A Whole New World

I visited the swanky campus of one of the new trendy colleges. Not as the parent of a prospective student, but as a friend of a faculty member. I got to interact informally with quite a few students and faculty members.

This was so different from the colleges my friends and I had studied in! Or maybe, it's just me! A dinosaur who had sauntered in from another era.

There are educational consultants who specialize in setting up these huge institutes. Some of the areas they work on are: getting a celebrity board of directors and faculty members; ensuring government clearances-land acquisitions, subsidies, land-use-change permissions, tax subsidies; connecting high net-worthy investors with promised returns and of course the marketing and promotion.

The courses are suggested by the consultant. But of course they are vetted by the faculty. The faculty themselves are dependent on the popularity of their courses-decided by the number of students opting for their courses and providing feedback. All great innovations to ensure transparency-except for the situations where a Prof who insists on rigour and discipline in a finance class, may get outbid by a course on exploring the links between Bollywood Music and Math.

This particular institution had on board a famous politician who owned a big chunk of the forested hill district. Well an institution this size will need to have political connections, I was told.

When a new course was being started-the teachers started suggesting with a class size of 30 so that they could build their facilities over time. The consultant insisted on a class size of 120 to ensure the ROI. The staff prepared the proposals hoping the government body which sanctions new courses would suggest trimming the proposed strength to 60. They got an approval for the full 120.

These 120 students have been selected after clearing an over-subscribed entrance test. There were many who could not make it.

The fees they’ll pay for a four-year course is more than what they will earn in the next ten years (as per average market standards). Their average recreational spend (travelling to the nearest city, eating and drinking out, watching a movie, gifting and other items that they didn’t want to detail) is more than the monthly income of many white-collar works in metros.

Most of them are not here to get a job (that’s so middle-class). They are still figuring out what they want to do with life, and the intensive education they will receive here will ensure they will do well with whatever they do.

Maybe the emperor is wearing special clothes-it's just me....