Though this is not so relevant now as educational institutions are now closed, but this is true that every year the private schools and other educational institutions increase their tuition fees and other fees and sometimes they even introduce new fees and leave no other option other than paying those fees for the guardians. As a result, the whole process of education has proved to be an expensive affair. If you ask any family with school-going students, they will tell how outrageous are the costs of education today and describe the kinds of miseries they are undergoing in dealing with the soaring costs of education.

But why has the cost of education in our country been raised in such an unpredictable and unrestrained way? The answer is simple. To be frank, education has now become a business. It is not that ‘business’ is a bad word rather it is just that the schools and colleges have become such commercial enterprises where everything is measured in terms of profit and loss ignoring and to some extent tampering the very purpose of education.

It is also true that these schools are run by a group of people whose only intention is to make money. The motive of these people is to maximize the profit, let alone impart education. Consequently, schools in our country have turned out to be money-generating institutions and the authorities running these schools can be called as ‘the private school mafia’ who know how to swindle money out of helpless guardians in the name of providing standard education.

In a broader sense, these schools have formed an oligopoly, and by means of this policy they exploit the students by charging higher fees and not providing the desired quality of education. In the meantime, students are treated as customers, not as pupils. For the school authorities, it can be said metaphorically that education has become a product, which is sold by the teachers and the students are customers of this product.

Meanwhile it is mentionable that any kind of increase in tuition fees cannot take place without the knowledge of the school governing bodies. If it is so, then their roles are not satisfactory as they are literally doing nothing to stop this farce rather they are co-operating in doing brisk business in the name of imparting education.

Under these conditions, mass people should wake up and rejuvenate themselves so that they can demand for fiscal accountability from these educational institutions.