espite its once famed commitment to the ideal of free, universal education for all, researchers say that the higher education sector in Kerala, dominated by self-financing institutions, marches on its belly, driven by the aspirants’ ability to pay, expanding inequity and education exclusion.
“Education exclusion, instead of declining has increased to an unmanageable scale,” says a social class analysis ‘Education Exclusion in the Professional Self-Financing Sector in Kerala’ by the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, Cochin University of Science and Technology.
Though self-financing sector in professional education had a “humble beginning,” it has been “shaped and reshaped as an industrial sub-sector” to make profit as industrial barons chose it as another investment opportunity.
A kind of dualism
The study also found “a kind of dualism” in which quality education is available only to the rich “in the form of public English-medium system.” D. Rajasenan, who led the study, said that the number of Scheduled Tribe students who sought admissions to self-financing institutions formed less than three per cent of the total admissions.
The percentage of Scheduled Caste students stood between seven and eight per cent. Their combined pass percentage stood between six and seven.
The key reason for this, he said, was the private cost on education, which means what the students have to pay for expenses other than tuition. Co-curricular and extra-curricular activities are often prohibitively priced for students from humble economic backgrounds.
While the caste-based reservation system has not helped improve the situation, even the universities, and government engineering and medical colleges have turned out to be centres of education exclusion because of the “hidden costs”.
Most of the data for the study were collected by a survey of 900 students comprising 450 engineering students, 225 students of medicine. and 225 management students in Thrissur, Ernakulam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, and Palakkad districts.
The three streams of studies were chosen because they are the “axes around which higher demand, status and earning rotate,” the study said.
Industrial barons have chosen the sector as another investment opportunity
