India’s tuition Pandemic (On India’s mushrooming ed-tech sector)

Relevance: Issues due to the rise of Edtech sector

Synopsis: With billions of dollars in capital and tech backing, Indian educational corporates are creating a situation of tuition pandemic.

China’s crackdown on edtech

Recently, the Chinese government announced a crackdown on its booming educational tuition sector. Under its new policy,

• private tutoring businesses have to restructure as non-profit companies.
• They are banned from listing on the stock market or raising foreign capital.
• They are prohibited from offering tutoring classes on weekends and school holidays.
• Parents and students are being encouraged to report schools and teachers who make extra income through private tutoring.

What is the Indian Scenario?

The overemphasis on tuition is an issue in India too. While the Chinese solution is not the best one, the underlying problem exists in India.

We make children compete for exams that do not test true talent and operate like a lottery. This isn’t a new issue. For instance, we already have the Kota factory phenomenon.

Why overemphasis on tuition is not good?

• Sports, musical instruments, dramatics, art, elocutions, debates anything that doesn’t feature in entrance tests or board exams is cut out.
• The time spent to score little extra marks can instead be used to learn a completely new skill, which would make one more employable and contribute more to the economy.
• Tuition takes away the level playing field. Many of these tuitions cost lakhs. Very smaller number of Indians can afford it.

Suggestions/Measures

The solution does not lie in banning mega educational companies. It attacks supply of tuitions, but does nothing about the huge demand for it.

1. One, we need to make a cultural shift. We must let our children learn other than engineering and medicine.
2. Two, we also need more good colleges. Lack of reputable colleges gives way for new edtech startups. Incentivize good people to open colleges, grant prime land and create more world-class institutions.
3. Take the pressure off the cutoffs and entrance exams.
4. Better regulate the mushrooming educational startups. Many of these companies provide excellent services, such as making people job-ready, upgrading skill-sets or teaching different vocations.

Conclusion

China’s massive crackdown is about how the tuition-obsession combined with tech can go too far. We need to fix this here before it is too late.