Education Is For Sale, Not Educators

"It requires a lot of courage to become an educator as it is not for everybody. If a parent is unworthy, children are spoiled; if a doctor neglects his duty, the patient dies; if an engineer performs poorly, the infrastructure collapses; and if an educator makes a mistake, an entire generation is ruined." - Professor M.S. Rao

It is reported that the name of the same faculty as a teaching resource is available in more than one college. It shows the irregularities in colleges in the state of Telangana and other states in India. Although it is known to many, nobody takes it seriously. In Andhra Pradesh and Telangana , nearly 8,000 names were repeated across more than one college, Dubbudu and his team found, which meant that a quarter of the total engineering faculty in the States consisted of duplicate names. In all, nearly 90 per cent of the over 1,500 accredited engineering colleges in the States had at least one 'duplicate' teacher on their faculty.

Some of the private engineering colleges in Telangana State are run by liquor barons and real estate brokers who converted these private colleges into money spinners. They don't follow professional standards, and they lack ethics and etiquette thus bringing down the standards of education and educators. Some of them don't follow rules and regulations as they have close nexus with politicians and political parties. They break rules and regulations and collect huge fee from students for being absent to the institutions and on various other projects. They don't pay the salaries to their employees when the latter leave their educational institutions. They also cow down the leaving employees if the latter intend to take legal action against these erring educational institutions. Majority of educators don't fight and they leave without taking the salary of the last month. There are a very few faculty who are ready to fight legally. But they are harassed by the managements by leveling wrong cases against them.

The managements of the private engineering colleges are noted for pitting one faculty member against another faculty member to break their unity and to create ill-will among them. It is like a 'divide and rule' which is not healthy in the long term for the Indian education. Most faculty members don't intervene when one of their colleagues is harmed or denied with rights and salary as they think it is the problem of an individual. In fact, they must know that it is everybody's problem in the long-run. When management harms the interests of a faculty member, they can harm other faculty members also when the time comes. Hence, faculty members must unite to fight for their rights.

Paying bribes and getting ranked has become the order of the day for these notorious educational institutions. They are busy in building their brands rather than building infrastructure and imparting quality education to their students.

Most of the educational institutions don't pay salaries as per the latest Pay commission. They show on records that they pay the salaries as per the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) norms but take the differential amount from the faculty every month. Therefore, the Income Tax department must check such transactions and close down the erring educational institutions immediately. If required, CBI inquiry must be ordered on the erring educational institutions for cheating students and faculty, and on corruption. They cheat students by taking money by way of condonation fee and cheat faculty by not paying last month salary and also summer vacation salary. There are some private educational institutions who hire senior faculty members to show during inspections of AICTE, JNTU and their respective universities and terminate their services once inspections are over by citing improper feedback or on disciplinary grounds.

Most of the regulators are aware of these irregularities. To please those regulators, the managements of the educational institutions invite such regulators to functions and on 'graduation day' celebrations and offer them decent money or gifts. As a reciprocal response, such regulators turn blind eye to the complaints filed by the faculty members.

To summarize, it is essential to clean the education system and the practices in private engineering colleges in India. Remember, the day corruption enters into educational institutions and armed forces, the country will collapse. Hence, all stakeholders including students, faculty, regulators, media and nonprofits must unite to check irregularities in erring private educational institutions to clean the system and to add sanctity to education. Remember, education is for sale, not educators.

"In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have." - Lee Iacocca