DTRI - Blog #Ethics

You cannot escape the all-encompassing embrace of Big tech. It will hug you tight tomorrow if not today. We live in its shadow, like it or not. You might as well smile under its clutches. It’s 2023 and there is no business on Earth that hasn’t been internet-ified. And why not? We live in a world of extreme pace. Entrepreneurs, investors, engineers and your neighbor are looking for scalable solutions that can make a quick buck. “There is always money to be made in food, pharma and education”. I don’t know who said it but someone did. The “Education industry” is an estimated six trillion-dollar market. The brick and mortar school to higher education sector does not concern us in this blog, but we will look into the lucrative and shady world of online education. This sector caters professional courses for graduates all the way down to primary tutoring. I know, the term “online primary tutoring” sounds very murky without exaggeration. To even build a scalable, profitable, 50x-returns-for-VCs kind of business, you are not going to get there without some serious sales and marketing operations. And that is the first problem we will discuss.

1. Selling to kids.

In some countries,it is illegal to advertise to children below a certain age. Regardless of the legal status, the practice is undoubtedly an extremely grey area bordering on unethical. So, what does it say about the much-touted unicorns that market to kids in India, when they not only make ridiculous and insane claims such as a certain Wolf Gupta aged 13 that earns in crores working at Google as an

AI researcher, but going so far as to paying shady companies to acquire cell phone numbers of underaged children?

In an ideal world, the people behind such antics would be finding it tough staying out of the courts. But today they are merely on the receiving end of mild internet ridicule, some of which ironically invites the ire of the culprits themselves and some comical defamation suits.

2. Quality of education.

Continuing in the vein of my previous point, if you dig into the numbers of the top Ed-techs in the country, you would find the top expense to be “Advertising and promotional” expenses. Mind you, this covers only fees paid to celebrities to be ridiculous on TV and big highway-side hoardings and such. We’re not even talking about sales, marketing and legal costs.

Only a paltry amount goes into actually creating quality, well-researched content and remunerating trainer fees. Not to mention, most school level tutors have been well known to be just, pardon my French, “picked off the streets”.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, for professional courses, “celebrity tutors” that have a well-established personal brand, auction themselves off for multiples of crores.

How then can the big guys assure us of quality education when their process is so marketing-heavy?

3. Tall claims and employment data.

I do not want to refer to the depressing oft-quoted survey and its “How many Indian graduate engineers are employable?” and “How many Indian graduate engineers can code?” numbers.

It is no doubt clear that our universities and policies are failing the youth. This does open up a space for the private edtech sector to right some wrongs. But amidst intense competition and plenty rival businesses, we see tall claims of guaranteed placements and promised packages.

But when it comes to raw numbers, the data is worrying. A survey by LocalCircles across 323 districts from April 1 to May 31, 2022, with around 27,000 respondents found that at least 69 per cent of respondents faced infrastructural issues and deprivation of vital services required while attending online classes, as cited by TheLogicalIndian.

The survey also found that nine per cent of consumers had infrastructural problems, 19 per cent did not like teaching staff effectiveness, and 10 per cent experienced refund-related problems.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that all edtechs are out to get you and your money. This is a wakeup call to the industry as a whole to stand up and take responsibility, adopt ethical practices and internal guidelines. Learn from past mistakes and communicate honestly to the customer.

Youngsters have to be especially careful when choosing organizations to help them in skilling up and boosting their careers. Go through the website, talk to the trainers (and not just the sales guys), assess the capabilities of the training organization and make educated choices.