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This exact problem plagues India. The public education system is essentially irrelevant here. Teachers hardly make money, even in private schools are hence ince

This exact problem plagues India. The public education system is essentially irrelevant here. Teachers hardly make money, even in private schools are hence incentivised towards joining the after-school private coaching industry training highschool kids for hyperc-competitive college entrance exams which is where the real money lies given parents are blindly willing to spend fortunes for even a small chance their kids might do better. Everyone knows regular high-school hours are quickly becoming irrelevant in a country obsessed with entrance exam coaching. Even many schools are getting in on the action with "intergrated post-school coaching". Education has truly become a gigantic business in your country the day even Amazon wants to get in on the action & does.

chakkepolja 5y ago
I was brought up in rural environment and education was very less competitive untill I finished 12th. When I got into city into a private engineering college with much high fees and hostel cost, everything in education also felt rushed and sub-optimal. Nobody has the incentive to teach properly. But until I entered the big college, the pretentiousness of 'heavy' education (which is basically making us grunt work because the professors are relatively very unskilled ) and associated stress was low. And that's one of the "top" colleges of the state. Professors couldn't properly write a java program using threads or collections and had the audacity to tell us to write every program two times __on fucking paper__. This country's education system is pretentious AF. The institutions are mostly incentivized to sell snake oil to rich urban parents. The urban parents are pushing their kids into a rat race. Edit: sorry for venting out here.
rdedev 5y ago
I stayed in one of those integrated school/coaching centers. It was miserable. The sole purpose of the place was make us learn as much as possible for engineering exams in those 2 years and nothing else. Luckily I had some good teachers and learnt how to learn stuff on my own. So I'm not completely bitter about it.
- crossroadsguy 5y ago
  One of those places in Hyd by any chance? That city is famous of this.
blueblisters 5y ago
I think the real solution for both, India and China, is to reform how students are evaluated for entry to college. It seems lazy to block coaching-classes/edtechs when they are simply picking up the slack in public education, and taking advantage of an ecosystem that encourages them to thrive.
- kace91 5y ago
  It's hard to imagine an evaluation system that doesn't lead to the arms race, when there's a lot of competition for comparatively scarce positions. What's your idea?
- lozenge 5y ago
  Any metric that becomes a target and all that. The number of opportunities in both jobs and universities whose degrees are meaningful is far less than the number of people. And the consequences of not getting one of those opportunities is much bigger than say, in the US.
  - hagy 5y ago
    I think this could be solved by including randomization. E.g., if the top schools currently take the top 5% of students by test score, then they could instead consider the top 25% of students and select 20% of them through a lottery. In that case there is still value to performing well on the test, but you can't singularly focus on success through testing well. Students and their parents would need to plan out a career path assuming they don't get into the best schools. They could still spend time and money on education and personal development, but it wouldn't be singularly directed at test prep. Instead, there'd be more focus on developing the foundational knowledge, critical thinking, and diligent habits that promote career success.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Came to suggest this. Has a variety of applications. And as you point out, if it's all or nothing, or massively increasing returns then the people near the cutoff/bend in the curve fight like hell to stay on the right side of the line instead of rebalancing the incentives. Basically turns education into a lottery where everyone spends lots of money to buy a lot of tickets because there's no sensible alternative. So appropriate that one of the solutions is to run an actual lottery that you can't buy more tickets for. Banning tuition seems like a surprisingly far-sighted move, wonder what else they'll come up with and how it'll work out.
sumnole 5y ago
We're seeing similar in the United States. Parents are expected to take on 6 figure debts to pay for their children's college education. If you don't have a college degree, with few exceptions your career is vocational. We could stop looking down on this alternative vocational path, and we could have a free public higher education system but there's too much money to be made in selling degrees and dreams.
- elteto 5y ago
  No one is expected to take on 6 figure debts. There are plenty of public universities that can rival Ivies and many elite, private universities have extensive aid programs. You can complete an engineering degree in an in-state school for less than $30k debt after aid. People still get on absurd levels of debt but there’s a large personal decision component there.
  - Moru 5y ago
    What you buy yourself is a contact network that you would not get at the public school.

chakkepolja 5y ago

I was brought up in rural environment and education was very less competitive untill I finished 12th. When I got into city into a private engineering college with much high fees and hostel cost, everything in education also felt rushed and sub-optimal. Nobody has the incentive to teach properly. But until I entered the big college, the pretentiousness of 'heavy' education (which is basically making us grunt work because the professors are relatively very unskilled ) and associated stress was low. And that's one of the "top" colleges of the state. Professors couldn't properly write a java program using threads or collections and had the audacity to tell us to write every program two times __on fucking paper__. This country's education system is pretentious AF. The institutions are mostly incentivized to sell snake oil to rich urban parents. The urban parents are pushing their kids into a rat race. Edit: sorry for venting out here.

rdedev 5y ago

I stayed in one of those integrated school/coaching centers. It was miserable. The sole purpose of the place was make us learn as much as possible for engineering exams in those 2 years and nothing else. Luckily I had some good teachers and learnt how to learn stuff on my own. So I'm not completely bitter about it.

crossroadsguy 5y ago
One of those places in Hyd by any chance? That city is famous of this.

blueblisters 5y ago

I think the real solution for both, India and China, is to reform how students are evaluated for entry to college. It seems lazy to block coaching-classes/edtechs when they are simply picking up the slack in public education, and taking advantage of an ecosystem that encourages them to thrive.

kace91 5y ago
It's hard to imagine an evaluation system that doesn't lead to the arms race, when there's a lot of competition for comparatively scarce positions. What's your idea?
lozenge 5y ago
Any metric that becomes a target and all that. The number of opportunities in both jobs and universities whose degrees are meaningful is far less than the number of people. And the consequences of not getting one of those opportunities is much bigger than say, in the US.
- hagy 5y ago
  I think this could be solved by including randomization. E.g., if the top schools currently take the top 5% of students by test score, then they could instead consider the top 25% of students and select 20% of them through a lottery. In that case there is still value to performing well on the test, but you can't singularly focus on success through testing well. Students and their parents would need to plan out a career path assuming they don't get into the best schools. They could still spend time and money on education and personal development, but it wouldn't be singularly directed at test prep. Instead, there'd be more focus on developing the foundational knowledge, critical thinking, and diligent habits that promote career success.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    Came to suggest this. Has a variety of applications. And as you point out, if it's all or nothing, or massively increasing returns then the people near the cutoff/bend in the curve fight like hell to stay on the right side of the line instead of rebalancing the incentives. Basically turns education into a lottery where everyone spends lots of money to buy a lot of tickets because there's no sensible alternative. So appropriate that one of the solutions is to run an actual lottery that you can't buy more tickets for. Banning tuition seems like a surprisingly far-sighted move, wonder what else they'll come up with and how it'll work out.

sumnole 5y ago

We're seeing similar in the United States. Parents are expected to take on 6 figure debts to pay for their children's college education. If you don't have a college degree, with few exceptions your career is vocational. We could stop looking down on this alternative vocational path, and we could have a free public higher education system but there's too much money to be made in selling degrees and dreams.

elteto 5y ago
No one is expected to take on 6 figure debts. There are plenty of public universities that can rival Ivies and many elite, private universities have extensive aid programs. You can complete an engineering degree in an in-state school for less than $30k debt after aid. People still get on absurd levels of debt but there’s a large personal decision component there.
- Moru 5y ago
  What you buy yourself is a contact network that you would not get at the public school.