Education Cannot Be Left to Market

Education is not a commodity for private profit; it is a constitutional responsibility, a social right, and the foundation of scientific progress, democratic citizenship, and human development. Every civilisation that has achieved scientific and technological leadership has treated education as a public investment rather than a commercial enterprise. When knowledge becomes a market commodity, society itself is transformed into a marketplace where learning is purchased according to wealth instead of talent. A nation that commercialises education ultimately commercialises its future.

Karl Marx argued that the dominant ideas of every age are shaped by the dominant economic order. Educational institutions are therefore never politically neutral. They either reproduce existing social inequalities or become instruments for emancipation through scientific knowledge and critical consciousness. Vladimir Lenin similarly viewed education as a means of equipping ordinary people with scientific understanding necessary to overcome exploitation and participate actively in democratic and social development. Universities should cultivate independent thinkers and innovators—not merely produce technically skilled labour for corporate markets.

Unfortunately, contemporary India is witnessing the rapid transformation of education into a profit-driven industry. Schools, colleges, universities, coaching centres, testing agencies, educational consultancies, and skill-development enterprises increasingly operate according to commercial rather than academic principles. Students are treated as customers, parents as consumers, teachers as employees serving institutional profitability, and knowledge itself as a product to be sold. Success is increasingly measured by revenue generation, institutional branding, market rankings, and infrastructure marketing rather than scientific excellence, academic freedom, or contributions to society.

One of the gravest consequences of this transformation is the extraordinary financial burden imposed upon Indian families. Tuition fees in many private schools, universities, engineering colleges, medical colleges, management institutions, and professional programmes have increased far beyond the reach of ordinary citizens. Families frequently exhaust lifetime savings, mortgage property, or incur substantial educational loans simply to secure access to higher education. For countless middle-class and working-class households, education has become one of the largest financial liabilities rather than a pathway to social mobility.

This commercial model fundamentally deepens inequality. Access to quality education increasingly depends upon purchasing power rather than intellectual merit. Students from economically weaker sections, rural communities, Dalits, Adivasis, minorities, women, and first-generation learners encounter enormous financial barriers despite possessing exceptional academic potential. Education, historically regarded as the most powerful instrument for reducing inequality, increasingly reproduces inherited privilege.

Commercialisation has simultaneously produced an enormous private coaching economy that now functions almost parallel to the formal education system. Competitive examinations for engineering, medicine, civil services, banking, railways, universities, defence services, and numerous government recruitments have generated a multibillion-rupee coaching industry. Instead of strengthening public schools and universities, increasing numbers of students depend upon expensive coaching institutions merely to remain competitive. This parallel system reflects a deeper institutional failure: when classrooms become insufficient for success, education itself loses credibility.

The crisis is further aggravated by repeated examination scandals that have seriously undermined public confidence in India's educational and recruitment systems. Over the past decade, numerous national and state-level entrance examinations and recruitment tests have been disrupted by question-paper leaks, impersonation, digital manipulation, organised cheating networks, and irregularities in examination administration. These recurring incidents reveal serious weaknesses in institutional governance, examination security, and regulatory oversight. They delay admissions and appointments, impose enormous psychological and financial burdens on millions of students, and erode public trust in merit-based selection.

For young people, every cancelled examination represents months or even years of wasted preparation, additional financial expenditure, emotional distress, and uncertainty about the future. Honest students who compete fairly often become the greatest victims of systemic failures beyond their control. When examination integrity repeatedly collapses, meritocracy itself becomes vulnerable, encouraging cynicism and weakening confidence in public institutions.

The combined effects of commercialisation, excessive fees, examination scandals, regulatory failures, and educational inequality have created what may appropriately be described as an emerging condition of educational anarchy. This does not imply the absence of institutions, but rather the gradual erosion of coherence, public accountability, academic ethics, and scientific purpose within the educational system. Profit increasingly dominates policy, while educational quality, social responsibility, and scientific inquiry receive diminishing attention.

Within many profit-oriented institutions, academic administration increasingly resembles corporate management. Institutional priorities often revolve around admissions, branding, financial expansion, infrastructure marketing, international rankings, and revenue targets. Faculty members are frequently assigned promotional, administrative, and managerial responsibilities unrelated to teaching or research. Heavy workloads, contractual appointments, employment insecurity, performance pressures, and restricted academic autonomy weaken the environment necessary for innovation and intellectual excellence.

