Right to evaluate its own students must be snatched from the colleges

Educational efficiency has always been a key point when it comes to deciding which college an individual wants to pursue their higher studies. While the rigours of entrance exams and circumventing the conundrum of reservation seats means only the ‘cream’ of the crop gets a seat in top government colleges, the rest fall back on the private educational setup. However, when it comes to career opportunities after obtaining the degrees from the respective institutions, it is the private college students that often face much more trouble.

A major theme that runs through the grievances of the students from private institutes is that their grades are inflated. There is anecdotal evidence and collective adherence to this thought of school amongst the recruiters that students from the private institutes have it easy when compared to their competition from the government colleges.

Private college students have it hard in real life

Although private colleges across the country have already established their own evaluation systems – the students that come through their screening process to the real world where employment opportunities are scarce, tend to have a hard time competing with their peers.

Meanwhile, most government colleges and universities still rely on students’ comprehensive assessment data in terms of the content of the evaluation. The professors and evaluators are far more rigid, orthodox, and conservative when it comes to marking the students.

While rigidity and orthodoxy are something educational experts do not want to attach to the evaluators, real learning only comes when the students have to work hard to earn their stripes, and nothing breeds this quality more than tenacity and orthodoxy.

Government college evaluation is given priority

In government colleges, the student has to earn every single point of their CGPA. While products of most private educational institutes have GPAs in high 8s and 9s – the same cannot be said about government colleges students. Example: A student with a 9.5 GPA in Amity University will still be considered equivalent to a student who obtained a 7 GPA in Delhi university.

The private colleges do not receive any funding from the UGC, and they have to run the institute from the tuition money and donations. And students only seek admission when they hear good things about the institute from the students who have studied there. A good metric to gauge the worthiness of the said institute is the grades an individual has received while studying.

Thus, the management of private colleges tends to be lenient and hand out the A-grades much more frequently. Thus, it can also be said, there is hyperinflation of ‘A’ grades in Indian private institutes.

An example from the Ukraine medical students’ saga

Immediately after the Ukraine-Russia conflict started, the Indian government started Operation Ganga to bring the stranded Indians back to the country. The majority were medical students who had been studying there as they could not secure admissions to the Indian government colleges and could not afford the hefty fees of private institutions.

However, according to estimates, nearly 4,000 students with medical degrees from Ukraine take the Foreign Medical Graduates Examination (FMGE) each year, but only about 700 pass. In 2019, 25.79 per cent of foreign graduates cleared the FMGE, while the percentage was 14.68 in 2020 and 23.83 in 2021. The figures in the years preceding 2019 were even lower.

The overwhelming failure percentage in the exam suggests there is a stark difference in the quality of teaching in India and Ukraine. A similar parameter can be drawn for the gulf of quality in teaching between Indian private and government colleges.

Read More: Why do so many students from India go to Ukraine for studies?

Create a level playing field in terms of evaluation

The right to evaluate a student should be made a level playing field. The students at private colleges can complete the syllabus according to the course content provided by the management. However, the final exams and the evaluation can be outsourced from a single authority such as UGC or AICTE.

That way, the students also remain confident that they have cleared the same hurdles and are worthy of the position they are applying to. Currently, most students have to unlearn a lot of concepts after obtaining their degrees and start the tedious process of studying again.

The precious time of the youth is wasted in trying to acclimatize to the hiring climate and all because the colleges did not have the same arena for everyone to compete. Or they did not allow the students to dance to their potential.

A clear and concise evaluation process for both government and private colleges can solve the problem and ensure that the human capital of students contributes to the collective growth of the country.