Private Universities - Naked Truth

Shards Of A Breaking Dream-Glass Of A Freshly Admitted University Student

“Yes, I had also, like many others here, come here with BIG dreams and aims. And bluntly speaking, I’m losing the passion and love for the field I used to admire before, and still do up to a certain extent. “

This is what a newly admitted private university student said when asked about his feelings for his university as a fresher.

“My subject teachers might want to brush up their English a bit, and then maybe come and teach us how to write reports or articles in English.”

“Or maybe they should go back home and Google the full form of T.R.P. and then try and teach us about Television and Radio, instead of beating around the bush when faced with a few questions from the students (clearly showing their lack of knowledge of the most basic points of their respective subjects)”, agitation spilled out of another student.

For a student capable of learning much more than what is served here, this environment gets suffocating and frustrating. It’s a blatant means of suppressing or killing a budding Journalist’s pen, or a ready-to-be-groomed surgeon’s scalpel.

‘Nurturing’ someone’s talent is a little more than making them run in corridors to complete registration formalities every other day, even months after the commencement of the term and giving them a raw taste of how the government offices in India might work.

It’s a place where students have to worry more about getting their admit cards generated for the upcoming examinations instead of preparing for the same. It’s a place where a kind suggestion to some teacher is rudeness of the student; expression of a problem regarding the system in the college only means challenging the authorities; expecting some improvement in faculty is like asking for the University President’s private bank account number and pin.

After paying college fees in hundreds of thousands of rupees, is it too much to ask for at least normal education that every child deserves after being promisedby the university? A middle class child attends a private university course in India only with guilt loaded in his heart. His parents can barely afford the high fee, and over that his other expenses mount to peaks. He bears the worst guilt anyone can imagine in a student’s life, and in return, he is expected to stay shut and waste one month of studies in a sports event which completely lacks enthusiasm in the organisers. A mere formality of a sports event, ends with a big bash worth a few crores, and that’s all you get in the name of ‘quality education’. People with big money very conveniently build a 100 acre, technologically advanced, campus for students to ‘study’. By studies, they mean give-us-money-and-we-are-sold.

Blatant corruption!

These universities, in my view, are a little too far from blending modernity with tradition. They need to blend our time and money with education first.