Education

Recently, when I was online on LinkedIn, I noticed this simple post which said something along the lines of “In a world of Byjus and White Hat Jr, be someone’s Khan Academy and Code.org”

I think people within India might be able to relate to some parts of it. The post is related to paid coding courses. You must have seen the tons of comments on the post - many criticizing the companies behind these paid coding courses.

In this post, I want to talk about how education has become valuable and how paid education is on the rise like crazy - many know this I guess? I just want to touch upon it and also touch upon the free education available for many.

Let’s get started with the above references - Byjus is an online app, which is very famous in India. It’s for school kids to learn online. It’s paid tution over the Internet. They boast over their really cool materials which are easy to learn from for kids. Materials which are top notch.

White Hat Jr is another paid online education for coding for kids.

You should see the ads for these apps in India. They are so slick and just can pull anyone in. I guess any modern day advertisement is good now.

Let’s take a different path now, the above are online education / E education. And are more related to just teaching, without any certificates etc. They are more like teaching to augment the education in school or to enable the kid in school. What about actual brick and mortar schools? Given it’s corona time, many schools have gone electronic too, and are trying out E education. You should hear about the cost of schooling in India - the medium to elite ones are all really really costly. The same goes for even college education in India. I think it’s a similar case in a few other countries too. And I’m specifically referring to the private schools and colleges in India. Not the government based / funded ones. Private education is so costly in India, my country. I just can’t imagine why they ask for so much money for my nephew who is just five years old. And there’s also bribing to even register and admit the kid into the school. Can you imagine how much bribe money goes into it? Almost everyone pays the bribe. Almost everyone. Only the ones who opt for government based / funded schools and colleges usually won’t have to go through that hassle. And very few private colleges, like mine, don’t take bribe or any extra money than what the university law mentions as the tution fees.

So that’s the state of private education in India. Not everyone can get into the government schools and colleges, so some just have to go to private. Imagine this - education is the most important thing, and to attain education and a good one that too, you need to pay so much?! What will middle class and low income families do? I know how much looting there is when it comes to other country colleges even in public colleges. I have no idea how that price is worth it, and I can’t even imagine for private colleges. And I keep hearing about the sad stories of student loans in countries. I studied college with the help of an education loan, but that’s way too low compared to the loans taken by the students in other countries.

You can also see how many students are looking to borrow in https://www.kiva.org/ website. They are looking for loans to pay back after their education! That is, when they get a job. You should see the period of their loans on Kiva website - 30 months, 60 months! And this is just a simple website which loans money to people and there’s no too much problems really. But when you get loans from banks and other financial institutions, the loan period is crazy and the interest rates are just unbelievable!!

So we are basically making it harder and harder for people to study - by almost making education an elite thing - that only people with money can do. I think education is the only basic thing can bridge the gap between very very low income class and the middle class. Education is the only thing can increase someone’s affordability, better someone’s life style, make someone’s life better. Education in any form can help actually. Or else rich will just get richer and poor will just keep getting poorer I think. Literacy rates, access to education, all have to increase and get better.

Now, back to the first thing we spoke about - Byjus, White Hat Jr. They are paid services, yes. I’m not going to say they are bad. I have no idea about them - I have never used them. But I can say this - they are the services that are making sure that education is paid, and showing that quality education can only be paid. I agree that everyone needs money and that everything can’t be free, but if education isn’t free, many things are going to go wrong. I completely support Khan Academy, Freecodecamp and other free services that teach for free.

On a final note, I want to mention one more thing. I’m always in a dilemma about the reasoning for paid content when I think about paid content like books and videos and what not - sometimes I feel like the creators of the content need to have a living so have to get paid, and then I feel it’s fair. But then again, I just feel that the number of copies that get sold and the amount for each copy, it’s all a bit much? I don’t know. One might say that the creators are very reasonable and that the costs are good and value for money - maybe true, may not be. But I know one thing - free content is not so bad. Maybe it might take more time for the free education on the Internet to get better. It might be time consuming to learn - but I think people who don’t have money, they have time to some extent at least, to slowly learn. Unlike professionals, who get paid for work, and can pay for courses and books and learn things faster - but I still can’t say that that’s the best way of learning because I know for sure that everyone learns differently. For me, the take away is - if I ever create content, I’ll make sure that it’s free. I hope that it remains that way as always. Also, however I don’t think anyone will pay for my content if I make it paid :P Not sure about it’s value/worth. Also, I’m not famous and all, so I don’t know how people will even find my content :P If you are reading this, you might be my only reader :P :)