Is Education becoming too costly ... ?

Thus, I am back to Bangalore. It was (as should be) very nice and refreshing Home going, also the social thinker within me was kept alive (in silent mode) and lot a many social fabrics were unthreading themselves in my imagination. I do not have wide study of Social constructs, neither I have the chance to participate in any relevant discussion, so I am not going to make any assertion, rather it will be a compilation. Of the many a things that touched my mind set during this journey, education was one of them. Particularly the cost of a "good" education can be any thing these days. Also, degrees are easily available for those who have money. This essentially means, you can buy engineering, medical, business management and many other degrees.
Dilution of Courses and Examination -- The standard 10th and 12th examination (CBSE) has become lot easier. I have heard of Sample Papers being distributed among students, in Kendriya Vidyalaya (they conduct pre-exam tests using these papers) and there are good chances that similar question do appear in the main examination. Interestingly the easing up of examination was done because of over-burden reports, suicide attempts, and every body should "feel good". This caused zooming of exam results to fit in 90% range, where still, skill set of student was limited to the sample papers. The system has no way to encourage intelligent students, rather it encourages parrots, the mediocre. Such a system also encourages planned approach towards study, where print outs, guides, supplementary books take place of Course books. The teacher comes to class, teaches student in very methodical way, the theme of subject matter gets lost in the way, and the foundation of child is built up in a weak manner. This whole "training" for examination requires a "dedicated" approach, which is surely not in the hand of Government schools. No doubt the result of students from rural areas have not improved much, moreover we loose raw talents (folks who were intelligent in mathematics in particular) very earlier. How good are Navodaya Schools ? This I am leaving to critics to decide, but surely they are serving very small fraction of population. How strong children are in their Geometry classes ?

(... to be continued ... )