Once upon a time ( not very long ago ) life for a college student was, to use an old cliché, simple to the point of being mundane. For some (like me) real-time started with a 10th Board exam. of HS or High School ( for some others, Board of SC or Senior Cambridge ) to be followed by 12th Board of Intermediate Exams. Those from SC were considered more anglicised and suave – would somehow pass in Hindi while the High School types, being not-so-cool, less likely to score highly in English for strangely obvious reasons, but often faring better in maths and science. But no-one,not even the best, could dream getting anywhere near 90%!
Things would eventually level after college pass-out into the big bad world of competitions comprising basically of two streams – engineering and medical (few even applied to armed forces) while many opted for graduation and post-graduation en-route to appearing for the All-India IAS, Railways, Income Tax, other Allieds or the SBI and PSU banks. Yet another set (financially solid !) moved to the US haven for higher studies.
When one saw/read that Mark Zuckerberg got his degree from Harvard Univ. more than a decade after he’d dropped out to pursue his vision of FB, one reflects that at the end of the day (of professional life), how much do academic results and marks count ! Many of success stories I know are of back-benchers in school, some even notorious pranksters !
Cut to the present and amazingly so many students get 90+% in their board exams and then high percentages result in high cut-offs to get admission in colleges, thereby de-motivating those who could not score well or who score even 80+% marks ( really fabulous in our time !). Should percentage be the only criteria for admissions ? Life is far much more than percentage and degrees but try telling that to eager, ambitious parents and the authorities, in a hugely competitive dog-eat-dog world.
The counter-argument is – this generation is far smarter and earns the high scores through smart prep and professional counseling. Multiple choice answers and objective type tests also enable very high scoring with ‘a little bit of luck’ of-course (like getting the right questions ! )
But is learning and imparting knowledge about success by scoring high – in the good old days, it was all about conceptual clarity and getting the ‘fundas’ right and also about the right values. Many from the old school might even sing sadly today “ Koi Lauta De Mere Bite Hue Din ….”
Working on Living 