Social Entrepreneurship Opportunities in Education

chillibreeze writer — Ganesh B

While "social business" may have many definitions, for the purpose of this article, I am define it as any business that helps societal development while yielding marginal returns for the entrepreneur. Societal development rests on many pillars, the most important among them being education. Poverty and illiteracy are considered the root causes for most problems in the developing world. While there have been immense social entrepreneurship ventures (such as microfinance) to address poverty, there has been very little social entrepreneurship in the education sector in India. The opportunities for social business in education are immense, and some of these opportunities are detailed below.

Vocational education
Are you looking for a doctor, an engineer, or an MBA? No problem – there are a dime a dozen! But try looking for a good electrician or a plumber and the probability of finding a good one will be less than 40%, and if you live in a metro, the probability dwindles to single digits! Despite the government's increased focus on vocational education, there is still a dearth for such skilled tradesmen. On the supply side, there are not enough seats in the Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) to accommodate the entire lot of applicants wanting to undergo vocational education. Hence, many aspirants remain unskilled and therefore unemployed across the country.

This situation presents a great social business opportunity in vocational education. One could look at setting up a vocational training centre at either the district headquarter level or the block level to offer short term and long term courses in various trades such as electrical, electronics, plumbing, mobile repairing, computer hardware repairing, tailoring & garment making, AC & refrigeration, welding etc.

While setting up such institutes, care should be taken to ensure that there is very high focus on practical training in the respective trades. For institutes wanting government recognition, the Modular Employability Skills scheme implemented by Government of India can be a big boon. As per the scheme, students trained by such private institutes can appear as external candidates for Government examinations and be certified by the Government at minimal or no cost. This provides an easy avenue for interested students to not only learn a vocational skill but also be certified by the Government thus making them an easy pick in the job market.

Rural entrepreneurship schools:
India is an agriculture based economy and despite the tremendous growth of the country, India still lives in its villages. Indian agriculture, in most parts, is dependent on the monsoons and the vagaries of the monsoon decide the future of many school going kids in rural areas. If the monsoon is good, the chances of a good harvest are higher and so are the chances of some extra income to keep the kid in school. Sometimes consecutive poor monsoons force a child to drop out of school thereby permanently erasing the chances of a better future for the child.

Under such circumstances, rural entrepreneurship schools can be a boon to these kids. The rural entrepreneurship school, as a concept, enrolls such dropout students and teaches them both vocational and survival skills apart from the regular school curriculum. As the name signifies, the objective of the rural entrepreneurship schools must be to cultivate entrepreneurial skills from an early stage and help build their capability to become self reliant. While the school will also help the child get through formal education, their focus will be to train the students on various rural technologies that can be adopted by the child for their livelihood on completion of formal education. Such rural survival skills may include various vocational skills, health related skills (such as blood testing/grouping etc.), and animal husbandry (including cattle & poultry farming). Such schools must emphasize on learning by doing and can look to making revenues through sale of products made by the school's students.

Finishing Schools:
Talk to any organization's HR manager and you will hear the same unhappy statement – "Today's graduates are just not employable!" Organizations lament that fresh graduates not only lack in technical skills but are also miserable in soft skills. Everything, right from the way they dress to the way they speak, write and present themselves, lacks professionalism. As one HR Director put it, "today's graduates speak crass English, write SMS language and behave like virtual avatars!" This situation clearly highlights the need for colleges to be an ideal finishing school. While most colleges fail to deliver on this count, it presents us with a great social business opportunity – finishing schools.

Finishing schools are institutes that focus on preparing such fresh graduates for an employment; in other words, making them 'employable'. The word 'employable' refers to employability from both technical as well as softer aspects. Finishing schools are the need of the hour both in rural and urban areas. Such institutes can partner with colleges and offer such finishing school programmes in the college premises itself. They can also offer it at as a retail model. The training programme must focus on communication skills (both verbal and written), aptitude, resume building skills, team skills, and interview skills.

They key to the success of finishing schools would be their ability to bridge the gap between what the organizations want and what the students offer. They need to constantly work closely with the students as well as the organizations in ensuring that the expectation gap is bridged. A mix of internet based online as well as classroom lessons could help deliver as per expectations.

Faculty development schools:
One of the many reasons for the poor quality of students is the non-availability of good faculty across all forms of education. Do a dipstick survey at engineering colleges and you will realize that most of the present faculty were students who passed out of the same engineering college the previous year. Today, most teachers are born out of compulsion, not out of passion. Very few people aspire to become teachers today resulting in the poor quality of education. Hence, most educational institutes are constantly looking out for organizations that could help in training their teachers and upgrading their skills. Thus arises a unique social business opportunity in the domain of faculty development.

A faculty development institute must focus both on the subject matter as well as on the techniques of teaching (teaching methodology). They must also focus on the effective use of technology to deliver quality education. Such institutes must partner with education institutes to deliver faculty training programmes. A key aspect to bear in mind is the need to have good quality content developed to ensure high quality faculty development programmes.

Most of the above mentioned opportunities can be started with an investment of less than Rs. 1 lakh. The returns may commence from the second or third year onwards depending on how large a market the business is addressing. All the above mentioned social businesses are scalable models and can be replicated across any geography in the country. The only ingredient for success in all these models is the need to be passionate about education and about making a change to people's lives.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in November, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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—About our writer:

A teacher by passion and an educationist by profession, Ganesh has been successful on both counts during his corporate career spanning more than 9 years. He is an MBA in Finance and Marketing from XIM Bhubaneswar and has been a successful Educational Projects Manager with organizations such as CRISIL, Reliance, Everonn and XIMB where he has been credited for launching innovative educational models. He is currently setting up vocational training centres for school dropouts in MP, UP & Rajasthan.

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