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One, the position of the bank – a financial institution and not a charity or a NGO. I know this well because my father is a bank manager while my uncles, grand father, a few of our family friends work in Banks too, so I pretty much know the situation in most cases. Every bank manager who has an authority to sanction loans, also has a limit he can sanction as well as a responsibility to recover the loan. In case of an educational loan, in cases where the candidate gets no employment within a year and cannot repay the loan, he can apply to the bank citing reasons and he will be given an extension. In spite of this, there are many people who neither respond nor repay the loan. I know of numerous times where appa has spent time tracking those people and other times where he has had to go to court for such cases. This gets worse in rural areas. I was completely surprised when I visited appa in one of the rural areas he was working in…I was treated like a queen! Appa had all kinds of visitors and everyone used to be ever ready to satisfy every whim of his! Appa explained to me later that he is seen as the source of income/ready cash (in the form of the loan sanctioning authority) in such areas and many people take it for granted that the Bank is responsible for giving loans without realizing that it’s a loan and they should pay it back. Gold loans fall into that category where people borrow money mostly before a wedding to buy gold and then neither pay the interest nor the loan itself. Obviously not everyone does it on purpose; they simply cannot afford to pay it back. In such cases, Appa has helped many people but there is a limit because he is a salaried employee and not the bank owner. If he does not meet the targets, his job (and in turn his family) would be in trouble.
The second and the most baffling issue to me w.r.t educational loans is ‘Why should education be so expensive?’ and ‘Why is no one discussing this as an issue?’. When I studied engineering, there were I think less than a 100 engineering colleges in Tamilnadu, now there are probably twice that number. It is a known fact that more than half of them are good for nothing colleges with their old students as lecturers, no lab facilities, no campus interviews and absolutely nothing except a building and an affiliation to the Anna University. Why are these colleges allowed to charge so much when institutions like IIT, Anna University charge 10% of that ?! Yes, they are funded by the Govt. while the others are private – understood. But why should people be willing to pay lakhs of rupees to get a namesake engineering degree from one of these colleges ?! It has been statistically established by many companies in India that the employability of graduate engineers is extremely poor and they have to invest a sizeable portion in training these people for the job. When this is the case anyway, why is the Govt. granting permission for opening more colleges ? Why are many universities getting the ‘autonomous’ status where they can charge what they want with no one questioning them? Why are more and more people falling for it ? Why is a B.Sc/M.Sc degree not enough ?
These are the topics that Neeya Naana should be discussing. They should invite Govt. officials and discuss on making education affordable instead of encouraging banks to provide more and more loans. How many people can afford to repay the loan when they probably have a huge family to support? But these TV channels are only capable of echoing their political parties’ thoughts and are completely spineless when it comes to discussing and providing resolutions in issues that really affect the society. I recently heard of one of the neeya nana topics – Penngal thali anivadhu avasiyama !!! Naatuku romba mukiyam !!!! I also heard that one of the ladies actually removed her thali and gave it to the host and was appreciated for being ‘bold’….muttika oru sevuru poradhu !! All these topics would only disrupt communal harmony and induce unnecessary emotions in different groups of people whose sentiments are hurt by these arguments and actions.
I am digressing….coming back to the topic, I have seen numerous such examples where people come to me for tips or advice and in many cases, I have discouraged them from joining one of these useless private engg. colleges and asked them to instead get a better B.Sc/M.Sc degree from a much better/cheaper college. It is sad that I did not realize this when I did my engineering but to be fair, I did learn something at college and I was able to repay my educational loan without much ado.
I originally intended to do my masters in the US but when I realized that the possibility of aid was very slim because of the sept 11 attacks that had happened when I applied, I decided to let go of that since there was no way I could have afforded it. I did my masters in Germany and I paid a semester fee of 120 euro!! When good education can come at such a price, I fail to understand why education is becoming more and more unreachable for people in India when on the other side organizations are discussing literacy campaigns…..like many say, India is indeed a mysterious land !
hope you did not see the program. true many programmes are like that thali affair. but some are really good.
