EducationWorld August 2022

Chile: Key reform on knife edge

A vote on whether Chile will accept a radical new constitution that enshrines bold commitments to higher education reform is on knife-edge as a crucial general election approaches. Public universities become free-of-charge as part of the wide-ranging changes to the system, which currently boasts some of the highest tuition fees in South America. A draft of the document was finalised by a constitutional assembly outside the formal political structure, but its acceptance is being inextricably linked to the fate of new president Gabriel Boric, one of the leaders of the 2011 student movement that called for the market-based education system installed by Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1980s to be dismantled. Critics say it’s far from clear how the changes would work in practice, or how the cost of the commitments could be met, particularly as the government has also promised to cancel student debt and to increase research funding from the current 0.4 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent. Under the gratuidad programme set up by Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s last left-wing leader, the poorest 60 percent of society have their tuition fees paid by the government, whether they attend public or private institutions, and it is not clear which elements of this system will be retained. Other proposed changes include a commitment to set up at least one public university in every region of the country and a new state funding system under which money would be distributed to institutions via block grants rather than based on the number of students enrolled. Maria Veronica Santelices, associate professor of education at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, says that if passed, the constitution will enshrine the idea of education as a right and give public institutions a stronger role than they have enjoyed in the past 30 years, when the expansion of Chile’s higher education sector was left mostly to private institutions. Also Read:Chile: Transnational recruitment drive

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China: Foreign students returning slowly

Recent weeks have brought signs that China could be — slowly — starting to let in overseas students shut out of the country for over two years. On June 20, Li Jiming, China’s ambassador to Bangladesh, announced that China is planning to allow international students to return, stating that Bangladeshis would be “first in line”. That same day, Pakistan’s education minister Rana Tanveer, accompanied more than 100 China-bound students — the first batch from Pakistan — to the airport in Islamabad ahead of their flight back. Yet halfway through 2022, foreign students hoping to return to China seem, by and large, to be in the same boat they were in when the year began: no closer to returning to their disrupted studies. At a time when much of the world is moving into pandemic recovery mode, loosening border restrictions and mask mandates, China has opened the door barely a crack. Of the nearly 500,000 international students in the country before Covid, only a small fraction have returned. And that’s not about to change any time soon, say analysts. “We don’t believe this year will witness a surging inflow of international students. We see no signals of loosening (the) zero-Covid policy,” says Claudia Wang, a partner in Oliver Wyman, a Hong Kong-based education consultancy. “That means there will still be strict quarantine provisions and the international air routes capacity will not fully recover.” Yet she is positive about Chinese universities’ resilience. “I’m not too worried (in the) mid-to-long run, as long as China improves the whole ecosystem supporting international students,” she adds. But those hoping for a speedy return may be disappointed. In 2018, the last year in which China provided official data on international enrolments, it counted 492,000 foreign students in the country. The largest group was from Korea, with about 50,000 — who have since been allowed to re-enter the country. But its next largest cohorts have yet to return. Some 29,000 Thai, 28,000 Pakistani students and 23,000 from India are still waiting for the green light, as are sizeable contingents from the US and Russia. In the meantime, China should be working to ensure that foreign students are a priority once its borders do open up, advise analysts. According to Wang, even before Covid, growth in new international enrolments had slowed, prompting Beijing to realise it needs to “further enhance degree programme quality (and the) nationality mix of international students”, to boost full-time degree enrolment. She is confident that “more best-of-breed programmes, better job placement pathways and visa policy” will attract more students from abroad. Read: China to consider return of medical students from India: EAM

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United States: Affirmative action ban fear

The recently reconstituted US Supreme Court is widely expected to rule against affirmative action in university admissions in the wake of its decision to end half a century of legalised abortion nationwide. In January, the nation’s top court announced that it would review affirmative admission cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, with a verdict likely next summer. This declaration of intent has raised concern that the court plans to use its 6-3 conservative majority to prohibit race-based preferences in college admissions. “The current court has clearly shown its willingness to directly overturn past precedents to achieve conservative policy goals, and I don’t see why this case would be different,” says Daniel Hirschman, assistant professor of sociology at Cornell University. In the past, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the basic principle of affirmative action. Last year lower courts ruled that Harvard and North Carolina universities were entitled to consider race when assessing a student for admission as part of wider efforts to create diverse campus communities. But unlike the Supreme Court reversal on abortion —which went against the position backed by a majority of Americans – the idea of prohibiting affirmative action is politically popular. In 2020, voters in California – despite it being one of the most left-leaning states in the country – decisively rejected a bid to restore affirmative action in its public university system. Such votes show that Americans strongly support the idea of a meritocracy, and mistakenly believe their nation already is one, “despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” says Hirschman. Affirmative action is also often dismissed as a relatively minor issue, given that highly competitive institutions enrol only a small percentage of US students. “Debate about admissions protocols at selective private schools in the United States is essentially a symbolic discourse,” says Mitchell Stevens, professor of education at Stanford University. The number of affected students is “statistically trivial”. But in states with top-ranked public institutions, admission preferences still carry real weight. A nationwide study earlier this year by University of California, Los Angeles, researchers examining public medical schools, found that among states that ended affirmative action, the proportion of students from under-represented racial groups fell by more than a third within five years of their ban. A nationwide rejection of affirmative action in admissions by the Supreme Court might however intensify pressure on US higher education institutions to take other important steps in the direction of racial and economic equity, says Dr. Hirschman. Those actions could include selective universities growing in size or adopting a lottery system among all applicants who meet a particular eligibility threshold, he suggests. Read: China: Sex education prudery

