When you hear the word ‘crack’, you might think of a walnut surrendering its contents. You crack a code to find out the secret message the spy is sending. You may also hear a bone crack, but let’s put that aside. Indian newspapers have now associated cracking more strongly with entrance examinations. Advertisements appear, that promise to help you crack something. A whole town, Kota in Rajasthan, has prospered with its economy and society gradually built on the idea of cracking.

The term is evocative. Cracking something means it is difficult to otherwise access the contents unless you have a special tool. The cracking experts provide tips and training to pass the test. Once you have cracked the IIT or UPSC exam, you access something highly desirable.

Youngsters in the thousands attempt these entrance exams, with a few committing suicide being unable to withstand the process, or upon failing the exams. The process of cracking tells us several things about our society that we need to face.

It is a sad comment on the nature of access to desired professional programmes or plum careers that we have created this cracking industry. Alternative programmes and careers are not seen to be desirable enough. Parents and students make it a goal early in life and stay obsessively focused on it.

It tells us that the selection process is draconian — the eligibility criteria (such as minimum marks), limited age range for qualification, and other conditions for selection create a narrow entry window. This increases the desperation of people who are driven to trainers who specialise in cracking. It tells us that our educational system teaches people in such a way that they feel unprepared to face exams as a part of selection procedures. Some pliant schools even see coaching centres as a way to outsource their responsibility.

Those who emerge successful praise the cracking process as a godsend. It compensates for the faults of their previous training. Even if they were partly confident of doing the test on their own, they buy ‘insurance’ by taking one of these cracking courses. And many, driven to a career that resulted from cracking an exam, spend the rest of their lives regretting their forced choice.

It should be one of the aims of our educational system to do away with the need for such coaching. We need to shift the responsibility back to educators and counsellors to guide students and help them choose appropriate career. Employers complain that many of our undergraduates are not ‘employable.’ By this they mean that what is taught in the educational institutions is either insufficient or irrelevant. Then, you would expect them to be actively engaged with educational institutions to correct the process which would reduce their own training costs.

On the contrary, employers have begun to interview candidates at institutions and hire them even before the student completes his or her programme. They insist that the school release the student before the completion of course work. The fear of losing the job opportunity makes the student beg for accommodation.

It would be wise if employers and industry practitioners reflect on their role and contribution to the process of education before they start their hypocritical complaints about employability.

The writer is a professor at the Jindal Global Business School, Delhi NCR, and Suffolk University, Boston

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