DailyPost 889
FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT
Intentions are most vital to our existence and take us on the desired path. Though we want to accomplish the goals our intentions are not aligned to it. ”Fake it till you make it,” is an English aphorism which suggests that by imitating confidence, competence, and an optimistic mindset, a person can realise those qualities in real life. Excellence in education field a generation back was supposed to be directly proportional to the infrastructure and logistics provided. And once this got sorted out academic quality was bound to shoot up.
The role of Human Resources both on the faculty and the student side was taken for granted. As things changed and money started being pumped into professional private education and to a considerable degree in schools and colleges too, the theory go unstuck. There was chasm between infrastructure and the quality of education and in hindsight, one can safely say, it was there to stay. While on the drive to get students admitted, quality of education was promised on the basis of the excellent infrastructure, which all knew was fake.
The understanding is that all that is faked is made to happen over the course of time because it was positioned as a self prophecy. Here, in education, this was not the case. It was not a story of very low quality TSeries cassettes being sold on the lane close to Golcha cinema in Daryaganj, Delhi in early 1980s to its iconic rise as the gold standard and with it, its owner Gulshan Kumar, who became the reigning deity of the music world. This is a disruption which has a clear cut methodology, anyone with the will can make it happen. He faked it till he made it.
The Indian private educational system mainly professional ones faked to be brand ambassadors of quality education, with the lack of will and hence the effort, could never make it to any reasonable quality. They had a good time window to make it but they were convinced of the fact that faking infrastructure for quality will hold good. That cannot happen. It is an irony that a whole generation of investors / educators could go wrong. Or their business model was not fit for education. Closure is the stark reality for lots of them.
MAKE IT TILL YOU FAKE IT DOES NOT HAPPEN IF YOUR ARF FAKE YOURSELF.
Sanjay Sahay