I believe every student in our country must have experienced such circumstances. The key issue that I’m trying to bring up is about the students’ perception towards the entire educational system. Many students believe in an invalid, baseless and self made theory that the volume of answers is directly proportional to the marks obtained.
Be it tenth graders or MBA graduates, students still follow the trend of writing long rambling answers with the anticipation of scoring good grades. This shows a high degree of reluctance in students while weighing the quality versus quantity dimension of an answer. However, I do not blame the students for this. Instead my scrutiny shifts towards the authorities and institutions responsible for the betterment of our educational system. With globalization fiercely challenging and questioning the roots of every service industry, I think our educational system needs to undergo a genuine reform in numerous aspects.
Most of the ageing educational institutions in our country have a common problem regarding the staffing of instructors and lecturers who still are glued to their traditional ways of teaching. Honestly, we’ve seen a lot of experienced teachers who can locate exactly the page number and paragraph of a theorem without looking into the book, but are clueless when a student enquires something not related to the course book. Hence, the modern practice of education demands teachers to be updated in their expertise irrespective of their experience. Meanwhile, the ways of course delivery also needs reshuffling. Students can no longer rely on classroom notes and lectures for a holistic development. Role plays, presentations, report assignments and case studies are effective tools for learning which many private educational institutes have incorporated in their curriculum, yet in a limited scale.
On the other hand, course developers and designers need to be careful while selecting the appropriate subjects for study. My own academic experience has made me realize that I’ve already studied many subjects that will have no practical implication or relevance in my personal or professional life. These courses are merely redundant and a burden to the students.
Establishing a balance between the system and the evaluating mechanism ensures an overall excellence in the system. In order to do so, the concerned authorities must start to prioritize quality over volume while appraising students’ performance. Besides, it is also important to identify multidimensional criteria for evaluating students. Implementing such system would raise the bars of standard as well as help students get judged based upon their understanding and not upon the amount of ink spent on the paper.
The writer is currently pursuing Masters in Business Administration (MBA) at Ace Institute of Management.
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