Caste, location, economic status and an English-language education can determine whether a student in India will end up in an engineering college, according to a study by Anirudh Krishna at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.
Analysing the results of a questionnaire-based survey of 876 students across engineering colleges of varying quality across the country, the author finds that the more rural one is, the lower are his/her chances of gaining admission into an engineering college. The lack of a knowledge of English severely reduces the chance of admission to all but the lowest tier of colleges. A combination of a rural background with a Scheduled Caste (SC) / Scheduled Tribe (ST) handicap virtually eliminated these chances.
India produces more than 600,000 engineering graduates annually. Though the engineering education system itself is faulty with the majority of graduates unemployable, the opportunity for admission to these ‘gateway institutions’ is the key to upward social mobility. The study conducted with the support of Aspiring Minds, a national employment agency, ranks 6 engineering colleges based on various factors such as the educational qualifications of their faculty and the employability of their graduates. These rankings are combined with data on the backgrounds of the individual students to identify the key factors that drive the rural-urban divide in engineering college admissions in the country. The students were asked to provide information on several parameters such as their caste, the degree of ‘rural-ness’ of their upbringing, their medium of education, their parents’ level of education and economic status, and the available sources of information and advice.
The worst possible combination for a child was to be poor and belong to an ST – the surveyed students did not include anyone that was poor and an ST. Affirmative action (reservation of seats) for SC/ STs in public engineering colleges is high but it is clearly not doing enough in this regard. Just as bad, was to be poor and from a rural background with agriculturist parents. An in-depth analysis of these issues also reveals the lack of information and advice on pathways to opportunity as hindering the mobility of the rural poor towards an engineering education. Among those who made it into an engineering college against the odds the chance help of a motivated/ rich relative, teacher or friend was, in almost all cases, the determining factor.
The lack of penetration of English in rural schools – arguably closely related to the often abysmal quality of these schools was another key determining factor. 70 - 80% of the students in the Tier 1 colleges had their secondary education in English while for the Tier 6 colleges this figure was less than 50%. The merits of an English-medium education are a debated topic in India. However the fact remains that the structure of higher ‘gateway’ education in India today necessitates a working knowledge of English.
Yet, it is not all gloomy. The study showed positive trends in social mobility for women and SC’s. Stories of individuals who made it against the odds also offer hope and more importantly, indicators of what sort of action is needed to address this divide. For instance the study describes the case of a poor girl in Delhi who gained admission into an engineering college thanks to directed effort and funding by the Delhi state government towards a high-quality school for the under-privileged.
There are bright minds out there in India’s villages waiting to be educated. Tragically, many of these children may spend their lifetimes completely unaware of the opportunities that exist and how these may be grasped. Rural and under-privileged families in India need to be provided with an English education, and with information, counselling and role models that encourage and instruct them about the opportunities available to them. Admittedly, this study only looks at engineering colleges and does not consider other disciplines. Also, differences between states on these indicators are not investigated here. Nevertheless, this is an important and revealing facet of the rural-urban divide in the country: it is disheartening for the world’s largest democracy to leave the education of its most deprived to chance. India desperately needs more directed, coordinated efforts to address the pressing issue of social immobility and injustice in higher education.
No comments:
Post a Comment