Irony of education in India-perceptions!

Note- I work with BYJU’S, love my work and hence would obviously be biased towards it. It has been more than a year for me in the education sector. I have realised that there is nothing idealistic when it comes to providing education in any way. The general mentality of the crowd prohibits reasonable thinking. Here are some of the ironies I came across-

Price- Aren’t we obsessed with it???

• When it comes to JEE coaching, the price needs to be optimised rather than cheap. People believe that quality coaching can never be cheap. Hence a 40-50k coaching is deemed worse than a 1-1.5 lakh package.
• When it comes to CAT, people just choose the cheapest option irrespective of the quality.
• School products- somehow a parent is always under the impression that the only money to be spent on education besides school, should start only after 10^th

Quality- As long as history proves right!!

• JEE quality is just based on the number of students that went to IIT from a particular coaching. What people rarely learn is that-
  • Any coaching buys the name of the students who have performed well; ‘we pay you money to use your name’. Moreover, anyone who buys even the study material from a coaching becomes a part of their curriculum.
  • Also all toppers of mock tests from various institutes get a similar deals- money, free study material etc. so they can use their names. Hence, you’d see JEE rank 1 being claimed by 2-3 coaching institutes.
  • Just having a lot of people doesn’t reflect the effectiveness of the course. If you have thousands of students under you, some are bound to do well.
  • Just because an institute has a difficult entrance, doesn’t mean they are good. They take good students and hence have better results. Why do you think BTech engineers from IIT are given way more attention than MTech?
• CAT Coaching quality is generally based on how much the coaching provides. Students want infinite question banks, lectures, mocks etc. Why spend 500 hours studying when the preparation is only 150 hours? Why waste time on studying every topic differently when they can easily be merged? One of the major issue a student has when it comes to Tablet mode of learning is that they cannot study without a classroom as they are not big enough to manage without a schedule 😐

Philanthropy-

I have never understood why people believe that taking money for educating people is wrong? Take BYJU’S for example. We have a team of over a 200 people including content writers, artists, video and sound editors and a hugeass technical team. Why is it not fair to ask money (which btw is lesser than the competition) for what we create by working our asses off all day? Ratan Tata is a respectable man who was bothered by the fact that families commute on two wheelers. He didn’t go out giving free cars; instead he created a team good enough so they can bring the Nano! Yes, it’s probably farfetched but we are working towards an ultimate goal of bringing quality education to everyone. It shall take time but we shall optimise it as well.

Technology-

This is the most hilarious part I presume. I was going through some reviews we got on our app and people have such insane notions when it comes to education-

• ‘An app that teaches you the classroom concepts in a much better animated way, is not worth 6k/year!!! Paying 1 lakh to a private tutor is perfectly normal.’
• ‘School-paid by dad, tuition-paid by dad, coaching-paid by dad, coaching on a tablet- price should be cheap enough so students can buy it from their pocket money!!!’ Hey how do you think a company runs? To quote joker, never do something you are good at, for free.
• ‘I know I shall never ask a doubt in the class, but I want a teacher standing in front of me. I don’t care if you provide a personal mentor, tablet doesn’t cut it!’
• ‘How can you tell me I can prepare on my own. You tell me what I should do with my life. I need you to force me to study.’
• The best- ‘If you have recorded the videos, give it for free on YouTube as it’s immoral to possess video lectures and not give it for free.’

It is sad to realise that a decision as crucial as education is taken keeping in mind such trivial facts.

Oh! BTW we just had a TV ad launched. Check it out; it’s always good to see your company on TV 😛