The price of education

An education is among the most expensive things that come by today. For parents it is among the single largest investment in terms of money and time. Even for the students, a major chunk of life is spent studying all sorts of things from history and geography, to science and math, to language and the arts. The more expensive the education, the better the exposure for the student and the better are the prospects. The education system is also built upon a very large competitive network where only the ones who can reproduce information in exams prevail. In most cases, going to school or college is only so we can get a piece of paper which says we have.

The competition becomes really unfair when we consider that it requires a lot of money just to be able to compete. In a country like ours where we have so many competitive exams to choose from, the only people who really clear any of these exams are the ones who have access to top quality coaching. This is the same even with schools as almost all students who top their exams take coaching classes rigorously even for the senior secondary level.

The students who don’t really afford a private coaching class have literally no chances of getting into professional courses as most of them have entrance exams that too need some form of extra guidance for students to get through. Educators may argue here that a private coaching class is not necessary but the reality is far from it as it’s impossible to get through on your own. The rest of the crowd who do not want to take up a professional course and the ones who don’t get into the top colleges are left with few options. With zero counseling and literally zero attention given to students’ dreams, we force our students to get into courses just because these courses exist. If we take up a survey of people who went to college and took up a particular course just because they had to, the numbers will be significant.

An education is among the most lucrative businesses in the world today. Buying your way through the best colleges and schools requires a considerable amount of money. Educators have also brought it on themselves to make sure that they have different classifications of students. It does make sense to an extent but when the money aspect of it comes into play, things become very different. Education is available only to the ones who can afford it, basic education that is free is really not worth pursuing as most students drop out and are on the streets by the time they are in their teens. The poorer sections of society still do not see much of college education as it is simply out of reach for them. People may talk about individual ability and say that students from poor families also get through to the top level on scholarships but the miniscule percentages of the ones who do get through are negligible. Today education is all about the money, individual ability leads to nothing if it’s not backed up by proper financial resources. In conclusion, education currently is about money and not the students’ aptitude.