Letters: Learning and earning

Apropos Ajit Balakrishnan's article "The end of colleges' golden age?" (February 11), the employment market follows a similar law of demand and supply as observed in commerce. In a situation in which surfeit talent is produced by educational institutions, recruiters are tempted to go for the "less-pay-for-more knowledge" option. This group of over-qualified people in lower jobs - say MBAs for graduate level tasks - becomes a reluctant stayer and keeps looking for a job switch or reduce its skill input to the job level. For corporations, it is a short-sighted policy.

The same trend has a back-end impact on the strength of colleges that experience fewer admissions in a job-deficient environment. The result is that they change their courses and curricula to suit what the students and their parents want, which may not necessarily be what the country needs. This narrow learning has its obvious limitations - a decline in the number of science and liberal arts students or their deflection to business-oriented courses rather than careers in science and arts. The strong correlation between the earning potential of higher education and the option for college education obscures the moot purpose of education, which is to enlighten the mind, improve the quality of life and broaden the vision. Not every educated person can get employed, but should that lead to a distaste for knowledge itself?

Y G Chouksey Pune

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