Market-Led Education vs State-Led Education
By: Darpan Shah
Tags: Indian Education, Education Development, Education, Debate, Education Reform

Education is one of the defining characteristics of a person’s life, and therefore education systems are maybe one of the most difficult systems to design right, because of the sheer complexity of the issue.

The types of education systems can be sliced across multiple dimensions and across many attributes, and the right system has to be balanced perfectly across all these dimensions.

Moreover, education systems are highly context dependent. What works perfectly for an African kid will simply not work for an American, nor for an Indian. Educational systems also need to constantly evolve, to fit into the constantly evolving demands and conventions of society.

That being said, there are approximate models that work to the extent where the net outcome is positive instead of negative. In this essay, I will be talking about one particular dimension basis which education systems can be designed, in the context of the Indian education system.

The question is, should the Indian Education System be a Market-Led Education System or should it be a State-Led Education System. There are weighty arguments for both sides, and I will chronicle them below.

By no means can I conclude such a heavy debate through a short-form essay; the point of this is only to encourage a more learned, well-reasoned and rich discussion amongst those who read it.

Market-Led Education System

A market-led education system is an educational system that is majorly influenced by industry forces. Computer Science syllabi, for example, would largely include coding languages used by a Google or a Facebook. So on and so forth for every subject. The focus of this system would be to churn out students who are prepared to execute in the industry from day 1. This can be a localised system or a centralised system of education — it doesn’t matter. The education of students through the years will be streamlined and converge to particular streams of studies.

Firstly, there will be no learning curve for new employees, and moreover, the quality of output that will come from new successive batches of employees will steadily increase over time because the pedagogy will become more efficient over time since it’s in the interests of corporates to make it so. Therefore, the type of productivity and efficiencies a company relying on such employees would see is exponential. In turn, to-be-employees trained thus would also have a commensurately rising demand. Looking at a macro level, the type of stability of this type of system would be all but guaranteed in that time-frame. This is because all these employee-student communities will be interfaced such that demand and supply are highly fluid, thereby patching up the supply-demand curve perfectly. Unemployment, therefore, will be virtually eliminated.

Secondly, it will vastly increase the efficiency of the education system. It is, right now, in the hands of people who just don’t give a s*it about it most of the times. There are isolated motivated people who take initiative and make a change; most just don’t. An education with the active management of companies and entities with vested interests, however, will run it very differently indeed. The delivery network, the support network, and the development network of the education system will be optimised to ensure the standards of education are high. Good education systems churn out students that directly become good employees in this scenario, and market entities will ensure the high quality of the education to realise maximum profits through high-quality employees. Therefore, the net benefit to society, such as it would be, will be considerably high due to a more operationally robust educational system.

Lastly, the syllabi itself; Due to the shifting nature of the demand of products/services/technology, every few years — or whatever the cycle for these industries is — there will be foundational shifts and progress in the knowledge of that industry. For the benefit of the companies to be maximised, they will ensure this updated knowledge is passed on to students and therefore their to-be-employees. This mostly cures new generations of employees of inexperience of subject matter in their respective domains, therefore contributing to their increased productivity and quality once they are employed. The advances of knowledge within particular domains will also be much higher since the population is largely already well-versed with the subject.

These high-value advantages paint a very rosy picture of Market-Led education; maybe it is right.

On the other hand, let’s consider a State-Led Education System.

State-Led Education System

A State-Led Education System is one where there is a central authority that decides the course and structure of the education system, and one where the authority overseeing this body is democratically elected by and answerable to the people as well. Ideally, the authority is not answerable to private corporations of any form. The authority is decoupled from the rest of the government to be free of undue influence. The Education System is focused on fundamentals in subject matter as opposed to industry fads and trends.

Most democratic countries in the world have a semblance of this system to a greater or lesser degree.

Firstly, consider the human output of this education system. There will be a large diversity of the type of expertise and knowledge that this cohort will have compared to the cohort from a market-led system. This is because of the diversity of educational courses that students will be offered in institutions. This diversity will give rise to new creations, products, services, and entire industries. The net value creation this offers to society will be more than the net value creation for society through a market-led system that is far more streamlined and efficient but converge to existing trends.

Secondly, it solves for the obsolescence of generations of employees due to shifts in technology. With the market-led model, a generation will be trained with the relevant technology. But once a shift in technology happens, then this generation is no longer relevant. They can try relearning, but its easier for employers to just hire fresh people well-versed in what the employer wants than for it to support this relearning. Therefore, this model makes the majority of every generation eventually obsolete. And then, what is this generation to do?

The State-Led model, instead, imbibes its students with fundamental skills that enable them to be better learners of new things, therefore giving at least some protection to generations against obsolescence, by ensuring educational parity between successive generations.

Thirdly, for a State to remain a robust, democratic, growing, and responsible State, it must have a very high pedigree of citizens. One that is necessarily multi-faceted, with its constituents advancing in all degrees and directions and one where there is a very healthy and spirited debate about all issues. This, in turn, necessarily needs people from very different backgrounds, and knowledge & skill streams.

This can only happen if the education system is very broad, inclusive, and nurturing. There are many things that a health citizenry needs such as a sense of aesthetics, literature, art etc. that may not have a tangible impact on the workability of the employee but are needed for a tangible impact in the functioning of society. Therefore, for the sake of a healthy State, a State-Led education system is ideal.

These high-value benefits, in turn, paint a very rosy picture of a State-Led education system. Maybe it is right.

These are some of the important comparisons when it comes to the State-Sponsored Education Systems vs Privately-Sponsored Education Systems debate in the broader context as well. These points in and of themselves aren’t enough to conclude this debate; hopefully, they will enable you to better understand this discussion better.

All the arguments above are entirely credited to “The Debating Group”, a small meet-up that for parliamentary debates on topics like these, currently in Bangalore, India.