IIT and IIM Reservations

The HRD Minister has stirred a hornet's nest by announcing OBC reservations in the IITs, IIMs, NITs and all other professional educational institutions. As expected editorials across the media spectrum have advised restraint. Merit should not be sacrificed most seem to suggest. On the other hand politicians hail the move and say that it should have been done 20 years earlier as it is the law and we must all abide by it.So what is the issue.

Most Professional educational institutions are funded by the tax payer's money and there is merit in channelizing these funds towards creating a more egalitarian society. Government institutions fulfill that obligation. At the same time, Privately funded professional educational institutions are also required to ensure a similar balance in the student demographics. The main difference being that the students bear a lower proportion of cost of education in the Government colleges. So what is the whole commotion about?

The lower fees in the government colleges makes them more attractive and therefore admissions are extremely competitive. Thus only the brightest students make it past the enterance tests. This gets reflected several years later during the final years of the undergraduate courses when campus placements take place. Companies eager to mop up talent prefer the Government institutes to Private colleges by a huge margin, though it can be argued that the quality of education provided may actually be better in the private colleges, as the faculty is much more accountable, just as the private sector works much harder than the public sector.What then are the real issues?

As the proportion of reserved seats in Government colleges increases, some of the talent would be constrained to take admissions in the private institutes and the placement quality would correspondingly improve in the latter. The accountability in Government colleges would take a further slide as entitlement mentality would get further reinforced and quality of education would slide further reinforcing the reversal in placement trends.Why then are our opinion leaders from industry and education so agitated?

The reasons are not too far to seek. Private educational colleges are supposed to be funded by the fees that they collect. This fees is regulated by the Government. Simple math would prove that the fees collected is tiny when compared to the budgets of comparable Government colleges run on Tax payer's money. To maintain their standards and continuously improve their facilities, private colleges depend upon forced donations or capitation fees in exchange for which they compromise on the quality of the intake. This system of generating finances for legitimate operations is promptly dubbed as profiteering (and is not legal and therefore has stigma attached) and would therefore break down when a large proportion of seats are reserved and hence all the shadow boxing.

The solution stares us in the face. Private colleges must be allowed to charge fees according to the standards of their curriculum and placements which can be regulated by autonomous agencies. It is probably not in the interests of private colleges to charge unreasonable fees as they also need sufficient talent pools at the entry levels which they can then train and polish before unloading in the job markets. The models work reasonably well in the developed countries, where higher education is truly valued and largely funded through fees and sponsorships.

If society wants to bring more equality and make these colleges reserve seats, there is no issue except that the college revenue generation must not get affected. Thus reservation of seats must be accompanied by corresponding scholarships which definitely have to be funded by the society at large and not just by the general category students (it would become too steep for them) and would make it unaffordable to most deserving cases, which translates to funding by the government.In today's age of global beliefs and practices, it may not be too late before all this actually happens, but as we have always seen in the past, we take good decisions grudgingly and do not mind paying the price for lagging a few steps behind the rest of the world.