Educating Kerala

The fact is that Kerala has be-en slipping behind her sisters in the South for decades, its literacy statistics masking the truth. Achieving universal literacy give or take a few percentage points says nothing about the quality of education. I have met graduates flaunting degrees in history who lack any sense of perspective and students of English who are hard put to rub together two coherent sentences. If anything, Bihar is actually better off since Bihari parents strain to send their wards off to colleges in Delhi, where their Keralite counterparts are content to hope for the best and put their children into the same old local colleges.

A ray of hope has appeared in the form of an argument over college fees. It will, I hope, become the thin end of a wedge that opens up a larger debate on the value, in every sense of the word, of education.

Very briefly, the government is squabbling with the management of the scores of private institutions that opened in the last three years. The argument is about the fees that these are permitted to charge. The Congress-led United Democratic Front and the Marxist-dominated Left Democratic Front are in broad agreement that the charges should be lower. When political foes agree, watch out!

It says something of the dismal environment in Kerala that the various administrators have taken their stand on the ground that this violates 8216;minority rights8217; the Christian community runs most such institutions. I feel that they are taking the correct position but for all the wrong reasons. Why isn8217;t anyone arguing that a decent education costs money?

It is a fallacy that the 8220;best things in life are free8221;. If you have to pay up to ensure reasonably clean air and water, you should be prepared to open your wallet for your child8217;s education. And that is doubly true when it comes to higher levels of schooling, a principle implicitly accepted even in the Communist Never-Never Land of the now-vanished USSR. The Kremlin permitted Soviet Jews to leave for Israel only if they paid the state what it had spent on them.

Primary education in the United States may be subsidised but that is certainly not true of the universities. The student is expected to shell out for what he gets, the difference being that he can get a loan at a reasonable rate of interest. And all that emphasis on dollars and cents is one reason why American universities 8212; if not the junior and high schools 8212; remain ahead of the pack.

Good professors get better salaries and better research facilities in the United States than anywhere else. That is why keeping their stars has become a problem even for the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who find their best teachers being lured away. But those facilities cost money. And the costs are borne by students; the better the university, the higher the fees. And doesn8217;t the Government of India itself provide educational loans up to Rs 7.5 lakh for talented students?

That is just as true of India. Or else why do students flock to, say, an Indian Institute of Management when they could earn an MBA on the cheap elsewhere? Outraged howls greeted T.M.A. Pai8217;s decision to found a medical college in Manipal, where students would have to pay their full fees. Manipal is a deemed university, but its reputation 8212; rated Number One in one survey 8212; stands so high that students admitted there can always get a loan.

There is no shortage of 8216;recognised8217; universities in India whose degrees aren8217;t worth murdering trees to print them. But there are also institutions on the edges of the UGC8217;s authority 8212; the IIMs, the Manipals, the ISBs Hyderabad 8212; whose certificates command respect even in the European Union and the United States.

Everyone in Kerala needs to get rid of a few fantasies. First, higher education is not the birthright of every student, and building colleges by the score so that everyone gets to add a 8216;BA8217; or whatever to their name only diminishes the value of that award. Second, higher education is not cheap and it is not the duty of the state to subsidise it.

I have three suggestions. To the politicians: don8217;t introduce legislation that will make higher education sub-standard by mandate. To the administrators: don8217;t introduce the religious motif into the debate. To the students: don8217;t agitate for lower fees today, or be prepared for lower salaries tomorrow.

The debate in Kerala has started on a bad note by dragging in 8216;minority rights8217;, but at least it has forced Keralites to focus on the issue of higher education. My home state blazed a path for India by demonstrating that universal literacy was an achievable goal; it would be a wonderful encore if Kerala made quality rather than quantity the focus of higher education.