How to Decide Whether to Enrol in a Private Institution or a Public One

After graduating from high school, the biggest decision one has to make is the college or university they will be studying in. One of the pivotal factors in this decision is whether the institution is private or public. This aspect plays a big part because private and public institutes vary a lot due to the difference in the amount of the funding they get, the quality of teachers, and the amount of discretion in their hands. When one may be looking for the top colleges for a particular field in a certain city, say the top MCA colleges in UP, they will need to search for the best private universities in Uttar Pradesh and the best public ones separately. These are the factors which differentiate the two:

1. Tuition fees

Most of the public universities were founded by different state governments, or by the central government, to help the general public gain access to higher studies. Hence, even today the state government or the central government pay for most of their operating costs. They also maintain their working structure via trustees and appointed boards. This lowers the cost of tuitions at a public university. The student's fees do not have to cover all of the college’s expenses and are hence subsidized. Private colleges don’t receive any such funds and therefore rely only on tuition fees and contributions, driving up tuition fees.

2. Degree offerings and size

Private and public colleges may vary greatly in the number of degrees they offer and overall size and number of students. Private colleges are generally much smaller than public ones, due to the fewer funds they have when compared to the substantial backing by the government. Private institutions generally hold a few thousand students at the max, while this number can go into the tens of thousands at almost any government college.

3. Class size

Class size is another big difference between the two. Public colleges may have more than two hundred students in each of their classes, especially undergraduate courses, making it very difficult for an average student to access his teacher, and vice versa. In private universities, the class size is comparatively small, with less than a hundred students in each class, so that students and teachers can access each other easily.