree certificates; hall tickets; association fees, etc. The fee structure is not transparent. May be in the recent times government is regulating the fee structure of the institutes but still while selling the private management quota seats no rules are present to regulate.
Thirdly the fame and popularity of the institute mainly depends of the quality of the students who graduates. But there's no correct way to evaluate this performance. The most common method is the ranking of the institutions. Many private organisations and media and other people rank institutions these rankings are based on several factors such as infrastructure, placements etc....and the management of the institutions easily manipulate these rankings by just bribing or influencing the organisations which rank. Mostly Most private institutions claim to be commercially-oriented, preparing graduates for the job market. Professional institutions promise potential students positions in their field of choice upon graduation. There is no any proper evaluation in place by the government. It may be noted that the central and state governments stipulate on a number of major aspects from eligibility criteria, admission procedure, sharing seats, maximum fees to be charged and quality, etc... but not on the terms and conditions of recruiting teachers, the vital input for education. The self-financing colleges do not seriously follow even many of those stipulations except the eligibility criterion. Eventually there is no performance evaluation in place.
Concluding the summary of the problems relating to the private institutions. The most acute problem is quality on account of lack of competent faculty. This coupled with a lack of accountability raises serious doubts as to its ability to address the huge latent demand for quality education. As aptly put, there is a place for the market, but the market must be kept in its place. Hence, a more effective regulatory framework needs to be developed to address the problem of imperfect information on the quality of teaching and student learning. While improved information sharing on academic quality would be an obvious regulatory mechanism, some form of self-enforced self-regulation is needed for more effective private higher education. Again there should not be any dilution in the rules of the regulation so there must be serious consequences in bending the rules.
- Private schooling in India is demand-driven.
- The negligence of the government in improving the public institutions opened an opportunity for private people to start institutions and therefore the demand and again the responsible for the huge volume of the private institutions and half of them are not even recognized by the government.
- Parents choose private education because they believe they provide better education and future opportunities for their children than the government schools.
- One more obvious reason is the infrastructure and the faculty. Very poor maintenance by the government and no proper regulations for the quality of the teachers.
Now that we have seen why private institutions are dominant in India Now almost no private institution believes in moral values of educating the society and each and every one is trying to squeeze profit by compromising on ethics at every level.
The major problems and exploitations of private institutions are as follows.
o number of institutions and intake by location
o background of sponsors
o affiliation
o single and multiple discipline institutions
o size and composition of faculty at different levels and qualifications and
o infrastructure (extent of campus, presence of major facilities such as library, labs, etc.)
Further, the major issues relating to self financing colleges are examined in terms of
o admission criteria and procedures
o fees
o quality
o performance
o performance evaluation and
o functioning of regulatory authorities
The private unaided engineering colleges and their enrolment have been located in economically prosperous places and where already government has invested cause mostly private institutions operate for profit and mostly its easy to find all the necessary infrastructure. But the intake of the students doesn't localize to those regions where the institutions are set up and varies largely. The most important aspect of the private institutions is the funding of the college i.e background of sponsors. This sponsors are mainly divided into three groups.
1.) Religious funding
2.) government funding
3.) Industrial funding
A majority of them own many educational institutions as a group or chain of institutions and the number in these chain of institutions keeps growing over the years and Similar growth can be found in terms of transformation of single discipline engineering colleges into multiple discipline institutions by adding management and applied courses which are market oriented cause the main motto of the most of the private colleges is not the quality but trying to gain profits.
In most of the sites of the institutes there's very limited information available on teachers, and over all it can be said that fresh graduates and post graduates at a lower salary manage the teaching in most of the institutes and there's no real motivation and inspiration to the student. The infra structure is very poor for most of the institutes as they bypass most of the government rules for setting up a institute by mostly bribing people who come around for investigation and hence research qualification of the faculty is limited or non existent at all. Only a very few or handful of colleges have some quality infrastructure. As far as the extent of campus, presence of major facilities such as library, labs, etc., vary a great deal across colleges.
The most important part of an institute is admission criteria and this varies a lot among institutions and mostly these institutions share with government for admissions. Its something like 75% of the seats are filled up by the government and the rest of the seats are termed as management quota and all the time these management quota seats are sold for a price based on the demand. If people are willing to pay the cost of the seat goes high. We can't even guess the amounts which people can pay for these seats. Once the college established itself and gain some popularity it slowly reduces the seats allocated to the government and will ultimately be independent cause now there's no need of the government for admissions.
Secondly the fees structure as these are private institutions these expect to run the institution and pay the faculty based on fee provided by the student. From the private institutional perspective, these institutions charge commercial fee rates and “capitation†fees and are neither accounted by receipts nor follow a transparent admission procedure. In addition, the private institutions collect exorbitant and compulsory fees of many forms and kinds in the name of transport, canteen, library, text books, mark sheets, caution deposits; degree certificates; hall tickets; association fees, etc. The fee structure is not transparent. May be in the recent times government is regulating the fee structure of the institutes but still while selling the private management quota seats no rules are present to regulate.
Thirdly the fame and popularity of the institute mainly depends of the quality of the students who graduates. But there's no correct way to evaluate this performance. The most common method is the ranking of the institutions. Many private organisations and media and other people rank institutions these rankings are based on several factors such as infrastructure, placements etc....and the management of the institutions easily manipulate these rankings by just bribing or influencing the organisations which rank. Mostly Most private institutions claim to be commercially-oriented, preparing graduates for the job market. Professional institutions promise potential students positions in their field of choice upon graduation. There is no any proper evaluation in place by the government. It may be noted that the central and state governments stipulate on a number of major aspects from eligibility criteria, admission procedure, sharing seats, maximum fees to be charged and quality, etc... but not on the terms and conditions of recruiting teachers, the vital input for education. The self-financing colleges do not seriously follow even many of those stipulations except the eligibility criterion. Eventually there is no performance evaluation in place.
Concluding the summary of the problems relating to the private institutions. The most acute problem is quality on account of lack of competent faculty. This coupled with a lack of accountability raises serious doubts as to its ability to address the huge latent demand for quality education. As aptly put, there is a place for the market, but the market must be kept in its place. Hence, a more effective regulatory framework needs to be developed to address the problem of imperfect information on the quality of teaching and student learning. While improved information sharing on academic quality would be an obvious regulatory mechanism, some form of self-enforced self-regulation is needed for more effective private higher education. Again there should not be any dilution in the rules of the regulation so there must be serious consequences in bending the rules.
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