05-10-2016, 02:19 PM
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Abstract:
Education in India has been a great challenge even though the Government of India has been providing many incentives to benefit the weaker class of the society to help their children get a better standard of education. Worse, many of them do not pursue a higher education owing to their family situations, their inability to pay for higher education and are opting to work to support their families instead. To help with this the government of Andhra Pradesh introduced the Fee Reimbursement scheme in 2008 through which the tuition fee of students whose parent’s annual income is less than 2 lakhs is reimbursed. In this paper we are going to study how this scheme affected the education levels in Andhra Pradesh and to which extent it had an impact at the National Level. This pilot study included the collection of secondary data on the literacy levels in Andhra Pradesh before and after the introduction of the scheme followed by hypothesis testing on the collected data to check the precision of our hypothesis. The results of the hypothesis showed that the scheme did have quite an impact on not only in the state level but at the national level as well. We conclude with suggestions on how to implement this national wide so that many more people can benefit from this scheme.
Introduction:
Education has become one of the greatest challenges in any developing country and it has influenced many policy makers and the government to take steps in reforming the educational structure. The government of India has gone to great length in ensuring that all classes of people get the same standards of education by providing incentives to weaker class people to motivate them to pursue studies even after their higher secondary education. One such scheme is the Fee Reimbursement scheme introduced by Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy in 2008 to help the weaker class in Andhra Pradesh to get higher standard of education and to overcome the fee barrier by reimbursing the tuition fee of students whose parents annual income is less than 2 lakhs. This scheme was carried on to Telangana also after it’s separation from Andhra Pradesh. Though this scheme was a success, this scheme had its ups and downs. This scheme was more concentrated on engineering, MBA, MCA etc. rather than on all the disciplines of higher education. For example, Engineers are reimbursed with Rs. 52,000 where as diploma students are only reimbursed for Rs. 10,000.
This lead to a negative impact on educational system with increase in unemployment rates on a larger scale due to decrease in quality and skills of graduates by several fold as the number of graduate’s increased many folds in the last decade. This increase in number of graduates tells us that the professional skills in graduates are lower. This is substantiated by the quote from Times of India saying that, “Over 80% of graduates in India are unemployable by corporates”.
Another scenario is that people may be misled by the free education offered by the government and this may lead to a greater confusion in choosing the career path for many upcoming graduates. People may be tempted to go for a specialization that they may not be interested in just for the sake of completing a degree and lose sight of their actual aspirations. For example, Rochelle’s aspiration is in painting and also has a natural gift for painting and wants to do her B.F.A (painting). But the higher cost of education prevents her from joining the top most university in Andhra Pradesh in painting like Potti Sreeramulu Telugu university, Hyderabad. Then she joins engineering owing to the financial help provided by the government of Andhra Pradesh and she gives up her dream on account of inability to meet her financial obligations and tune her mind towards a different stream where there are more likely chance she would be inefficient.
Finally, the motto of government to provide a free technical education would be taking a negative turn and spoil the career of several youths who were walking unemployed on the roads in search of IT jobs at Ameerpet, Hyderabad. Hyderabad has become the IT HUB of the states [AP/Telangana]. The UGs or PGs are surely giving a try to the IT industry in the thirst of a job. Few of them who get selected feel lucky and finally end up in working in an irrelevant field of their study. They have to face the hurdles and bear with the pain of not being able to pursue their dreams. For the initial mistake of joining an irrelevant industry, they would be penalized throughout the life. They are many employees in current IT sector those who regret their existence in the industry and perform poorly when compared with other colleagues.
So, we have seen how a government policy intended for the good of a state can turn out to be a major problem in itself. Instead if the government would be willing to focus on the important aspects of society and concentrate on areas such as Waste Management, developing more and more skilled people specific to sectors like agriculture, manufacturing etc. and also tobring out the talents in every individual, it would be of major help and also an important phase the development of society.
Due to recent unemployment talents in the state have started to more towards the US, UK, Australia etc. in search of jobs and a better standards of living. This has caused a major Brain Drain in the talent pool of the state. What are we trying to project is that the Education ministry should have the optimum number of students using the supply and demand per every discipline. The industry’s demand for the specific skillset needs to be identified clearly and the decision of giving “subsidy boons” should be taken appropriately. If the subsidy on any sector is provided at an optimum level, the upcoming graduates would also not face any trouble of becoming a forced labor and the productivity of the nation would be increased eventually.
