Should education sector be privatized ?

With so much happening in education sector- deemed university status withdrawal and probability of recognized foreign educational institutions coming to India - first question that comes to my mind is "Should Education sector be privatized?".Profit is being – and will continue to be – made whether government allows it or not.It’s better to recognise it, so that the focus can then be solely on quality and access.Businessmen, entrepreneurs and investors have swarmed the education sector in the past few months suggesting that education has become an even better business than it was before.They do make profits but they are not allowed to say so.Now the onus is on government to take right course of action to ensure a better educated India.

Why :

The government cannot prop up higher education due to a lack of funds.The present expenditure in the education sector is planned at 6 per cent of the GDP. Of that, only 0.77 per cent goes to higher education.India has largest population in world with 13.5 cr pupils in primary education and second largest population in the world of over 110cr people.Educating such a massive population is a not only expensive but a very difficult one. 

There has been growth in infrastructure but huge gap still remains.There is shortage of skilled labour in various sectors.Just to put this point into perspective,we will take the example of software sector.The phenomenal success story of India’s Software Sector is well-known. To sustain this growth there will be a significant requirement for quality manpower at various levels.As per NASSCOM, there will be a requirement for 2.3mn IT professionals by 2010. There will be a shortage of quality trained personnel required by the IT Industry of 5,00,000 by that year. This is even as the country enrolls nearly 10mn students annually in its colleges and institutes of higher education. A total of 4,95,000 technical graduates, 2.3mn other graduates and over 3,00,000 post-graduates are produced each year from the system.How are we going to sustain our growth?That's a big question mark.

The Way Ahead :Public-Private Partnership(PPP)

Ownership of schools is not allowed except under a trust format.currently,India face a backlog of 2,00,000 schools and provide easy access to education for all children.

If government allows the ownership of schools to private player -enabling them to make profits by legitimate means -the ownership of school would become much easier and may lead to more schools being open up and thereby improving the access to education.With poor teacher training  and poor teacher-student ratio,it becomes very difficult to provide  quality education to all.But with private player in picture,these gaps will be bridged ensuring quality and easy access of education to vast majority of deprived masses.

Concerns :
How would schools be effected by privatization? How would poor people be able to afford a decent education? How would standards be made? Here comes the role of government.Government as a regulatory body should lay down the regulation and guidelines under which these private institute will function and hence taking care of these concerns.

Do you think the privatization will benefit the Indian education sector?

Let me know your viewpoint.