At institutions like the Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences, the language of ‘innovation, science and student-centric education’ masks the truth of commodification of education in these institutions which are turning the education sector into a marketplace. Within the Faculty of Life and Allied Health Sciences, students struggle in an environment where academic life is shaped less by the idea of knowledge and more by constant extraction of money, labour, obedience, and performance.
Despite the already devastatingly high tuition fees charged by private universities, students continue to face repeated demands for payments throughout the academic programs like, extra fee for workshops, conferences and additional certificate courses that are often presented as a part of the curriculum. Programs that should be part of comprehensive education are instead imposed on the students as monetised add-ons. The result is an academic structure where students are made to feel devalued with continuous targeting and humiliation unless they continue paying beyond their regular fees. Education under privatisation is very similar to a subscription model. Every skill becomes a commodity. Every credential becomes a purchasable token. The private university system financially and mentally exploits students with this pressure in the name of ‘opportunities’, where they are told how these certificates are mandatory and are threatened for their degrees if there is a failure to do so in the given time. The burden falls on students, especially the ones who already come from families facing a lot of difficulties to even access higher education. Such private institutions create an atmosphere where students are not treated as learners who have a right to education, but as consumers expected to continuously invest in maintaining the institution’s own employability. This exposes a clear hierarchy of power in which institutional gains, interests and extraction of money from students dominate over meaningful academic learning. The labour of students becomes part of the exploitative branding machinery of the university.
The consequences of this privatisation and exploitation of education extend beyond finances. Students increasingly face physical and mental exhaustion due to constant deadlines, assignments, and a classroom environment with little room for discussion, disagreement, or critical thought.
Some students from RUAS have shared that it is ironic how those who teach them subjects like Ethics in classrooms often seem to know nothing about practicing it themselves. Instead of creating a respectful and meaningful learning environment, some faculty constantly disrespect and humiliate students and make classes feel like a complete waste of time by simply forcing everyone to sit through the day with no lectures or engagement but in an atmosphere of fear and power assertion. Students shared how whenever any issue arises, the faculty respond with threats about marks and academic consequences.
Students are openly targeted in classrooms, treated differently, and humiliated in front of the entire class to isolate them and alienate them further, which creates an unhealthy and uncomfortable classroom atmosphere instead of one focused on learning and mutual respect.
All of this genuinely puts a mental toll on students when teachers hold personal grudges, use authority to settle personal issues against students instead of behaving with professionalism, fairness, and maturity.
University professors are supposed to guide and support all students, but when personal biases influence their behaviour, it creates a toxic environment in the classroom which has a serious mental impact on students. Students say that they reject this culture completely.
Threatening students with the withdrawal of guest lectures, field visits, or academic opportunities exposes a dangerous understanding of teaching itself where knowledge is treated not as a right but as private property controlled by those in power. Academic opportunities become rewards for obedience rather than essential parts of learning. This is not mentorship. It is coercion.
Students recount that such repeated statements imply that teaching students is put across as a burden or personal inconvenience which reveals another disturbing reality of institutional culture where students are seen as liabilities rather than learners. We are reminded that someone is “leaving their own work” to teach us, as though education is a charity given to us and not a professional responsibility funded directly through student fees and institutional salaries. What does this say about the condition of academia today?
Students of public health from private universities have stated that they are constantly taught about structural violence, systems of inequity, psychological well-being, and social justice under social determinants of health. But how seriously can institutions speak about these values while reproducing the exact toxic power structures within their own classrooms? These issues faced by students are bigger than one classroom or one department. It exposes a broader crisis in higher education where authoritarianism is normalized, dissent is discouraged, and students are reduced to fee paying recipients expected to endure whatever conditions are imposed upon them in order to get their degrees. We refuse to normalize this.
Privatized education transforms universities from spaces of public learning into surplus-generating corporations where students are simultaneously customers, unpaid promoters, and raw material for institutional growth. A university cannot claim to provide learning while continuously monetising access to it. Education is not a commodity to be bought, sold, and exploited for profit. It is a basic right that must be accessible to everyone with dignity and equality.