Literature Review:
India is one of the fastest developing nations in the world and one of the greatest challenges in India right now is the quality of education and lack of skilled labor in India. This is because of the unstructured nature of educational system in India right now and another reason is that there is a common belief that, “you would be better off doing engineering than other disciplines”. Another important fact is that the Indian Government has been too concentrated on increasing the Enrollment rate, providing equal education for all that it missed the important point of improving the level of quality and skills in the country. This is in accordance to the UGC research work done for the 11th plan – Emerging Issues in Higher Education – Approach and Strategy in 11th Plan.
Globalization has had its impact on sectors like IT, agriculture etc. in the 20th century and has had mixed dimensional effects in the start of the 21st century. With the increase in Globalization and liberalization, Government of India is concentrating more on infrastructure and less on the Education and hence the burden of education is falling on the private sector where the motive is Profit centered and not Skill development centered according to review by PALLAVI SETH & VIVEK BHATT in the International Journal of Research in Business Management, Jan,2014. Globalization has opened up the borders for higher education, implying on reforming the educational system in India to meet the global standards. Nowadays it comparatively easy to pursue higher education outside India due to globalization and India is currently experiencing a brain drain of its talents owing to the unstructured educational system in India and higher rate of unemployment according to Dr. IRFAN INAMDAR and Dr. Mithilesh Kumar Singh based on their research work in Challenges of Globalization on Indian Higher Education and Impact Of Globalization On Higher Education In India.
Dr. MonalisaBal, (2014) says that the Make in India is going to be a strategic movement where in industries are encouraged to produce and consume products made in India. It clearly states the future availability of jobs in the production sector and it is a message to Educational Institutions Nationwide to improve the quality of education and produce more Skilled work force in India to meet the growing job market in the future. It also suggests improving the quality of R&D work done, paper published and overall skill set of the nation.
Inspection over A.P. colleges across few years:
Fee reimbursement scheme
FEE REIMBURSEMENT SCHEME is a student education sponsorship Program designed for the allocation of weaker sections of people by government of Andhra Pradesh. It was started in 2008 during the tenure of Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy. Government’s expenditure increased from 2000 crores in 2008-09 to 500 crores in 2012-13. This scheme supports professional courses like Engineering, MBA, MCA, B Ed etc. The Fees for students pursuing B Com, BSc or BBA included only Rs 10000 per year where as the amount was 52000 Rs per year in case of Engineering. This created a lot of hope and interest in the weaker sections of the society who cannot afford otherwise. This not only deviated the number of students pursuing non-engineering background to shift from their interests to the field of Engineering. This factor is like a burning factor leading to increase in number of engineering colleges. Government of Andhra Pradesh had no restriction in granting the permission to establish new engineering colleges. Over-all the number of non engineering colleges almost remained constant but due to this scheme the number of engineering colleges has increased vastly. 34 undergraduate colleges have started in the year of 2012-2013. On one side of the coin the number of professional graduates have increased where as the field of B Com , B Sc or BBA is almost negligible when it comes to the state of Andhra Pradesh. This further hindered any development in the field of Arts. The impression has come to such an extent that the one who takes engineering is more intelligent and is treated differently when compared to non engineering graduates other than doctors. When it comes to the field of engineering and Medicine, the number of engineers have increased due to the mind-set of the people that if you become an engineer your time taken to feed family by earning money will be more frequent than for a doctor. Since Government was paying the fees everyone started enrolling in to engineering courses irrespective of the fact that they are worthy or not. Because of this demand new colleges started to erupt just to encash this phenomenon with-out having the real intention to provide quality education. This factor enhanced the rise in number of engineering colleges which have no standards.
