Trends in the Education Sector - Essay Example

?Trends in the Education Sector Introduction Education makes man refined, cultured, and more importantly it has a formative ability on mind, character, and physical ability. The history of education is as old as the mankind. Education and education systems have constantly evolved and will change in the future as well. In the ancient days, education was considered to be a sacred service but, today education fortunately or unfortunately is looked upon with a business motive. Education those days were provided by scholarly intellects but, today education is not much about scholarly intellects, with other factors playing their roles. The metamorphosis of education industry is visible at all levels such as primary education, secondary education, higher education, adult education and alternative education. The change has been with the curriculum, learning modalities, teaching, technology, and economics. Education at preschool levels: Education at the preschool level has seen enormous changes in the last two decades. Preschool or Childcare was initially started with an intention to serve those working couple who have to leave the child in a creche, which can take care of the child during the day. Gradually these creche started converting themselves into education providers for the little toddlers. Creches not only provide care for children of working mothers but also play an educational role, with the pre-school education play a key part in child's development (Vlok 1996, pg.403). These schools fulfills the basic issues which the parents would like their children to achieve including personal, social, and emotional development apart from communication, knowledge and understanding of the world Since the initiation of the globalization process, the education industry has changed completely. Now educational institutions can spread their wings globally to any part of the world where potential exists including in developing but potential countries like China, India, etc. Educational institutions try to enter new markets through entry strategies like the franchisee system. According to a report “the preschool industry in India accounts for 985million$ and the largest chain of pre schools in India comprises of just 550 schools, less than 4% of the total market potential of 15,000 preschools”. (Kumar 2008). Though the above mentioned fact, it is very clear that in a country like India there is a huge potential to start preschool businesses. Modern pre schools which would like to distinguish from the rest and stay away from cut throat competition, now offers other extra curricular activities to the children who enroll with them like playing, teamwork, self help skills, scientific thinking, creative arts, etc. As far as the pre school industry is concerned the competition is from the unorganized sector. Parents wanting to put their wards in the best schools located at far away places have left many a school go vacant in the UK. In December 2008, revised school admission code was formulated and was presented in the parliament. One of the agenda is to “improve the application process so that parents can apply for a school place to the local authority in which they live, instead of the authorities where their preferred schools are located” (nfer.ac.uk) With the visible improvement in the lifestyle of the people, the demand for a well structured, branded pre-school will grow leaps and bounds in the years to come. “The preschools which have a good track record and look for new things to inculcate in their curriculum remain successful. Moreover, the education and training sector is ever growing and everyone wants to try his or her hand at it.” (Arora 2010). The other issue plaguing the pre-school sector is the shortage of teachers, which has become a universal challenge. The global teaching force in primary education has expanded since 1971 but, has slowed down ever since 2000. In primary education sector, education providers who can provide a decent pay to the teachers could stay afloat in serious competition. Although, parents wants better development in toddlers before the primary school phase, preschool education is not taken that seriously by parents. It is obvious that parents do not do so much of analysis before taking a decision, and that is reflected from the amount of data. and quality of data from various sources. The data available from the web was generic and hollow. Based on the unauthentic data that is available in the web it is difficult to jump to a conclusion. Education in primary and secondary education Primary and secondary education also has seen a sea of change in the last two decades. Schools offering primary and secondary education have mushroomed in the last ten years. The governments and the education department are now grappling with issues like quality of education and affordability. With the surge in population in the recent past, the need for more schools was always on cards. But, the population growth has outpaced the growth of schools. With favorable demographics on cards the requirement of a school which can provide quality education and can lay a solid foundation for their children is the need of the hour. Affordability is a key factor for quality education. In many European nations, it is quite common to find income inequality. “At a national level rural areas appear, on average, to do better, not only in income terms but also in terms of equality in the distribution of income”. (statistics.gov.uk). Governments started to deploy more funds on education to improve the educational industry and thereby nation as a whole. Many developing nations also realized the importance of substantial allocation of funds in their annual budget towards the education sector. “…a nations commitment to education may also be gauged by the relative share of public sector resources allocated to the sector” (ILO report). As part of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) many nations are keen to abolish the biggest barrier to drop outs from schools and that is school fees. Education providers in this industry can also do their part by treating the sector mainly as a service, with minimal business motives. This in a way could also make them competitive, when compared to other players. Like any other industry, market segmentation is a must for the education sector. The education market has to be segmented based on income, gender, requirements, curriculum, etc. After thorough segmentation, market targeting should be done. On the one hand, there is a segment which does not have proper income and the family struggles to provide their children with education, and on the other hand there is a market which is a niche segment with high affordability but, requires state of the art education. In between there are other segments which cater to the middle and the upper middle segments also. So one needs to do the market targeting with care and caution and understand the competition at different levels and make a judicious decision. The data pertaining to primary and secondary education from various sources appear authentic and holistic. Data concerning affordability and its impact on school education is more reliable as it was primarily sourced from government websites. Trends in Higher Education With several higher educational options available to students nowadays, newer trends are emerging which has changed the way people perceive about education globally. An assortment of career options from radio jockeying to news anchoring, program anchoring, content writing, fashion designing, event management, hospital management, etc,, have opened up several newer avenues for education. Long-established study courses like medicine, engineering and other subjects still have lot of demand. However, with the changing trends in the global and national economic development newer courses are fast emerging as alternative. The recent trends in education have certainly shown a difference from the previous trends. In particular, the emergence of online education, with many colleges offering online courses, has made the higher education a bit saturated with various options. This also has led to heightened more competition in this higher