Thread by @AnilKSood5

#EducationPolicy
Thread
@khilwani_karan @andymukherjee70 @sritara @kikumbhar
Ideally, I would support it with research data. But the issues are well known.
1. Our public and private education system is not effective in building capability among our young...

..and the public and private sector employers don’t want to invest in people (reflected in the proportion of contract workers at various levels)...

2. At the same time, we are running a parallel system of coaching classes and training institutes where the family spending on education and training ends up being way beyond their means, resulting in education-driven indebtedness growing by the day.

3. A news article saying that IIM Ahmedabad (my alma mater) has written to Flipkart mentioning the following:
economictimes.indiatimes.com/jobs/iim-a-ask…

4. “The IIM email pointed out that students need to repay loans and had turned away "multiple opportunities that the campus had to offer", adding that most students had chosen Flipkart over other well-reputed recruiters because of the strength of its brand.”

5. If the delay of six months for an IIM student can cause hardship, what would it do to someone who has taken a loan for low-end skills?

6. IIMA may be posturing or making a genuine effort to help its students, but how many other institutes in the country will have the courage to write to a potential employer?

7. The biggest beneficiaries have been the training institutes, education firms and not-for profits trusts and societies (who rake in thousands of crores of cash surplus every year). The employers still talk about not finding employable staff.

8. At the same time, the labour laws are being rewritten to provide higher flexibility to employers, resulting in the bargaining power being completely taken away from the employees.

9. The US is trying to reform their education as well as the employment system and we are blindly aping the system that they are trying to reform. At the same time, the socio-cultural values that an average US citizen holds are very different from the ones every Indian holds.

10. It is fine to borrow and consume in the US, but it is not seen as something sensible in most situations in India. We still have policies that are forcing people to borrow, consume and invest.

11.The narrative sold to people is that you borrow money to get educated and skilled as education & skill will take you really far. But you are still no good, a& I therefore cannot pay you well. I have a right to fire you as I need flexibility to deal with economic uncertainty...

12. ...In any case, you are contractor’s employee.
13. That is how the markets work and we must do that as we need to be globally competitive economy.

14. Given the low income level for '00s of million people & thereby inability to take risk, the only sensible policy choice is large scale public investment in quality education, including higher education.

15. It will improve an individual's ability to contribute. Returns will go to individuals as well as businesses, including the politicians. May delayed in terms of timing. In the long run, NPV would be far > fooling the young & parents by running education as a business.

16. India can change in a generation. We have already wasted more than one generation of young Indians in this experiment of trying to make business out of education.

Core Premises
1. Let our young not start their life with debt.
2. Let them or their families not bear the cost of economic uncertainty.
3. Quality of education is key & teachers play an important role. They deserve better than life of low-quality contract employment.

My framework for thinking about capabilities that business & therefore the society needs.
As incomes grow, consumers (& business) seek better value thru solutions, services & complex products. We therefore need advanced technical, managerial & leadership capabilities.

We need to build these capabilities thru continuous investment. Investment with longer payback (education) is to be made in the public system (Ed) and the one with shorter payback (training) by the private sector. Off late, we r expecting all the investment to come from the HHs.