TN Government is planning to
seek a review of the recent Supreme Court order abolishing the state quota set aside in the private, unaided and aided-minority professional colleges.
Amit Varma of
India Uncut has observed
here that the above act by TN government is on par with parents scaring toddlers with threats of authority and terror.
I have been reading Amit's writing for some time now and have agreed, respected and enjoyed most of his thoughts. In spite of that and even though I am against unwanted government regulation, I disagree with Amit's thoughts on this.
Having studied in such a college and have had to gone through the grind from close quarters, I can say with confidence that this government quota has worked in providing education to more deserving students on merit more than any other single factor in professional education.
If my memory serves me right, each private college needs to set 50% of the available seats for state quota. The remaining 50% can be filled up by the college management. I might be wrong on the percentages, but do bear with me.
The 50% of state quota is filled by the DOTE (note sure what it is called now, but it stood for Directorate of Technical Education) department of the state governments. The process of selection followed is as per the student's aggregate marks in their 12th and TNPCEE exam.
The only qualification of the other 50% seats filled under management quota by the college is to have obtained 50% -60% percentage in the 12th examination. Yes, there would be college conducted entrance exam which serves just as a procedure whose outcome has o bearing. The only other qualification is for the parents to afford the management fee, rightly called as capitation fee.
What this arrangement did is provide a platform for the deserving students to even have the opportunity to go through a professional education. Mind you, the fee structure for this state quota students is in no way with concession. They pay the full tuition as well as the other *basic* (lab, food, transport, books, building, etc,) that the management determines. And also mind you that some of these fees are compulsory as well. For example, there are colleges where it is mandatory to pay food and transport fee. You are not allowed to bring own food or use other personal / public transport. In most cases, the yearly fees that these students pay are almost equal to that those management quota students pay. Currently there are 120+ engineering colleges in TN. What this provides is nothing but an opportunity for more deserving students to even contemplate studying a professional course.
Now, I am not against management quota. Well, why would I be, I joined a professional course under management quota. And yes, I have seen as much students who joined under management quota succeed in life as much as students who joined under state quota.
But I believe that it is important to have that possibility for an equal number of deserving students to join professional courses. When the percentage of non-deserving students doing professional course keeps increasing over a period of time, I would suspect that there would be a decline of the combined intellectual quality of the professional course students.
*Regulation* might be a improper word to use. But for lack of any other word, controlled regulation does work in some aspects. I believe education is one such aspect of life where some amount of regulation is required. Open markets like US do have regulatory bodies. Be it for education, FDA, etc. Not that this is something to be aped just because it is present in US.
An example where non-regulation or private-regulation alone leads to decline that I can site is the US health insurance industry. Not sure if this industry is regulated. But the way it operates, the costs just keeps growing. Even though growing costs is common in other aspects, talking to an industry insider will tell you how messy and self-inflicting the system is.
An example (ok, purists will definitely differ with me) where some amount of regulation has helped growth in the recent years is mobile and telephone industry in India. Yes, there are issues, but overall it has brought about positives.
I totally agree that comparing private professional colleges with *market forces* is way off. Any private enterprise will prosper with the proper value proposition that meets a requirement of a consumer who can afford it. A private professional college in the current setup with its management quota alone will just enable undeserving consumer who can afford with a requirement and serve that requirement. It will not meet the requirement of a section of consumers who actually have the requirement and more importantly, deserve it.
I wish that the Supreme Court order is reviewed and the state quota stays. I wish that the politicians of TN work on this together as they are doing now.