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Bank frauds boom

The small minority of regular readers of this page and publication in general are undoubtedly aware that your editor is more than disenchanted with India’s 256 Central and equal number of state government promoted public sector enterprises (PSEs). With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that ignorance of ancient India’s glorious tradition of free enterprise which had enabled the growth and development of the subcontinent into the world’s wealthiest region accounting for 20 percent of global income and output, and diversion of national savings into white elephant PSEs was a disastrous mistake. In 1969 it was compounded by nationalisation of the country’s 28 major banks by prime minister Indira Gandhi. Transformed into happy hunting grounds of the neta-babu brotherhood and managed by corrupt clerks ill-schooled in the fundamentals of banking business and practice, government banks have ruined the Indian economy by continuous denial of timely credit to industry and excessive risk aversion. Unsurprisingly, India’s public sector banks are among the world’s worst performers with NPAs (non-performing assets) averaging 15 percent of advances. According to a Business Today graphic report (July 24), India’s banks lost Rs.100 crore per day to fraudsters during the past five years with PSBs (public sector banks) defrauded of 80 percent of a total amount of Rs.5 lakh crore. Although it’s woke to criticise the BJP/NDA government at the Centre for numerous acts of commission and omission, one of its most welcome decisions is to privatise PSBs, starting with two this year. Yet it’s doubtful whether this declaration of intent will be implemented. The neta-babu brotherhood has too much to lose.

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Cast-iron corruption

Perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of the Silicon Valley of India i.e, Bengaluru’s real estate boom are the neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) brotherhood and corners-cutting lawyers, who have accumulated massive fortunes from the maze of documents required to purchase and register property. On July 20, ten teams of the Karnataka Lok Ayukta (ombudsman) made surprise swoops on the offices of 43 sub-registrars in Bengaluru and discovered “shocking irregularities”. According to Justice (Retd.) B.S. Patil who was appointed Lok Ayukta after the office was vacant for several years, sub-registrars offices where all property registration documents have to be filed, are swarming with touts (agents) who levy large commissions ranging from Rs.10,000-100,000 for completing dozens of documents — many written only in Kannada, the state’s dominant language. “Moreover, cash registers are not maintained, PAN numbers are not mentioned in documents to evade payment of income tax, registration of revenue sites is done illegally and higher officials neither supervise nor take any action,” a Lok Ayukta spokesperson informed the media. Outraged by blatant “maladministration and derelictions,” Justice Patil has initiated suo motu proceedings demanding explanation from the state government. But that’s an exercise in futility because such raids have been conducted every year since 2002 without any sub-registrar being prosecuted for corruption. Because under the rules, permission is required from the State to prosecute government employees. Meanwhile, it is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for the common man to emerge from a sub-registrar’s office without paying a bribe. Serpents slide freely in the garden city.

