With reference to the thought-provoking article, "Broken educational systems" (November 30), a woman who has paid Rs 4 lakh as fees for her son's junior KG class, has all the reasons to be worried about his future. Not only the primary education system, but also the higher education system in India has huge flaws.
We are aware how cutthroat the competition for getting entry into the IITs and IIMs is. A few thousand students make it to these institutes; the rest settle for colleges where there is no certainty of getting a decent job after graduation.
Then there are those who can afford to send their children abroad for higher studies by paying exorbitant fees. They forget that barring Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford and their ilk, a degree from other foreign colleges will help little. Defaults on education loans, however, are quite likely.
We need to dramatically improve standards at non-IIT and non-IIM institutes by building excellent infrastructure, setting tough criteria for admission and designing course curricula aligned with industry needs. Also, teaching as a profession should be given a huge incentive so that institutes have good quality faculty.
Bal Govind, Noida
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