Serious and detailed media investigations into the education sector are unfortunately rare – this is at great cost to hundreds of millions of middle-class parents and students. Indeed, much media seems dependent on large, full-page advertisements of all manners issued by universities, educational technologies, and tuition centres. There is clearly little appetite to bite the hand that feeds. In this context, it is heartening to read Pradip K Saha’s book, The Learning Trap – How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride (Juggernaut, 2023).Pradeep K Saha’s The Learning Trap – How Byju’s Took Indian Edtech for a Ride. Publisher: Juggernaut, 2023.Saha charts the rise of a charismatic teacher to a status where he (and his family, who held controlling roles in the company) were clearly out of their depth, especially in financial matters. By the end, there seems little doubt that there is rampant denial and fraud, alongside the financial heartbreak of so many families and young men and women. The scepticism of these families toward education technology will likely never be allayed.Saha quotes many heart-breaking stories of how low-income families (such as even auto rickshaw drivers) were exploited – some were denied refunds, and a lack of understanding of online subscriptions caused many families to bleed money, and end up in debt traps.Equally, what is most useful about Saha’s book is that it speaks to the larger educational milieu of India. As written, most media hardly investigate education. This is in tune with the larger fawning business media landscape over India’s economic prowess. Misunderstandings regarding education are rather more significant than fraudulent practices in say, a food-delivery app. The very idea that an education app can do so much – no less than transform your life – is itself unquestioned in our endless faith in technology.When the media does cover education it is mostly to bemoan the fact that Indian universities rarely feature in the list of best in the world. There is thus a stark contradiction – on the one hand, a certain segment may indeed bemoan this but on the other hand, it is simply taken for granted, as Saha writes, that the IIT-JEE or NEET or UPSC dream is only natural for India.Also read: ‘Treated Like Slaves, Abusive Practices’: Byju’s Staff Reveal Harsh Work ConditionsOne of the chief reasons that Indian universities – even the lauded ones – do not do well in rankings is that the admission process is designed to exclude. Entrance exams are choke points – their design is fundamental. A truly good university would have a broad-based entrance process that looks at the full potential of a student – this is why top international universities insist on many dimensions. Not just test scores, but personal essays, fuller CVs of achievements and individual projects, interviews, etc. Indian universities are rarely willing to spend resources to hire trained admission teams – it is simply seen as an expense in both private and public sector universities. Most public universities would rather save, and most private universities would rather spend money on more direct marketing. It is in this choke point that the test prep industry thrives.There is little trust in institutions – indeed, especially in the top ones – and hence it is convenient for everyone to simply look at a number in a single test – so-called “merit”. This deeply damaged ecosystem is where apps like Byjus (and many others) thrive. Indeed, there is little discussion on how to make the debilitated school system more robust so that these technologies/centers can at best provide a supplementary role – of making learning more engaging and deeper. Rather, the school system – especially its evaluation sub-system – is not held accountable at all, and the boards only ruthlessly homogenise in their evaluations.Companies like Byju’s, as Saha notes, had initially tried to make learning genuinely more engaging with animations and visualisations, and it is easy to believe that at one point Raveendran must have been a sincere teacher sharing his joy. The problem remains that if everything is anyway geared toward a few scores in a few exams, there is little learning – among other things, learning cannot happen in this atmosphere of high anxiety.The system is geared toward the test-giving authority being able to plausibly claim that it is not biased – thus many of the elements of these tests have nothing to do with learning (or creativity), but entirely to do with irrelevant skills such as being able to do a problem with tricks that increase speed. It is in these hacks that these edtechs thrive – deeper learning is sacrificed. It is the destruction of this learning at this crucial age that will then make it difficult for these students to ever think creatively. Is it any wonder then that this pool of students, and the faculty that has to accommodate this, can no longer hope to do serious Nobel Prize winning work, and have to go abroad if they have any such inclination. This indeed is a large part of the answer to why no Indian universities feature at the top of the rankings – college years are spent simply cleaning up the learning-loss of the admission process.Even more urgent than rankings is the thought that all our doctors, engineers, and civil servants also come through such a compromised system.One is grateful to Saha for these uncommon book-length explorations of the educational ecosystem and its sometimes bizarre manifestations – there is a need for many more such extended, critical explorations. Recently, far more laudatory books – such as Nistha Tripathi’s Unstartup – while providing useful context, for the most part simply reproduce the self-image of the founders and those who have a direct financial stake in these technologies. One is however glad for all these books – they teach us that there are no easy lessons, and that all stakeholders – students, parents, technologies, and universities – must all be thoughtfully invested in the task of rethinking education and careers.Nikhil Govind is a Professor and Head of the Manipal Centre for Humanities.