Life begins anew for teeming teenage school-leaving India

It’s that time of the year when media sits up and takes notice of The Great Race For College Admission instead of focusing 24×7 on the political scene, the economic situation, crime, cinema and cricket, though not necessarily in the same order.

And so we have weekly magazines showing chirpy college students on the cover while the inside pages give us the publication’s rating of which are the best colleges to apply in, in the traditional streams of arts, science, engineering, medicine and law, and the more modern fields like business administration, computer applications and fine arts.

The ‘best colleges’, of course, have absurdly-high cut-off points for admission in terms of performance in the school-leaving exams even if the publications soften the blow by mentioning the salaries offered to the best and the brightest of graduates.

These publications would presumably be read from cover to cover not just by school-leaving students vying for admission or their anxious parents but by senior citizens who have the time to meticulously peruse magazines even if they realise with a pang that the cut-off point has been raised to such an extent that they would themselves not be admitted to the college they once graced!

And so what if the pecking order of the best colleges seldom changes, with the top 10 remaining almost constant? Quality, we are told, is not something that can be developed overnight.

Perhaps the applecart could be upset if the series of education reform Bills pending in Parliament are passed so as to allow worldclass institutions to be set up in India.

The more the merrier, to ease the supply-side constraint for quality education and preempt absurdly-high cut-off points like the 100% stipulated last year for admission to a leading college!