Visa delays and refusals are playing havoc with Australian universities’ course and financial planning, weeks ahead of the new semester starting July/August. Median visa processing time frames for higher education students have more than tripled in the past few months, according to the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). Fifty percent of applicants are kept waiting at least 47 days for their paperwork to be processed — up from 14 days in February — with 10 percent of students experiencing delays of at least four months. Meanwhile, refusal rates for offshore visa applicants are running at almost three times the pre-Covid average. Overall, one in five applications is rejected, including about one in three from India, one in two from Nepal and three in five from Pakistan. The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) says its deadline for South Asian students to accept enrolment offers used to be about a month before the start of a semester. Visa processing delays have forced the institution to increase the buffer period, according to deputy vice-chancellor Iain Watts. “If they haven’t accepted their offers by about two months before the start of term, we won’t confirm their enrolments because we know they won’t get a visa in time,” says Watt. According to Watt, UTS could lose more than A$100 million (Rs.559 crore) in tuition fees from students who would have been able to enrol this year but for the visa processing changes and delays over the past six months. UTS is one of 16 universities that has managed to retain their Level 1 immigration risk rating despite a widespread increase in visa rejections. “You can imagine what it’s like for institutions that are rated at Level 2 or 3, and have been put at the back of the visa processing queue,” says Watt. DHA figures show that demand for Australian education remains strong. Some 185,000 would-be students applied from overseas for higher education visas over the 11 months to May — slightly more than over the same period a year earlier, and more than 50 percent more than in pre-Covid times. But the number of visas issued so far this calendar year is 26 percent lower than in the equivalent period of 2023. Watt says all but five Oz varsities are losing students to other countries, principally the US but also non-anglophone destinations such as Germany and Malaysia, “because we’re perceived as not as welcoming as we used to be”. He doesn’t expect visa processing to improve before the next federal election. “All of this is about political parties wanting to show that they’re in control of migration numbers.”
Canada seems to be losing the attention of international students so quickly that its institutions might not recruit enough students this year to hit the sharply lower visa caps imposed recently by the Trudeau administration. After watching overseas student enrolments surge to more than 400,000, the federal government this year announced the imposition of study visa caps aimed at ratcheting down the number by about a third to around 290,000. But at current application rates, Canada’s colleges and universities might get only some 230,000 students from abroad for the coming academic year, estimates ApplyBoard, an online services company. Universities Canada says its members are “seeing application numbers down” by an average of 40 percent. “Canada’s attractiveness has fallen significantly,” Meti Basiri, ApplyBoard’s chief executive and co-founder, told Times Higher Education. “There is far less demand than supply.” The reason, explains Basiri, is that the Trudeau administration has taken several other steps in recent months beyond the visa caps, and had threatened more, which together are discouraging many international students from considering Canada. Those additional steps by the federal government include doubling of the wealth requirement for incoming international students, new limits on their working hours and new visa limits on their spouses. While the full enrolment picture for the coming academic year is not yet known, the apparent speed of the turnaround is shocking. In recent months, Canada’s higher education leaders had been loudly warning of dire consequences from visa caps, apparently unaware that those caps might prove moot because of other factors. “We did what the UK did,” says Basiri of the limits on visa rights for spouses and dependents of students, “and five other things on top.” Also read: Canada: International students can only work for 24 hours per week
As Jakarta (pop.10.6 million) rapidly sinks into the ocean — 40 percent of the greater metropolitan area of the country’s admin capital (pop.30 million) is now below sea level — Indonesia’s behind-schedule, controversy-ridden new capital city on the jungle-clad island of Borneo could spell a new era for the archipelago’s universities. The ambition for the new capital Nusantara is bold: a futuristic, sustainable smart city that can propel Indonesia’s economy, supported by a “21st-century education cluster”, including world-class universities. Two years in, the reality is a little different: a development project that is lacking in investment and — somewhat ironically, given the situation in Jakarta — a stable water supply. In June, amid concerns about the progress of the new capital, outgoing president Joko Widodo broke ground on the construction of a new branch of Gunadarma University, the first higher education institution in Nusantara. But analysts are doubtful that top universities, both within Indonesia and internationally, will be rushing to set up in the new capital. Not only does the new city still lack basic infrastructure, there is unlikely to be a mass exodus from Jakarta. “Perhaps the government might offer very high incentives for these universities to build in the capital city, but at the end of the day in terms of population, in terms of the demand, (it) is still located in Jakarta,” says Teguh Yudo Wicaksono, head of the Mandiri Institute, an economic thinktank. Indonesia has been attempting to attract international universities more widely in recent years, inviting top institutions to establish branch campuses and develop new research centres. In 2022, Australia’s Monash University opened a branch on the outskirts of the current capital — crucially, on the opposite side of the city to the sinking north Jakarta — while Deakin and Lancaster universities are set to open a joint campus in Bandung, 94 miles from Jakarta.
