I am from AP and had all my education in AP. When we studied, education
gave us sufficient time to enjoy. True, there was pressure during examinations,
but once they are over, the fun continued. I was more fond of athletics than
studies and was running some 10 KM a day in the morning and used to practice
jumps and javelin in the evenings. And of course there was cricket to be
played.
In contrast the present day education in AP till intermediate has become
extremely competitive and time consuming. Children do not have any time for any
extracurricular activities. Most of the colleges do not have any play grounds
anyway.
I think this transition took place with setting up of educational
institutions specially for appearing in the competitive examinations like IIT,
AIEEE and BITSAT apart from the states own EAMCET. The pioneer in intensive
coaching for IIT is the Ramiah coaching center set up in 1985. It has been very
successful and each year since inception a number of students for this
institution got selected for IIT. Institutions like Narayana and Srichaitanya
followed suit. These institutions initially started as junior colleges that
gave coaching for EAMCET( competitive exam for entering into the Engg. colleges
in the state), IIT and AIEEE and BITSAT examinations. They concentrated on
intensive coaching of the students . Their efforts started paying off and the
number of students getting selected for IIT, BITSAT and AIEEE from the state
went up substantially. They then branched off and now have a reach into every
nook and corner of Andhra Pradesh. taking their lead many other educational
institutions also took the same path.
Last year almost 25% of the IIT seats were bagged by students from AP.
This is a great achievement considering that AP accounts only for 7% of the
Indian population. I do not have the statistics about the AIEEE but in the case
of BITSAT too the success rate is very high and 25% of all BITS students are
from Andhra Pradesh.
Due to these institutions more and more students wanted to take up
Engineering stream related courses in Intermediate (Maths, Physics and
Chemistry) and to cater to those who did not get into the elite institutions a
number of Engineering colleges have sprung up all over the state. Andhra
Pradesh presently has some 700+ engineering colleges with a student intake of
over 2,00,000 every year. This is about 18% of the total Engineering seats in
India ( around 11,00,000).
Engineering is being given more preference than medicine both by the
students themselves as well as the parents because engineering concludes in
just 4 years and many candidates are able to get campus placements.
In the case of medicine, one has to give 5 years 6 months for its
completion. But in the present day only MBBS does not hold much value and one
has to MD which may take another 2/ 3 years. Moreover the MD seats would only
be around 10 to 15% of the MBBS seats and every student may not be able to
secure a seat. And after the MD one may go in for the super specialty which may
consume another 2 years. This means one has to study for some 10 years to
establish in medicine whereas for Engineering the time is much shorter.
Moreover getting an Engineering seat also opens up avenues for going to the US
where there is a great demand for software engineers.
That was the reason why last year only 50,000 students appeared for the
entrance exam for medicine against 300,000+ for engineering. From the 1990’s
many engineering students from AP have gone to the US , did their MS there and
settled down. The bulk of the visas to USA from the Chennai consulate have gone
to the students from AP. This also has increased the fascination for
engineering. This fascination for engineering helped the students of AP
substantially and this was the creation of the above coaching institutions.
Therefore, the credit of making AP an engineering powerhouse goes to those
institutions as well as the then Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu who freely
gave permission for setting up new private engineering colleges. This policy
was continued by the later governments.
The institutions have also done some damage too in the process. They
started drilling the students right from morning till evening holding exams
every week . Their network has now spread to all over AP and they have also established
many branches in India at places like Delhi, Chandigarh, Karnataka ,Rajasthan,
Himachal, Jharkhand and MP. All their branches were given the same exam paper
each week and their internal rank in the state and also all India is given to
the students every week. For the 2nd year Intermediate students their class
timings would be from 8 in the morning till 8+ in the night. This is now
putting an undue stress on the students. Every parent in AP now wants to see
their children in the IIT’s, BITS or NIT’s and the parents expectations are
putting in further stress. Average children cannot get into the IIT’s and
expecting them to do so would only bring down their morale and they may break
down under pressure and even start hating studies.
While the role of these institutions in promoting education in AP is
appreciated, perhaps a line has to be drawn now and some restriction of hours
by the Government would be more appropriate. If the child wants to study he/she
can do so at home on his own interest and keeping them in college for 12 hours
a day I feel is criminal. The value of education should be understood by the
student and he/she should not feel it as drudgery. Other things like sports,
cultural events should also be encouraged along with studies and the student
coming out should be made into an enthusiastic and fun loving individual rather
than an automaton who pores over books most of the time doing nothing else.
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