Comments on: On Education, IT and the Government

By: ghost_writer

ghost_writer — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:17:45 +0000

haha … your economic thoery and rants; a curious mix of the sublime and the ridiculous. apart from merely assessing the output-input i.e. value of education; surely you see it as a public good and one that should be funded and supported by government (notice I did not say run by government). even the great economist Milton Friedman accepted that government has a role to play in education. of course, he recognized that it is a very small role and one that should be based on competition between providers (as opposed to the Indian model of monopoly of state provider, high entry barrier etc.)

I am curious – in a similar way would you not see providing bandwidth connectivity as a public good? If yes, how would you propose to fund and maintain it in a manner that maximizes economic outcome (again note – I am talking of connectivity as opposed to tools, companies or technologies)

By: Aravind

Aravind — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:53:24 +0000

Atanu,
I have been following your blogs for quite a long time now. I eagerly wait your blog entries everyday. Thanks for writing. It helps me see things differently often from a better perspective.
Regarding this particular blog: What do you exactly mean when you say education is controlled by government? I see lot of private schools and colleges all over the country. So, why do say government is not letting private enterprise in education?

By: blogreader

blogreader — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:02:09 +0000

Thank you for this post. A few points:

In a given business sector, whenever there are competing options

between a risky and a relatively safe enterprise, most businesses will

take the latter. This is because after optimizing for profits they will

chose a point where there is scope for handsome profits at a certain

level of risk, not too high. In case of hi tech firms which innovate,

companies get to keep at least a portion of their profits through

patents etc., in case their risky enterprise bears fruit. In case of

education, at least in the Indian context, the only criterion by which

an institution is judged is its success in somehow placing its sudents

in a job. Under such a situation, institutions cannot ‘innovate’ in

terms of curriculum, research, etc. as the job market is not simply

interested in such things.
Hence to really change things, the nature of the demand for education

needs to change, which is not going to happen in this country any time

soon. On the other hand, the government has an advantage here, as it is

not interested in immediate profits, and can afford to wait till this

social investment bears fruit in terms of invention etc.

A second point. There are areas of knowledge where market demand is nil

or small, in terms of jobs. So small that it is difficult to achieve

economies of scale in such areas. So even if there is a small demand

for education in such areas, it would not be very efficient. Hence

institutions delivering education in such areas would close down. This

is probably already happening in the Indian context. This is immensely

harmful in a larger context, as though their market demand may be

small, their utility in terms of societal goals cannot be

overemphasized.

I read somewhere that only about 5% of any population is capable of

benefitting through higher education. I am not aware of the current

thinking in this regard. If possible please throw some light on this

issue.