A lot of global universities have significantly increased their online presence, and are leveraging technology to reach out to the masses, shares Jatin Bhandari, CEO, PythaGurus with Elets News Network (ENN)
Do you think reservation in higher education is defeating the purpose of imparting the best possible education to meritorious candidates?
There are two things I want to address in the higher education quota. The first one is the impact of higher education on the ability of candidates to make a contribution to their career as well as country. If you consider medical, engineering and management as professions, the bandwidth of impact is much wider than the school level education.
If we offer seats on the basis of reservation, we are essentially depriving the candidates who are motivated to make a career and are driven to learn. The size of the Educational PIE is the same – and we are splitting it with a very distorted rationale. For every person gaining admittance with a reservation quota, there is one deserving candidate who gets left out.
Another factor that I want to consider is the stage of higher education in the overall lifecycle of a human being. Don’t you think we are too late in hand holding someone if we are providing quota in higher education? Not only are we sending the message to a 14-year-old child that he does not need to nurture his learning potential and fight as there is quota waiting for him at a later stage of his life, but we are also making him lazy. If we want to spend more budget in teaching the candidates with reservation quotas, I think the emphasis should be in the early stages of their lives. It should be in the first 12 years of their education. The system should enable them to reach a level commensurate with the people in the general category.
In the light of Supreme Court ruling, what would be the impact of doing away with all forms of reservation in institutions of higher education?
Doing away with all the reservation will enable the talent to come forward. It will allow hundreds of thousands of students across the country to gain access to a well -deserved education. This will also have a great impact on the GDP – by injecting the country with more efficient workforce.
Technology can eliminate the barriers that a lot of people face with regard to accessibility, cost, etc, of education. With technology, you can provide education to anyone, anywhere, with ease and within less cost
‘Access’ to all & ‘Quality’ of education are the major fault lines in the education system of India. What role can technology play in bridging these fault lines?
Technology can eliminate the barriers that a lot of people face with regard to accessibility, cost, etc, of education. With technology, you can provide education to anyone, anywhere, with ease and within less cost. A lot of global universities have significantly increased their online presence, and are leveraging technology to reach out to the masses. Therefore, technology is bridging the educational fault lines and opening entry to different sects of the society.
Being into the technologyenabled learning space, how your organisation is contributing in bridging the education fault lines?
Our organisation helps people in employability. We identified that the student community faces massive rejections in recruiting, interviewing, and higher education. We have created technology products to bridge this knowledge gap. Students can take our video courses and understand a lot about different styles of interviewing and prepare for different B-Schools, and jobs.
