Geetanjali Krishna: Crashed course

I had dreamt of soaring in the skies,” said Ashwini, “but my dreams have just come crashing down on me!” This Ranchi lad was telling me about his experience with a private college that had taken a hefty fee from him for a diploma course in flight-steward training. The institute had taken the entire fee before the course could get over, and, apparently, guaranteed placement in airlines, cruise ships, hotels or call centres at the end of the course. Instead, when Ashwini’s course ended last year, only two of his batch of 32 were placed. “The rest of us were left high and dry,” said he.

Ashwini had dreamt of seeing the world since childhood. So after having completed completing class twelve, he began applying to institutes that offered courses in aviation. “An aviation academy in Ranchi rejected me saying I wasn’t tall enough,” said Ashwini, “so I was pleasantly surprised when a private institute in Delhi did not bat an eyelid over my height in its entrance test.” According to him, their written entrance exam was a sham. “I’d not really prepared for it, and so could answer barely ten questions out of hundred …. yet, I made it!” Although, even at that point, his father and he realised that the institute was little more than a teaching shop, Ashwini was bitten by the aviation bug. “I was taken in by their guarantee of 100 per cent placement,” said he. His father coughed up a tidy fee of Rs 1,00,000 (in three installments, the last of which was paid before the course was even completed) for the course, in the hope that his son would soon get a high-flying job.

When the course began, Ashwini realised that that not more than half of his batchmates could speak English. And so, the first two months were spent learning the language: “At times, I’d get disoriented and wonder whether I was doing a spoken-English course, or a course in aviation services!” said he. Then they went on a training programme to Singapore. “When we reached there, we found that there were no arrangements for any training … so we all just enjoyed our first foreign trip and came back!” Now that a couple of months had passed, many students began asking when the placement interviews would begin. “We were told to be patient, there were many airline jobs on the anvil,” said Ashwini.

As the course neared its end, Ashwini and his batchmates were sent for the odd interview, but nothing much transpired. “Instead, I was told that I lacked the minimum height requirements of airlines, so I stood no chance at all of getting a job,” said he bitterly. The institute asked him to appear for several call-centre interviews, but Ashwini wasn’t having any of it. “I figured, if a call centre job is what I wanted, I’d have done a Rs 5,000 spoken-English course, not a Rs 1,00,000 course for flight stewards!” The way he saw it, if his height was less than the stipulated height requirements of airlines, the institute should not have accepted him in the first place.

“In retrospect, I feel the institute just took my money without really caring for my future. Instead, they abandoned me to my fate,” said Ashwini. This conversation made me wonder: The intense level of competition for good colleges has given a huge impetus to vocational courses, as well as to private institutes, but why don’t we have a code of conduct for them? The state and Central universities, after all, follow a defined set of rules and are supposed to be transparent and accountable.