ReplyDeletein this programme the plight of the girl belongs to a category which does not come under anything you have talked about.
the statistical analysis of loans for education and for big business deals threw better light on the individual's (managers')mental make up too!
@dharumi
ReplyDelete"in this programme the plight of the girl belongs to a category which does not come under anything you have talked about."
Puriyala...you mean that while women have thali, men really have 'nothing' to show they are married ?
I never watch neeya naana because most topics I have seen so far (in ads) are either religious (like kula deivam pujai venduma ?) or controversial. Probably there are a few good ones now and then....if so, will check it out.
Hi, its a good topic of edu being exp in india. it is bound to be exp coz of various factors like cost of the land, facilities and infrastructures (ofcourse in good/decent univ, the profs & lecturers jump regularly for higher salary, and of course profit (as most of the private univ are opened for this reason)
ReplyDeleteIf a student is very well qualified then he can get into a good univ (if not top univ)thru anna univ counselling for lesser fee (half of the fee of management quota). So here govt is doing something for the students (ofcourse quota on caste system is a different issue, may be you can write one blog on this :))
Regarding under rated colleges, on one side: gen students who get less marks in 12th or ppl with no knowledge abt univs opt these univ. So in the first case why should govt do something for these ppl who are not intereseted and in latter case govt should provide infos to ppl frm rural side. But ya on other side these colleges are not for edu purpose but only for business purposes.
Regarding fee in germany, even in germany many univ have started charging high amt of fee, upto 4000€(approx) per semester for few courses, like the one i m doing (Production engg at RWTH Aachen). Many indians come to this univ and are ready to pay this much of fee for good and better edu, as RWTH is one of the best univ in germany (even though i dont feel that these course are worth for this much money) and most of them take bank loan for the same.
So i would say in many cases lakhmi irundha dan saraswathi but not in all cases (depending on hardwork and luck).
@Kamal
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree with most of what you said, there is an important aspect that is always forgotten - why should everyone become an engineer ? It is that desire that serves as a fuel for most of these useless private engg. colleges. Even children themselves might be interested in other branches and could be forced by parents to take it up however expensive it is. This should change. The basic purpose of education should change.
When you talk about marks w.r.t XII std, its killing so many youngsters, they are forced to go to tuitions and spend sleepless nights and at the end of it most of them learn nothing (same case in engg - hence the unemployability) and simply scoring marks by mugging up facts should not be the yard scale in education.
Do you know how bad the Indian students in the first batch of prodn engg at RWTH were ? There was hardly one student who passed all his exams at the first go. Many took more than 4 yrs to finish their masters. This was one of the major reasons for RWTH introducing high sem fees, to make students finish in 4-5 semesters.
Well said, its a good debatable topic :)
ReplyDeleteI didnt knew abt the students of first batch of RWTH. When asked the univ ppl, they said that this fee is to pay the Phd students who take classes and conduct exams for you, as doing it in english is a pain for them and they question "why should we do for free or for same amt as doing in german?" so to pay them they charge from us. It is a valid point, but unfortunately they dont even give most of the scripts in proper english (i can find the verb at second and last position :)). Btw even many germans (frm RWTH) take minimum 3yrs-3.5yrs to finish their hauptdiplom (equivalent to masters) so no doubt with new exam structure, international people may take same or more time. Of course Another main reason to finish it later is the same lakshmi :)
So everything starts and ends with Lakshmi... (i recollect the song "na biwi na baccha, na baap bada na maiya, the whole thing is that, ke bhaiya sabse bada rupaiya") :)
@Kamal
ReplyDeleteActually there is another aspect that I failed to elaborate on - Basic education, finishing XII (like Abitur in Germany)...that should atleast be affordable or free. True, we have Govt. schools, but are they any good ? My friend's son is in Pre-KG and she spent 1 lakh for him this year...can you believe it ??
ya i knew abt the fee for pre-kg. my bros, sis n frnds told me. There is one school in chennai (i think its shiksha), where the parents should apply for admission, before the delivery of the child. These are heights! and the sad part is even people do what the school says.. i hope it improves in future with the help of people and govt...
ReplyDelete