The business of post-graduate degrees

IT IS that time of the year again. The entrance exam mania is at work, sending frantic students and parents into a tizzy over the sheer enormity of all the preparation required. Coaching institutes are smiling their way to the bank, concerned parents are coughing up ridiculous amounts of money to have their wards ‘mentored’ and the students themselves are under tremendous pressure on account of the ‘perform-or-perish’ nature of the tests. It’s the same story that is repeated year after year.

If at all, the situation has only taken a turn for the worse. There was a time when the Common Aptitude Test (CAT) was merely a means of securing admission into any of the prestigious management schools. Not anymore. Today, the CAT is much more a symbol of prestige and supposed intellect than a stepping stone to a degree. With the MBA being the next obsession of the Indian middle class after medicine and engineering, the CAT has attained immortality the way the PMT (Pre-Medical Test) had, before the turn of the millennium.

Every year, in the first two weeks of November, television channels show a slew of interviews with nervous aspirants, more nervous parents and know-it-all gurus who give out gyaan in generous doses. A day before D-day, newspapers assert themselves with an array of articles giving out vital statistics such as the number of students appearing for the exam and just how much more that is as compared to the previous year. All put together, these factors brew a deadly concoction of intimidation and fear, which very often undoes the efforts of several weeks and sometimes months of an aspirant.

These days, there isn’t quite a business as convenient as that of a coaching institute. You exaggerate the magnitude of the exams and then, when the victim is scared enough, you put yourself forth as their only saviour who’ll sail them through the dark, murky seas of quantitative, verbal and logical abilities. You seek refuge in amazingly well-thought jargon, which your average aspirant is in the dark of, and once they’re convinced of your potential to elevate their careers to new heights, you make them pay a few tens of thousands as fees. Then begins a never-ending saga of single-chapter tests, double-chapter tests, subject-wise tests, mock full-length exams and the rest. This is not to mention several hours spent ‘guiding’ the students on how to tame the wild lions they encounter using the best strategies, what to revise and what to avoid, and whether you believe it or not, even stuff like how many pencils to carry and what type they should be.

This is not to say all the coaching institutes are fooling around. There are a few that are truly committed and that will be willing to help in whichever way possible if you prove yourself a sincere student. However, therein lies the trouble. Students are flocking to these places in hordes. Just how do these self-proclaimed CAT tamers decide who’s potential is what? How do you decide which students needs more attention than another? Every student is different and so are his/her needs and aptitude, necessitating each one to ideally be treated differently. Just how many institutes are able to fulfil this need? And, when they’re unable to do so, they provide students with generic guidelines on how to go about their work. It is not surprising then, that what works wonders for one causes another to fall flat.

While the students and the institutes battle it out, ‘aided’ suitably by the media that adds to all the apprehension, the ones truly making hay while the sun shines are the colleges themselves. An entrance form that is not more than a single A4 sized sheet of paper, accompanied by a tiny booklet that they call a prospectus, costs not less than one grand and in some cases, two. With at least two to three dozen institutes calling themselves ‘prestigious’ enough to be considered the top bracket of the country, the forms alone come to about 20 to 30 thousand per aspirant.

Assuming that an institute issues not more than 5000 forms (which, by the way, is a grossly conservative estimate), they earn Rs. 50 lakhs out of the forms alone. Of course, in most cases, only a small fraction of all these thousands of aspirants actually get in. Many do not make it and several choose to try again, meaning that the investment not only goes down the drain, it also has to compulsorily be incurred again next year.

A dark alley indeed, with no light in sight, at least as of now. Not all teaching institutes are worthless and not all colleges that money-minded, but the fact remains that the whole business of handing out degrees is all set to intensify over the years. Those of us, who’re perpetually ranting over the fact that primary education expenditure is astronomical, do also consider what it takes to call yourself a post-graduate. Clearly, education ain’t all that simple anymore.
 
source: http://www.merinews.com

Date: 24th March, 2010

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