India’s charge into online or e-learning, which offers the exciting prospect of making best quality higher education accessible to under-served youth in remote locations countrywide, is being led by several go-getting private sector companies and education institutions. Among the front-runners:
NIIT Ltd (estb. 1981; sales revenue: Rs.979.9 crore in the year ended March 31, 2009). Currently NIIT […]
With the global economic meltdown forcing corporates worldwide to cut costs, Indias once-booming IT sector, which increased its headcount to over 1 million in 2008, can no longer afford to spend millions on in-house training for new recruits. This ill wind for the IT industry is blowing favourably for the innovative Bangalore-based upskilling company A […]
Stranger to History: A Son’s Journey through Islamic Lands by Aatish Taseer; Picador; Price: Rs.495; 323 pp
Post 9/11 amidst the rise of global Islamic terrorism, interpreting and explaining radical Islam and its fanatical followers has emerged as a major industry which has kept printing presses humming. Yet most of the rash of analyses of militant Islam […]
Online education or e-learning is a constantly evolving technology. Over the two decades since it was first introduced to the public, this wonder distance education technology, which has the potential to democratise and revolutionise teaching-learning, has experienced a dramatic metamorphosis. The first teaching-learning innovation of the IT (information technology) industry that flowered in the mid […]
With the cash-strapped Central and state governments, who run a combined fiscal deficit of 11-12 percent of GDP ill-positioned to substantially augment bricks-and-mortar education capacity in the forseeable future, online learning aka e-learning has emerged as the great white hope of Indian education. Hemalatha Raghupathi reports
With 21st century India’s ramshackle higher education system able to accommodate a […]
It is prayer time at the Nur madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado province on the northern coast of Mozambique. At this school, education does not stop at religious studies; on Saturdays, the malimo (teacher), Mitilage Rashid, talks to the 120 students about HIV and AIDS.In 2008 Rashid attended a course […]
An international ombudsman to uphold the principles and values of higher education should be established alongside a global index of academic freedom. These are the key recommendations made by senior figures in European education who gathered in Romanias capital Bucharest, in early summer (May) to attend the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations (Unesco) […]
As you enter Lille III (the Universite Charles de Gaulles arts faculty), you are greeted with the words Le Capitalisme etouffe nos facs! Tuons-le! (Capitalism is suffocating our universities! Lets kill it!) spray-painted on the pavement.The graffiti, and barricades made up of tables and chairs, summed up the character of the blockade that ran at […]
Chinas education revolution, which has seen an explosion in the number of university entrants, could be stalled by bottlenecks in the supply of talented students, a meeting of leading Asian university heads has heard. Xu Jialu, director of the College of Chinese Language and Culture at Beijing Normal University, told a meeting of university presidents […]
Americas universities are the best in the world, but the kindest verdict on its schools is could do better. The country spends enough on them — around the rich-world average of 3.8 percent of its massive $ 13.8 trillion (Rs.66,739,000 crore) GDP — but its pupils do poorly in tests of reading, writing and mathematics, […]
Is English Indias first or second language? For a minority of Indians who have had the good fortune to be educated in the countrys 11,000-plus elite CISCE and CBSE English medium schools it is, clearly, the first language. For the rest of the population, including children who attend state board affiliated vernacular and so-called English […]
The Indian army, which boasts its own 123 schools countrywide, inaugurated its first primary-secondary school — The Golden Palm Army School (GPAS) — in the port city of Chennai on May 26, to educate children of serving army officers, as also grandchildren of ex-servicemen. The new school is expected to end the uphill struggle faced […]
An educator who believes that primary education should be life and skills-oriented rather than purely content driven, Mumbai-based Nupoor Kanchan recently (January 2009) registered ILEAP (Integrated Learning Enrichment Achievement Programme), a first-of-its-kind learning centre for children in the age group four-12.The mission of the ILEAP is to create an engaging, stimulating education environment in which […]
The Supreme Courts sharp reprimand to the Karnataka government while upholding a high court judgement striking down the states 1994 language policy mandating Kannada (or the mother tongue) as the medium of instruction in all primary schools in the state, has come as a welcome relief to right thinking citizens countrywide. While delivering the apex […]
Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats — David Brooks, New York TimesIf there is a common threat that confronts us all, its that we live in a world that has become increasingly individualistic, competitive, […]
After completing my bachelor in management science degree next year, I want to qualify for entry into a people-oriented career such as counselor in a hospital, or psychologist. Please advise.Shirin Mistry, Mumbai
A postgraduate programme in social work (MA social work) will help you become a counselor in the health sector. Alternatively, you could opt […]
On July 6, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the Union governments 2009-10 budget. It was a staid and sober effort, representative of the personality of the man himself. Its highlight was his focus on the governments determination to spend on projects targeting the poorest of the poor — the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Bharat […]
A final year English literature student of Mumbais National College, Nirja Patyal (20) divides her time between attending lectures and rehearsing with the theatre group Josh, which she founded with eight friends in 2005.Theatre always fascinated me, but for a long time it remained just a pipe dream. Then during my summer holidays after my […]
The Delhi-based HCL Infosystems Ltd has signed an agreement with Delhi University (DU) to dispense ICT training to students. DUs Campus of Open Learning (COL) has introduced several short-term professional training programmes to bridge the skills-gap of its students. As part of this initiative, COL has signed an MoU with HCL Infosystems for conducting programmes […]
The Union government suspended Prof. R.A. Yadav, chairman of All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), from office with effect from July 29 following his refusal to step down or proceed on leave in the wake of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filing a graft case against him. “Chairman of AICTE Prof. […]
“Were pushing for dramatic reform. We have to educate our way to a better economy.”
US education secretary Arne Duncan (Chicago Tribune, July 6)
“Let there be creativity. Let there be competition among universities. Its not the governments policy to introduce uniform syllabus in universities.”
Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal (Business Standard, July 13)
A decades old tradition institutionalised in the Indian academic examination process — from school board to university levels — is that answer scripts, once submitted, are never seen again by examinees. This tradition is being increasingly challenged in the eastern seaboard state of West Bengal (pop. 80 million) where the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led […]
Quite obviously the control-and-command obsessed education bureaucracy in Karnataka is determined to tighten rather than relax, its iron grip over the education sector in the state. Stung by high court and Supreme Court verdicts, which recently struck down its retrograde proposal to make Kannada or vernaculars the compulsory medium of instruction for children enroled in […]
The Yash Pal committee report titled Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education, submitted to Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal on June 24, which recommends severe dilution — if not abolition — of all apex-level regulatory bodies of Indian higher education, has created a flutter within the somnolent bowers of Indian academia. The higher […]
As recounted in your cover story, the new HRD minister Kapil Sibal has big plans for India’s education system (EW July). For the sake of every young Indian, I hope he makes good these plans. It’s important to remember that India has a history of high-profile HRD ministers promi-sing to enact drastic reforms, and little has […]
Prayoga Institute of Education Research, an established DSIR institution in Bengaluru, and The Sports School, India's pioneering integrated sports institution that integrates academics with professional .....Read More
In the run-up to the assembly elections in Delhi, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday announced an Ambedkar scholarship for free foreign education of the .....Read More