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Greatest PSE leader

“Each man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind,” wrote 16th-17th century English poet John Donne. The demise in Chennai on June 26 of V. Krishnamurthy (1925-2022) has certainly diminished the nation. It marks the end of the most distinguished leader of several show-piece Central government public sector enterprises (PSEs) promoted with great hope and expectations in the first flush of India’s independence. But with PSEs requiring continuous budgetary support, independent India’s public education and health sectors were perennially starved of investment with catastrophic consequences for national development. Be that as it may, under VK’s leadership several model PSEs — Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL), Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and Maruti Udyog Ltd (MUL) were established. The latter company was promoted by prime minister Indira Gandhi’s spoilt brat son Sanjay, who promptly crashed it. After it was nationalised during the Emergency, VK travelled to Japan and in a brilliant presentation, persuaded the board of Suzuki Motors to invest in this defunct PSE. The rest is history. In my previous avatars as founding-editor of Business India and Businessworld, I wrote several unprecedented cover stories on BHEL, SAIL and MUL (now Maruti Suzuki Ltd) and VK spent long hours detailing how he intended to transform PSEs into model profitable enterprises. On the other hand, I argued the case for ending PSE monopolies and encouraging private enterprise in the heavily regulated Indian economy. Presumably my advocacy of deregulation prevailed. Fed up with constant government interference and unchecked corruption in PSEs, VK transformed into a prime mover of the 1991 industry liberalisation and deregulation initiative of the Narasimha Rao-led Congress government, which doubled India’s annual rate of GDP growth. After retiring as chairman of Maruti-Suzuki, VK continued to serve the public interest as chairman of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council — a cabinet rank position and later as trustee of several education institutions in Tamil Nadu which he invited me to visit and project as model schools. Unfortunately, I couldn’t accept the offer due to work pressure. Undoubtedly, the greatest PSE leader of them all has passed after a long, arduous and finally unsuccessful struggle to reform India’s black-hole resource guzzling PSEs. The nation is diminished.

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Repairing CUET collateral damage

Mandated without adequate debate and preparation in the trademark style of the BJP/NDA government, the inaugural Common University Entrance Test (CUET) 2022 — promulgated as the sole exam for admission into undergraduate programmes of the country’s 45 Central universities — has made a disastrous debut, writes Summiya Yasmeen Mandated without adequate debate and preparation in the trademark style of the BJP/NDA government now mid-way through its second term in office at the Centre, the inaugural Common University Entrance Test (CUET) 2022 — promulgated on March 21 as the sole pan-India exam for admission into undergraduate programmes of the country’s 45 Central universities — has made a disastrous debut. The first phase of the exam held on July 15-20 in 554 cities countrywide was marked by chaos and confusion. The initial batch of 800,000 class XII students who wrote the new common exam for entry into top-ranked, low fees universities established and managed by the Central government, experienced high stress and anxiety. Delay in issuance of admit cards and last minute switches of exam centres resulted in thousands of students reporting at wrong centres where they were not admitted. Angry students and parents staged protests outside several exam centres in Delhi NCR, accusing the National Testing Agency (NTA), which conducts CUET, of mismanagement and bungling. It’s important to note that although mishandling of the inaugural CUET has made headline news, this common entrance test is for admission into 45 Central government varsities that constitute a small fraction (4.2 percent) of the country’s 1,055 universities. The remainder are relatively pricey private (39.7 percent) and low-ranked state government varsities. Therefore, well-funded Central government higher education institutions with superior infrastructure, high-quality faculty, well-maintained campuses and rock-bottom tuition and residence fees are the first choice of every higher-secondary student who has swotted for class XII school-leaving exams. And of the 45 Central universities, the most prized is Delhi University, particularly its routinely top-ranked undergrad colleges — St. Stephen’s, Miranda House, Sri Ram College of Commerce, among others. The intentions and objectives behind introduction of CUET are noble. It is the response of the University Grants Commission (UGC) — the apex level body which supervises and administers higher education countrywide — to the stress experienced by class XII students hitherto obliged to write multiple entrance exams, and popular colleges notifying sky-high cut-off percentages for admission into some study programmes. “In National Education Policy 2020, it is advocated that we should remove the multiplicity of entrance tests and have one single test so that students do not have to go through the difficulties of writing multiple entrance tests… with CUET, students can now write one single entrance test,” says Prof. Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar, a former professor at IIT-Delhi, vice chancellor of the top-ranked Jawaharlal Nehru University and incumbent chairperson of UGC. “Use of one entrance test for admissions in undergrad programmes has become a global phenomenon,” he adds. Given the relatively high-quality education provided by well-funded Central government universities at ridiculously low price, no sooner was CUET…

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JBCN Education: Promoting internationalism in education through a global curriculum

JBCN Education, a pioneer in the K-12 education segment in India, is creating pathways for its students into the global arena by introducing unique learning initiatives in its curriculum. Leveraging its international collaborations across several schools, JBCN encourages learners to explore and embrace different cultures and nationalities.

JBCN has rolled out this initiative across various levels […]

Nurturing global citizens through a transformative learning experience

– Shyam Kumar, Associate Director, Outreach, Admissions & Career Services, Vidyashilp University

The rise of technology catalysed an unprecedented global transformation. Over a relatively short period of time, we journeyed from the great dot com boom to contemporary innovations such as the internet of things and augmented reality. But that’s not all! Technology has seeped into […]