Universities exist to produce knowledge, not customers. Their central mission is to promote scientific inquiry, critical thinking, creativity, constitutional values, and solutions to society's pressing challenges. Research in agriculture, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, medicine, climate science, biotechnology, public health, engineering, economics, and the social sciences contributes directly to national development because it serves public needs rather than private profit. When commercial returns become the principal criterion for institutional success, research serving broader social interests often receives inadequate support.

The weakening of public universities has further accelerated this crisis. Budgetary constraints, declining public investment, shortages of permanent faculty, inadequate laboratories, insufficient research funding, and deteriorating infrastructure have limited the ability of many public institutions to compete with aggressively marketed private institutions. Yet no country has achieved scientific leadership by abandoning public investment in education. The world's leading research universities have flourished because governments recognised knowledge as a strategic national resource rather than merely an investment opportunity.

Scientific education also requires intellectual freedom. Universities should encourage students to question established assumptions, evaluate evidence objectively, and engage with competing ideas through rational debate. The scientific method itself depends upon freedom of inquiry, independent research, peer review, and open criticism. Educational institutions that discourage questioning or subordinate scholarship to commercial or ideological interests undermine the very foundations of scientific progress.

Education must, therefore, be viewed as an integral component of national development. Economic growth, technological innovation, public health, industrial productivity, environmental sustainability, democratic governance, and social justice all depend upon a strong public education system. Nations investing heavily in research universities, scientific laboratories, teacher development, and universal access to education consistently outperform those relying primarily upon market mechanisms.

India possesses one of the world's youngest populations and extraordinary intellectual potential. Its future depends not upon the expansion of educational markets but upon the expansion of scientific capability. This requires substantial public investment in schools, colleges, universities, research institutions, libraries, laboratories, digital infrastructure, and faculty development. Quality education must become accessible irrespective of income, caste, religion, gender, language, or geographical location.

Teachers constitute the intellectual foundation of every university. Their primary responsibility is teaching, research, mentoring, innovation, and knowledge creation. They should never be transformed into marketing executives or admission counsellors responsible for increasing institutional revenues. Likewise, university administrators should function primarily as academic leaders committed to protecting institutional autonomy, strengthening research culture, encouraging interdisciplinary scholarship, and defending academic freedom.

Equally important is the restoration of integrity within India's examination system. Secure digital technologies, independent examination authorities, strict legal accountability for paper leaks and organised examination fraud, transparent recruitment processes, and robust cybersecurity mechanisms are essential to protecting the credibility of merit-based education. The future of millions of young people cannot remain vulnerable to repeated failures of institutional governance.

The Constitution of India envisions justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity as the foundations of democratic society. These constitutional ideals cannot be realised if education remains governed primarily by private profit and unequal access. Public education strengthens scientific temper, combats superstition, expands opportunity, and enables citizens to participate meaningfully in democratic life. It is therefore not merely a welfare expenditure but one of the most productive investments any nation can make.

India's aspiration to become a global leader in science, technology, innovation, and manufacturing cannot rest upon unchecked commercialisation, exorbitant educational costs, and recurring examination crises. Great universities flourish through sustained public investment, academic freedom, institutional autonomy, scientific curiosity, and social commitment. Their success should be measured not by annual revenues or marketing campaigns but by the quality of their research, originality of their scholarship, technological innovations, and contribution to solving humanity's most pressing challenges.

The future of Indian education must, therefore, be reclaimed from the dominance of market fundamentalism. Education should serve society rather than capital. Universities must cultivate scientific knowledge, constitutional morality, democratic citizenship, human creativity, and social responsibility. Every student should have access to affordable, high-quality education, secure examinations, equal opportunity, and dignified employment based upon merit rather than wealth.

Education must never become an industry that manufactures debt, inequality, insecurity, and unemployment. It must remain a public institution dedicated to truth, scientific inquiry, human emancipation, and national progress. Only then can India fully realise its immense intellectual potential and build a knowledge society founded upon justice, equality, and scientific reason rather than commercial profit.

The writer, an economics professor and author, is currently engaged in research on Sustainable Economic Development, Political Economy of the Global South, and India’s Socioeconomic Crisis. The views are personal. acpuum@gmail.com.