T Thomas: Education as a business

If we accept the principle that education is a business, it can lead to improvement in quality.

When I get up in the morning and look out of my window in Cuffe Parade to the Colaba Woods across the road, and the Arabian Sea beyond, the sight that uplifts my spirits is of children in their blue uniforms briskly walking to a municipal school at the other end of the street. They come mainly from the large, unorganised housing sprawl at the end of Cuffe Parade in South Bombay. These children attend school in the morning shift. When I return from my office in the evening, I see another set of children going home after the second shift in the school. They are chatting and laughing at the end of the day. Whether it is my wishful thinking or not, I see more girls than boys among these children. To me that is the hope of India""children from slum-like surroundings going to school, including a large number of girls.

At the other end of the spectrum are elite places like Cathedral School, with which I am closely associated. It was started almost 300 years ago in the vestry of St. Thomas Cathedral to provide education for the children of those employees of the East India Company who could not send their children to boarding schools in England. Over the centuries, Cathedral has maintained its position as one of the best schools in the country. The gulf between the children going to the municipal school and those going to Cathedral School is symbolic of the divide in our society, and poses a challenge to those of us who feel the need to bridge the gap at least partially.

State and municipal schools do provide education to the less privileged children, a few of whom happen to be so outstanding and committed that in later years they do even better at university level than those who go to the elite schools. But there is a need to provide higher-quality education to children from all layers of society. While state/municipal schools can provide a certain standard of education, they are not equipped financially and in other ways to cater to an aspiring class which is expanding as the country progresses. This is where education as a business could provide a solution.

Providing education originally started as part of the teaching of religion in both India and the West. For many centuries this privilege was restricted to the upper castes in our country and to the nobility and rich landed gentry in the West. Some of the great centres of learning in Europe, like Oxford and Cambridge, were originally set up to provide priests for the church. Their close links with the church continue even to this day. Even Harvard University in the US has a close association with the church. It is only in the last century that private non-religious philanthropy has enabled secular universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford to be established. They are run as corporations today. Nearer home, an Indian entrepreneur in the Gulf region has successfully established the Sunny Varkey Schools and Colleges in Dubai and other nearby emirates.

In our country, the Pais of Manipal have successfully established a university with professional colleges as business ventures. In my opinion, our country needs more such initiatives. Providing a once-off endowment in memory of a family member is what most businessmen in India tend to do. But endowments cannot take into account the ravages that can be caused over decades by inflation and exchange rate erosion. What an institution needs is a steady and dependable source of income, and access to additional capital for expansion and modernisation in the future. If an educational institution is operated as a business, it can have access to additional finance provided it has a record of providing an acceptable return. If providers of food and shelter can expect a reasonable return on their investment, why not those who invest in education? Once education is treated as a business, those involved with it can take steps to attract the best talent as well as invest in developing the requisite talent. Just like a business it can focus on results, invest in growth and prepare and implement longer-term plans to remain competitive. It can also establish a "brand" name and charge fees according to the prestige and value of the brand.

One of the challenges that education faces in India is the ability to attract the best talent. Today the best talent in the country is attracted to business management or professions like medicine and law, and to a lesser extent to government service. Education has to compete for talent against those other avenues open to young people, and has therefore to offer equal or more attractive terms for those who may choose education as their career. To do so, education has to be treated as a business and those in charge will have to act like participants in a business enterprise. They can be rewarded with remuneration comparable to that of business executives and made eligible for bonuses to be earned against achievement of targets. Equally, there will have to be distinctions made between teachers depending on their performance.

To facilitate this process, government departments should desist from interfering with the fee structure or remuneration in private educational institutions. Today such freedom from government interference is given to schools owned and managed by minority communities. Why not extend the principle to schools that may be set up by private enterprise? For the sake of equity, the government could stipulate that a certain percentage of seats should be made available by private schools to children from the less privileged sections, provided they meet the minimum standards laid down by the institution.

We have to question seriously why education has to be treated as a sacred cow. If we accept the principle that education is a business, it can lead to improving quality, attracting better talent and additional investments. Some of the more enlightened "education businessmen" may choose to allot a portion (say 10 per cent) of the seats in their institution to candidates who cannot afford to pay the stipulated fees or to give repayable loans to candidates in need. If these steps are taken, there could be explosive growth in higher quality education in India.