education sector, when compared to the preschool and the primary education sectors. Trends in postgraduate student numbers between 2002-3 and 2007-8, shows an overall increase across all education types. It indicates that while postgraduate numbers have increased the number of students doing other certificates and diplomas and professional qualifications have taken a nose dive. It is also interesting to find that Doctoral scholars’ numbers have registered a growth of 9 per cent during this period, and the number of UK domiciled students has shown an increase of 3 per cent and also shows a declining trend of late. Over all growth is witnessed in the higher education from the previous years. “young participation has increased from 30% in the mid 1990s to 36% at the end of 2000s making young people today over plus 20 percent more to go on to higher education than the mid -1990s” (www.hefce.ac.uk) It shows that a large chunk of non-UK domiciled students has grown from 30 per cent to 36 per cent of the group, with taught masters registering an impressive growth. Online Education Online Education is fast becoming a major preferred mode of education amongst students. Enrolling to regular courses is increasingly getting highly competitive, and so online education and distance education has come as a panacea to problems in the conventional education sector. Distance mode of education is offered through correspondence courses, where the student and the teacher meet once in a week or once in fortnight. There are several other advantages of choosing for an online study course. Being at their home students can secure degrees from many universities of repute across the world. Students need not have to make any modification in their present daily routine. While taking an online course, the students are free to study at their own convenience. There were no restriction regarding time and place. If a topic is found to be hard, the students can study slowly without rushing in. The other advantage in an online course was that, if a student forgot something about the lesson taught, they can immediately find the lecture of the instructor in their virtual classrooms. “The virtual classroom is totally different. If you can't remember what your professor said all you have to do is re-read his or her lecture.” (Loudon). While studying in a traditional course, one had to write down the notes. But in an online course, the lectures were always available online and so the students can take a print out of it, whenever they needed it. Importantly, an additional degree for a working employee, who cannot attend regular college, through online college will ensure them good career prospects. In addition, recent trends and developments in online education underline the vital and significant role of education in effectively catering to the political and socio-economic challenges in the society. The major challenge in providing education is the cost factor. The cost of education through the internet is relatively low and many can afford it. Students here also get a chance to lay their hands on many e-books, free of cost by downloading them. That is, with sea of information available in a moment, it allows the students to gather various books, articles to study. In an interesting development however, much efforts are going in the direction to make the learning process an enjoyable and fruitful one. Thus, with these advantages, online education sector is turning out be a major competitor for the conventional mode of education. On-line Universities, which do not require physical infrastructure, have latched on to the newer version quickly. By doing an online course a student can save his expenses on commutation, hefty college fees, and other miscellaneous expenses which he or she would incur during the course of the education. This is truer for certain kinds of courses designed to cater to the needs of students who do not have financial support from family. Perusing a specialized degree through normal methods ensures better jobs, but the level of success of online education and job prospects for them is yet to be ascertained. That is as, online education is of recent origin, the data available regarding patronization of such education systems by the student community is yet to be researched completely. In due course of time, a well researched data should provide us with the real success of web based education. Internationalization of the Education Process One of the key developments in the educational sector, and which also impacts competitive rivalry is the internationalization of education. Developments such as growth of internet, and role of World Trade Organization (WTO) in facilitating market entry for universities globally will have a tremendous impact in the education sector in the years to follow. Several universities has plans to have their satellite centers in other countries of the world, and also offer online courses to students’ across the world. Though such courses have the limitation of the absence of personal interaction, they compensate it by allowing students to have discussions with professors through setting up of online chat rooms. Other forms of internationalization are gaining more prominence these days. It may consist of international collaborations for the faculty members and also the students, joint research tasks in their offshore campuses. Many a European universities are keen to make an entry in the Asian region, particularly in the potential regions of China, India and also Middle-Eastern countries, and this will lead to collaborations between the European universities and the Asian universities. Collaboration is looked upon as a successful strategy to avoid competition. Improvements – A key factor Although the field of education is going through a sea of change, the traditional method of face to face teaching system is very much prevalent. Mushrooming educational institutions and ever increasing demand for higher education has exposed acute shortage of faculty resources. If the shortage of talented and inefficient faculty members persists, it will have its ill effects on then quality of education. “Regarding the individual’s learning style; some students are able to learn when there is a live interaction between them and the teacher while others don’t really need it.” (Moore). Apart from aptly recruiting need numbers of faculties, institutions have to incorporate quality standards to main their dominance over their competitors. The educational institutions are required to participate more into information sharing and accountability has become a key factor. The budding educational institutes are expected to set new trends in adopting several standards related to the quality of education. With the advent of science and technology it has paved way for several newer forms of innovative educational methods which otherwise is not possible. Different software are now being used by a number of institutions, and there will be growing need for reorganization and the process of controlling. The prospective clients i.e. the students look at an educational institute’s extent of technology adoption before joining the institute. In a nutshell, institutes have to be tech savvy to attract students and face Conclusion: Overall there is an increased competition across all forms of education and increased demand for newer education systems and niche providers, right from primary to higher education. The contemporary industry structure and rivalry is good as it will foster developments in the field of education which ensure overall prosperity and wellbeing of any nation. Prospective entrepreneurs as well as qualified prospective employees can be developed well, if they are given good learning environment in their institutions itself. “The role of enterprise education – in schools, colleges and university – must be at the centre of any meaningful growth strategy. Evidence shows that enterprise education doubles the likelihood of someone starting a business.” (Bewick 2010). With active and facilitating role played by the educational leaders as well as college staffs, more qualified personnel can come of educational institutions each year. 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