IIT Degree > Nursery Education or Not?

The results of a parent survey in Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) was picked up a leading publication recently (Read here:http://goo.gl/48Sl0y). The headline chosen by the journalist — ‘Fee in nursery schools much higher than at IITs’. The article’s tone was indignant at the fact that preschools are charging 50% more than a higher education institute.

This bring us to the question of the hour, how does one value education? What is the fair amount of fee one should pay for their child’s education at different stages?

A potential answer would be to project the child’s future earning and value it on the day when you are standing in front of that fee counter (If you wish to take up this exercise for your child, please read:http://www.investopedia.com/university/dcf/). Easier said than done, isn’t it? But most parents do it implicitly. Read on to understand how and what are the flaws in each approach:

1. The hereditary approach: Some parents assume that kids will follow in their own footsteps. This allows a business tycoon to send his/her child to the most expensive education around while a blue collar worker will send their child to a government run school. This can also be confused with economic approach where one’s income decides the choice of education. Irrespective, the flaw: Child’s own acquired abilities and ambitions are not considered or given space to evolve, leading to misplaced expectations and sub-optimal results.
2. The imitation approach: Teens and parents are some of the prime examples of herd mentality. Difference being that the teen is making a decision for themselves while parents are not. Some parents decide their willingness to pay based on where their friends, neighbours, or relatives send their kids. Flaw: Child’s uniqueness is disregarded. If the decision made by the friend, neighbor, or relative is based on false notions, the flaw will perpetuate.
3. The wait and watch approach: Some parents wait to understand the direction that their child is taking in order to commit large amount of funding for the future. Flaw: Belief that a child’s future is determined by their higher education alone. The indignant journalist is a proponent of such a flawed argument.

The most oft-quoted stat by proponents of ECCE is that 90% of the child’s brain development happens before the age of 5. If this fact is taken along with the common knowledge that education is important in shaping a child’s development, clearly it makes sense to pay more for preschool education than higher education. If parents agree, then we already would have come a long way. How much more would be a question for another article to answer.

To take this a step further, this same mindset need to be extrapolated from an individual to the government. In the pursuit of setting up new IITs (Read:http://goo.gl/07N4C3) at US$ 250 mn. each (Read: http://goo.gl/4F9XUq), the government has completely ignored urban 0–6 year olds. If urbanization is the trend, the government is clearly spending its effort out of sync with the future. Even if one assumes a cost of $2 mn. and 100 children per preschool across years, we are missing out on shaping the future of 12,500 young citizens per IIT (or 75,000 for the 6 IITs approved as per the Institutes of Technology (Amendment) Act, 2016. Parents and their representatives need to do so much more and it all begins with a change in mindset!

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