Education: Government has to get its priorities right !

The point of focus of this post is whether to increase public investment in higher education.

The state has been financing education because it brings awareness in the society in various ways. Improvement in female education can lower fertility rates. The basic education can make people aware of health and hygiene issues. Therefore, for improvement of school education, state financing must be there due to the fact that most schools in rural areas are in pitiful condition even not having proper school-building and teachers. The parents in the rural part cannot afford to send their wards to other expensive private schools so government schools are only option for them. Therefore, a proper grant for school education is really important. On the other hand, we need to focus on higher education also because they produce vast number of scientists, managers, engineers and various other professionals necessary for the development of the nation. But at this point I want to put a question whether there should be state financing for higher education or not. The tuition fee for higher education paid by the students is much less than the amount spent on them by the government. Therefore government should adopt a policy by which students should be forced to pay for the costs of higher education, particularly in technical, medical and management studies because they get hefty packages after completion of the courses. This suggestion may be questioned from the point of view of poor students. It is true that it is the responsibility of the government to provide world-class higher education facility to all sections of society but reforms can be brought by introducing easy student loans processing and need based merit scholarships for meritorious students open to all. It may happen that some discrepancies may be encountered regarding non-payment of loans and steal of scholarships, but still it will be much smaller than present level of subsidies to higher education. Subsidized higher education intensifies social inequalities. Majority of the students seeking professional higher education belong to urban society so they may be educated about the benefits of this policy.