Profitable Education

Mr.Manish Sabarwal of Teamlease Services writes: 

• Rabindranath Tagore has a wonderful story called Kartar Bhooth where the perceived static wishes of a dead leader make life difficult and kill innovation. The ghost of non-profit in education has similar consequences: 90% of education capacity created since 1991 has been for-profit but in the guise of non-profit because of legislation. This regulatory cholesterol reduces the ability of professionals like teachers to attract third-party capital for entrepreneurship. 

• More dangerously, it rewards regulatory arbitrage abilities and, consequently, most education entrepreneurs today are land mafia, criminals or politicians. This low-quality private sector capacity creation becomes a self-reinforcing argument against legitimising a professionally-managed, well-regulated and quality-minded for-profit private sector. But the most expensive school is no school and the primary case for private sector is not quality but capacity and cost. We should not care whether a school is government, not-for-profit, not-for-loss, for-less profit or for-profit. All that matters is a good school or a bad school. Let biodiversity explode.