January 29, 2015 was my first visit along with my friend Ajai Abraham, to the biggest institute of the country, the IIM, an institute where every student dreams of pursuing his post-graduation. The visit was mainly to present our research paper on Entrepreneurship. The visit gave me an opportunity not only to listen to various learned people from across the globe and visit the campus but also to ponder, introspect and critically analyse the education system in the country with special reference to engineering students.
As it was an International Conference, we happened to meet people from various parts of the globe, especially from Germany and Italy. There were seven people on the stage during the inauguration, six men and one woman. All the men were covered from neck to toe and the lady was wearing a skirt showing off the bare legs. This made me ponder about the formal dress code which is designed by the west, where men fully cover their body and women have to expose theirs, especially the legs.
During one of the sessions I got to learn that 95% of the students in Germany study in government schools. Parents prefer to enrol their children into government schools because it offers quality education at an affordable price. This made me ponder why our country doesn’t do the same thing. Instead of doing so, it has introduced RTE Act so that it can shy away from the responsibility of providing quality education and place the burden on private schools.
Today, when a majority of the educational institutions are trying to build beautiful buildings to attract students, IIMB is not on the same lines as many walls and roofs are not painted and just left with the rough cement look. Today, many institutions give a lot of focus on the presentation but IIMB does not consider this that important. That is why I could conclude that IIMB gives more importance to quality and not to outlook. Truly, this is the sign of a great institute.
IIMB was the place where the movie ‘3 Idiots’ was shot, which was based on the education system of the country. The movie was an excellent depiction of what engineering education is like in India and how parents force their kids to pursue careers that are only meant to create a good standing in society for themselves (instead of pursuing what they love). The movie was such an outrageous success that it is one of the highest grossing Bollywood films of all time. India is perhaps a very rare country in the world, where parents decide the career of their children a few moments after their birth. To quote from the movie ‘3 Idiots’ where the character of Farhan Qureshi played by R. Madhavan says, “I was born at 5:15 am and at 5:16 am my father said: My son will be an engineer.”
However, the movie was very successful in highlighting some issues of the education system, giving special reference to engineering students. First, to allow children to choose their profession based on their interest. Secondly, to study with an objective to learn something but not with the mere objective just to obtain a degree, get a job and go abroad. Thirdly, the negative impact of the grading system. Fourthly, students committing suicide because of the pressure from the education system as well as the parents. And fifthly, that people pursue engineering but ultimately land in some other job.
No wonder, India produces 6,00,000 engineers from colleges across the country every year and in many families it is a trait that has been passed on for generations. It is not uncommon to see three to four generations of one family ranging from immediate brothers, cousins, uncles and distant relatives all having engineering background. Today, a very larger percentage of students in India are opting to become engineers because they will get handsome salaries and there are a lot of opportunities for engineers in the country. Today, girls and their parents also prefer their better-half to be engineers as they get good salaries and will have two days-a-week quality time to spend at home.
But, we always fail to see the other side of the coin as someone has rightly said, “All that glitters is not gold.” Engineers today are in modern day slavery. They should be called professional slaves as they wear formal shirts, pants and ties. They have become slaves to the MNCs. As per the rules and regulations they need to work for eight hours a day but actually land up working much more due to the work load. And during this course of time they also need to handle huge pressure from their superiors and also meet a deadline, which ultimately leads them to a lot of stress. They become so busy that their social life is badly affected. Many people in the greed of more money land up becoming workaholics. They have no significance for festival or any social event. They use all their time and talent for the MNCs for which they are working. But still today it is considered to be a very respectable profession. The work pressure and stress of many IT employees has resulted in divorce and health hazards in the recent past. By this I do not mean that people in other professions are not exploited by MNCs, they are also equally exploited, but a large number of people in the country are pursuing engineering, so I am specifically speaking about them.
Today the life cycle of IT employees is something as follows. ‘That they get bored with being children, are in a rush to grow up, and then long to be children again, that they lose their health to make money and they lose their money to restore their health, that by thinking anxiously about the future, that they live as if they will never die, and they die as if they had never lived’.
Our education system has many problems and one problem we have is the mismatch between what we study and what we do. Our entire academic career doesn’t really tell us much about our self. After we finish our education and start working, we would find a huge mismatch between what we have studied and what we are doing. All those years we were only trained to focus on our academic performance in order to get above distinction in our final report cards. Which in reality holds no value more than an empty piece of paper and we only learn that during the early days of our professional life. In school we are taught to memorise answers and vomit them in our exams. Thus, the one with the best memory power scores the highest marks. But in reality, memory does not play a very important role, what becomes important is the ability of the person to think, reason, analyse and make quick decisions.
Today, parents are also victim of mental poverty. They are concerned not about education, but only about qualification, of their children. They think that the school that gives more homework is a good school. They want good marks and more homework, not good values and more knowledge. In fact, once there was a Gandhian teacher, who made students work, sweep and even clean up toilets on 2nd October – Gandhi Jayanti – to teach Gandhian values. Next day parents, along with some panchas, came to the school, asking why their children were made to work. When the teacher told them Gandhi believed in each one doing his own work of any kind, a panch quipped – let that Gandhi do all this work, we will pay him how much he wants.
The government needs to implement drastic measures to bridge the gap between education and work. University degree holders continue to work at supermarket shelves while school leavers are without vocation. It is essential students receive the kind of education that goes beyond the classroom. Education needs to allow young people to gain employable skills and this can be done through vocational courses. We need to start telling kids the truth, instead of peddling the weary old practice of “university at all cost”.
I hope the education system in our country will become a matter of discussion among the citizens of the country so that we have an education system which is God-centric, with moral values and making students socially responsible. I hope we will prepare students for the society and not for the corporate world. In order to make our education system better we need to bridge the gap between what is taught in schools or colleges and the skills which are required in the society.
As the third day of the conference came to an end, I collected my certificate, had lunch and left the esteemed institute. I might have left the institute but my thought process will continue.