Hence anyone who has a little bit influence and construct one building and call it as Engineering college without meeting any standards of college. Slowly people realized that it is not really fruitful to study in any normal engineering college. Government initially gave permission to increase the number of colleges even though they are not meeting certain standards. The existing standards of the established colleges started to fall drastically. This concluded to the fact that engineering student found it very difficult to get a job. This increased the unemployment in Andhra Pradesh drastically. As Unemployment is the biggest worry at any point for Indian economy, this element has to be dealt with great caution. After few years Government realized that this will not make any good for the society and passed strict rules like “Engineering College should have basic infrastructure facilities and every faculty should have a master’s Degree“. Government had strict regulations from 2012 onwards not to increase any undergraduate college without providing any valid reasons. This caused a drastic decrease in number of undergraduate colleges from 2012 to 2013. The fees of the standard engineering colleges has been increased and then the quality has increased slowly in reputed organizations. As the colleges with par less quality decreased, good amount of colleges are existing in the market and the demand for engineering is again started to increase.
Consequences of the Fee reimburse Policy:
The unemployment rate might increase further on a larger scale. The Quality of higher education might reduce by several folds. The technical skills in an ideal engineer would be lower.
The professional skills of an ideal graduate would be lower
There are fair chances for the people to miss- led by the free education offered by the government.
This might also develop higher levels of confusion in career development of the upcoming graduates.
People might lose the focus in area that they fit to specialize. i.e. For Ex: Racheal is pursuing her 2nd year graduate degree from Nagarjuna University, Guntur. But the policy of government’s Fee Reimbursement might attract her to discontinue the course and join any technical degree like engineering, which is much expensive. This would surely waste her 2 years of academic hard work and tune her mind towards a different stream where there are more likely chance she would be inefficient.
Finally the motto of government to provide a free technical education would taking a negative turn and spoil the career of several youth who were walking unemployed on the roads in search of IT jobs at Ameerpet, Hyderabad. Hyderabad has become the IT HUB of the states [AP/Telangana]. The UGs or PGs are surely giving a try to the IT industry in the thirst of a job. Few of them who get selected feel lucky and finally end up in working in an irrelevant field of their study. They have to face the hurdles while feel like switching into their expertise field. For the initial mistake of joining and irrelevant industry, they would be penalized throughout the life. They are many employees in current IT sector those who regret their existence in the industry and perform poorly when compared with other colleagues.
Few will be taking up these crazy courses such ANALYTICS, HADOOP, CLOUD COMPUTING and other FAD courses to take up an instant employment. We could say that this exactly a timely pleasure for the industry to entertain a heavy staff till the boom of these FAD courses come to an end. As the world is getting updated day aby day, the employees were also treated like school kids to take up the subsequent courses otherwise put under the threat of firing. In fear of holding the employment for a while, they involve in updating themselves with the latest courses. All these pressures would eventually lead them to develop hatred towards the job.
So, we have seen how a government policy with a positive scope is in turn turning to be negative. Instead if the government identifies the most important sectors for the nation’s wellbeing such as, Agriculture, Waste management, Milk Dairy etc.… and turn the upcoming brains towards them, there would have been an inner army developed by now, to give a helping hand to the country which is only around 80 % self-sufficient for food.
That is one area the state governments had miserably failed and also encouraged an intensive brain drain from the state to US, UK, Australia and UAE in the recent past. The flow of students from the state had increased massively in the recent past as a resultant of the unemployment that they need to face here. What are we trying to project is that the Education ministry should have the optimum number of students using the supply and demand per every discipline. The industry’s demand for the specific skillset needs to identified clearly and the decision of giving “subsidy boons” should be taken appropriately. If the subsidy on any sector is provided at an optimum level, the upcoming graduates would also not face any trouble of becoming a forced labor and the productivity of the nation would be increased eventually.
Conclusion:
In 2008 Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy Proposed the Fee Reimbursement scheme to attract the attention of the masses as he needed a prominent image in the people's minds as he was campaigning for the 2009 elections. This scheme played a major role in his victory of the elections of 2009. On introduction of the scheme, the thirsty started applying for higher education and there was a quick shortage of colleges. As the demand for engineering was very high, many of the investorshad seen this as a business and started up a number of engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh.This had led to a flurry of new institutes opening up each year. Though this achieves its purpose of increasing the enrolment rate, it had a negative effect as the quality of education of Graduates in Andhra Pradesh reduced drastically by making them educated unemployable. Thus, the educated unemployment rate also reached a new high during the years of 2009-2013 in Andhra Pradesh to an extent where the rate of educated unemployment in Andhra Pradesh was more compared to rate of educated unemployment in the entire nation. It would have been good government’s part to show an opportunity to the upcoming graduates instead of making them forced labors.