But the real problem is this. Higher education has hinged on a lie. That it leads to a good job. For decades there appeared to be a correlation between higher education and lucrative jobs. But, in reality, it was always inequality that helped people secure well-paying or prestigious jobs. As more and more people could afford education, and were well-fed enough to crack entrance exams, industries just couldn’t absorb so many. Higher education was only an artificial filter designed to reject millions of people. Without inequality in society higher education is only about learning.
This is an excerpt from an article by Manu Joseph in the aftermath of the recent student protests in India wherein he very aptly paints the true present picture in India.
In the last few decades education has been proposed to us Indians as the only way to the upper middle and rich classes. But as Joseph puts it, more and more people are capable now to educate their children and push them to crack entrances to get into prestigious colleges. But the reality is that there are just too many of us and the competition therefore has become deadly which itself is proxy of the fact that the unemployment even among the educated youth will keep rising and rising.
In some very dire and foolish attempts at correcting this imbalance and of course to ensure potential votes, the government has been incessantly increasing the number of medical and engineering colleges, the consequence of which isn't just lowered quality of professional education, but also the saturating job market and salary dips.
This is a very critical phase for the country and the need to sort things out with the help of solutions that will actually work for the Indian demographic is very imminent.