Education:A Billion Dollar Industry...!!!!!!

The first thing I noticed was the Sydney opera house in the background and the glitz and glory of the western lifestyle was clearly tickling my imagination. Sitting at the international admissions fair was like getting engulfed in a sea of beautiful dreams. Education in greener pastures has surpassed the quality norm way back. More often than not students get attracted to universities abroad by their sheer presentation of the supposed quality abroad. Foreign Universities have very well mastered the art of manipulating the minds of young people to garner admissions.

As shocking as it may seem the disparity in education fees for international and national students is huge in developed countries. For example - There is a certain course called Masters of Arts in Creative Writing, which is designed in a manner to help students with writing and poetic instincts to develop a better hand at their art. In UK without quoting the name, a university charges 11100 Pounds from an international student per year whereas it charges only half of that from resident students. Given that developed countries are developing extremely self-protective rules in case of immigration, it is a timely call to all those young people to measure up their pros and cons before they set upon a definite path. There have been several instances wherein students have finished their courses with utmost satisfaction but have not garnered jobs for themselves in foreign countries and thus they have had to come back to their homelands. And if they have loans, they have had to work over-time to pay that off because usually interest rates on education loans are extremely high. Also the education visa finishes the moment you are done with your education; hence it is a highly risky move to go for higher studies abroad until and unless you have a strong will-power and determination.

The situation in our own backyard is not very comforting either. Students have limited their career choices to medicine and engineering, resulting in a lot of medical and engineering colleges mushrooming all over the country in the past few years. This has resulted in the degradation of the quality of the education imparted in such streams. Even reputed names in such fields are charging exorbitant prices and imparting lower quality education and experience in return. Students have been engineered to make choices pertaining to their safe future which is quite a wrong perception because these things would hardly matter in the long run.

But think about it: When you are old, wise and grey, you will sit and ponder about the ‘ifs and buts’ of not having followed your passion. What if I had kept strumming the guitar for my band? What if I had kept writing poetry devoid of the concern of the real world? Life becomes a lot of what ifs if we don’t take a positive outlook towards our passion. But all this falls on deaf ears of ambitious parents. People laud movies like 3 Idiots, Wake Up Sid, Udaan and Taare Zameen Par on the very same subject but yet they fail to learn from the same problem.

Education is a perennial requirement which is probably why people in need of education will always be exploited by those offering services. Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest has become too apt a description for this industry.