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Tame `sharks` in education sector
2007-09-02 10:10:35
By Editor
A nightmare is bad news. Compounding it makes the news worse. This is the situation in which many parents, guardians and children find themselves in, as an unnecessary price for pursuit of education, which is rightly defined as the gateway to success.
Most young people are eager to advance themselves academically and to acquire professional skills as a pre-requisite for launching themselves into lives of stable families, decent livelihoods, as well as becoming resourceful nation builders.
But since only a few of the rapidly swelling population of education and skills-hungry aspirants can be absorbed by the public education sector, the rest seek openings in the private sector alternative.
This entails costs like high fee rates, which students and their sponsors don`t have much qualms about, since private institutions cannot run on ``emptiness``.
But many operators of those institutions, and increasingly public ones, are stretching the cost factor too far, to make the proverbial extra buck through exploitative, shark-like methods.
The ``selection costs`` phenomenon is a case in point. Schools, colleges and universities set the timing for inviting applications for entry in such a way that students spread the chances and risks to as many of them as possible.
Costs are incurred on photo-copying result slips and certificates, registration, entrance examinations and travel, averaging between 100,000/- and 200,000/- per head !
Ultimately, one enrolls in only one institution, and some in none, but much, or all the money is forsaken. The worst case of daylight robbery is to commit someone to pay part of the fees before commencement date, which isn\'t refunded if a student opts to join a better institution later.
The government should step in, by prohibiting selection processes before announcements of final examination results, setting ceilings of administrative costs to reflect real cost factors, and, as much as possible, standarising commencement dates.
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