Education Suffers When GDP Grows

What is wrong with the picture?

Profession	Avg yearly income
Management trainee	$35,811
Teaching	$29,733
Consulting	$49,781
Sales	$37,130
Accounting public	$41,039
Financial Analysis	$45,596
Software design	$53,729
Registered nurse	$38,775
Accounting	$44,564

Source: National Association of Colleges and Employers (US)

Teacher’s income paints a dismal picture

Imagine after years of grueling studies and facing bitter competition, one makes it to his or her dream career ‘teaching’. The happy bubble bursts when one realises that he or she is being paid a lot less than the friends who took up other professions. And that’s when a teacher starts having second thoughts and others around learn from her mistakes early in life and pursue other careers.

Unless a person has taken up teaching as a career because of fewer working hours, secure work environment, or the paid holidays or other reasons apart from the joy of teaching, he or she will soon be rethinking this particular career choice.

So what happens when a talented person with degrees is paid less? Of course he or she makes one of the two obvious choices-a. resorts to other means of income b. opts for a career change.

The story is same everywhere

The disparity in teacher’s income is true for almost all nations, whether a developed one like US or a growing one like India. Even in US the top college grads do not opt for teaching as their desired work area as there are other well-paying jobs and even people who take up teaching supplement it with other part time jobs to subsist.

 In India a teacher’s income is not enough to run the house and one often comes across teachers with dual jobs or with an extra income source like private tuition, which is actually an illegal income making source.

Higher GDP means more job opportunities

GDP is on the rise and most countries are economically booming. But what we don’t realise is that with a booming economy and better salaries, teaching as a career does not appeal to most.

Take a look at the GDP growth of US, a developed country, and India, a growing nation. You will find that the trend of growth in India follows on the lines of US in recent years.

So if in US college grads are not taking up a career in education, the same fate can be expected in India too as the GDP is growing and there are other well paying career avenues.

Teaching is a recession-proof career and it was only during the recent economic depression that one found a surge in people opting for school jobs as ‘safe jobs’. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?

News excerpt during recession:

Government jobs are probably the best places to find real security. That includes people who work in public schools. Recently, even former Wall Streeters accustomed to megabonuses and fast routes up the corporate ladder have been turning to teaching opportunities in the New York City public school system, where pay is much lower but security is much greater. While private-sector employees are generally vulnerable to the whims of their employer thanks to at-will employment contracts, tenure laws in most states protect teachers. Tenure generally comes after a few years of teaching, and employers must then provide just cause and due process in a firing.

Why should we be bothered?

Since education is the background of any country and makes more difference to a nation’s progress than we can imagine, what can be said for any nation where teaching is not the number one priority even for teachers? Not only that even those who made the mistake of pursuing their dream career as a teacher leave for greener pastures when they find that their hours of toil are not getting them anywhere or stay on because of the secure job environment.

Why don’t schools pay more?

The popular opinion of people who are not so wise about these things is ‘why doesn’t the school pay more in terms of salaries?’ or ‘why don’t schools collect more fees so that they can pay their teachers well?’ This is rendered impossible because of the government’s directive according to which a school cannot escalate the fees as and when they want.

The government norm is that a school can make a hike of only a certain percentage on the total fees. If it is a new school with a high fee structure then the cap will not affect the teacher’s salary. However most new schools then go empty and a few also close down. If it is a 20 years plus school then it will have an existing fee structure which even hiked by a percentage every year will not be able to do justice to the pay educators get. This is basically the reason why new schools have better teachers and old schools end up with “Talent Exodus”!

Conclusion: Better GDP leads to poor quality of education

Indian surveys indicate that the top students would like to take up teaching provided the pay is raised substantially. The question is whether this can be done. If we are looking at the ‘future’ then this should definitely be done.

Finally we come to our topic- how does the improvement in GDP reduce the quality of education? By now you must have guessed what I am getting to. Yes, if the economy is doing well, well-paying jobs will be more in number and we can expect most top grads to take these up. So, what about the educator jobs then which try as much as we can cannot compare with the pay doled out by other professions?

We are back to where we began. Less pay, incompetent employees and the education system takes a major hit. And who suffers the loss if education quality is dismal?- of course the country!