The route to Sunway University is far from your typical campus approach. To reach this Malaysian institution, you must first navigate to Sunway City on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, past various Sunway hotels and Sunway shopping malls, away from the Sunway medical centre, until you reach the entrance to a canopied walk. Sunway U is a prized feather in the cap of the south-east Asian conglomerate that established it in 2004. Universities such as Sunway have been popping up across Asia for decades. South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) was established in the 1980s by a steel company, while Malaysia is also home to Universiti Teknologi Petronas, set up in the late 1990s by the Petronas oil and gas corporation. And newer ones are emerging — Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup broke ground on VinUni in 2018, the same year that India’s Jio University was established by the parent company of the country’s most popular telecom company. For big businesses, setting up a university seems an unusual move as it is unlikely to generate the profits they are used to. But there are other driving factors. In some cases, company leaders feel they need to step in if they want to secure the graduates they need for their expanding workforces, while others are prodded by governments or are simply philanthropically minded and keen to support the development of their nation. Often, it is a mix of all these reasons. Whatever the motivation, many of the institutions are having an impact. “The famous ones… are really among the best universities,” says Philip Altbach, professor emeritus at Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education. “These are some of the most innovative institutions in their respective countries.” Not a few scholars also believe that universities with their roots in industry are well-placed to develop employable students — some of whom go on to work for their alma mater’s parent company. At Sunway University, for example, students have opportunities to intern with the conglomerate, as well as with other organisations. However, while the best ones may be driving innovation in higher education, there is also a “sleazy” underworld of companies setting up low-quality institutions for non-altruistic purposes, according to Altbach. For example, there are cases of property developers in Indonesia and the Philippines attempting to attract homebuyers with the promise of new universities that, in reality, are unlikely to offer much by way of quality education. And even among the best of these universities, their demographic reach can be limited. “Despite their deep pockets, they’re, generally speaking, tuition dependent,” says Prof. Altbach. This means they tend to attract those who can afford to pay higher fees — middle-and upper-class students — which does little for improving access to higher education. Depending on how they are set up, corporate-owned universities also risk falling prey to market fluctuations and shareholder whims. Sunway University, for example, only narrowly avoided being caught up in the 2007 financial crisis because the group’s founder, fearing bankruptcy, had moved…
Ideally, Marianne Korkalainen’s high school in Rautavaara, a tiny town in eastern Finland, would enrol at least 20 new pupils each year. This autumn, her shrinking municipality will send her only about 12. But Ms Korkalainen, the head teacher, has a plan: she intends to invite half a dozen youngsters from poorer countries to help fill her empty seats. Eager adolescents from places such as Myanmar, Vietnam and Tanzania will swap their tropical cities for her snowy bolthole. They will receive a Finnish education. At Finnish taxpayers’ expense. School-age populations are shrinking in lots of European countries — and in Finland, faster than most. By 2030, the country could have nearly 10 percent fewer children aged 4-18, according to EU projections. By 2040, their ranks might be smaller by 20 percent. This spells trouble in particular for rural schools, which suffer from having few births and from migration to the cities. Hundreds have shut their doors in recent decades. Some now offer local youngsters incentives, such as free driving lessons and small cash “scholarships”, in the hope of retaining them. The idea of giving vacant desks to foreigners is new, and has been propelled by a Finnish startup. Finest Future sells online Finnish lessons to eager beavers in Asian, African and Latin American countries. Those who achieve decent proficiency are referred to willing schools. By the end of this year, the firm will have helped import around 1,500 foreign pupils. But it says its goal is ultimately to supply Finland’s upper secondary schools — which educate about 110,000 students in total — with around 15,000 new students each year. Already some small schools are taking in more foreign pupils than Finnish ones. In the long run all Finns benefit, argues Peter Vesterbacka, Finest Future’s co-founder, an entrepreneur who helped build the ‘Angry Birds’ brand for Rovio, a games company. Finland’s total population of 5.5 million will start declining within the next decade. The country struggles to attract high-skilled foreign workers (about 9 percent of its inhabitants were born abroad, one of the lowest rates in Europe). Vesterbacka reckons that foreigners who turn up when they are teenagers, who learn the language, and who are educated in the Finnish system are far more likely to stay, and succeed, than adults who are targeted later through skilled-worker programmes. He reckons they bring much more money into the country than the government must spend on their instruction. Also read: Finland: 12-Year-Old opens fire at school, killing one
With cannons on campus, its own Qing-dynasty wall and the first Dutch fort in Taiwan nearby, National Cheng Kung University seems an appealing place for a budding historian. However, after a first round of applications, no students had accepted places in the history department for next year. It is a shock for the university, ranked third in Taiwan. In much of East Asia, universities face a demographic crisis. In Japan the population of 18-year-olds has been declining since the 1990s. In Taiwan, the undergraduate population has dipped by more than a quarter in the past decade. Experts in South Korea talk of an “enrolment cliff”, as 3.6 million students in 2010 fell to 3 million last year. This has hit humanities and social-sciences departments hard. Faced with a more uncertain economic environment than their parents, students want to study subjects that will lead to well-paid jobs. These are mostly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Private universities, which educate most students in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, often depend on tuition fees, and therefore most need to adapt to students’ wishes to stay afloat. In South Korea, 18 private universities have closed for good since 2000. What’s to be done? Universities have managed to increase foreign student numbers, but not enough to offset demographic decline. But efforts to increase the rate of university-going among locals could still bear fruit. In Japan, the growth in female students has meant that the university population increased slightly over a decade. In Singapore, the number of students continues to rise, even as the traditional university-age population is falling, through policies which encourage older student cohorts to enroll. Singapore’s government, while fond of STEM subjects, also stresses the importance of social sciences and the humanities for policymaking. The number of students in these faculties is growing. Also read: Asean: Few humanities takers
A climate scientist has become the first female leader of Mexico after winning a record-breaking majority on the back of promises to transform the country into a “scientific and innovation power”. But questions remain over how far she will break from the populist policies of her predecessor. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, a former professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam), will assume office on October 1, replacing her mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose six years in power saw numerous attacks on academics. The strong mandate for the member of Lopez Obrador’s left-wing Morena party could give her the legitimacy to establish her own policies away from the influence of the outgoing president, says Cath Andrews, a history professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (Cide) in Mexico City. Lopez Obrador oversaw a series of cuts to institutions’ budgets — particularly those he perceived as opposing his regime — and passed a science law that sought to shape research spending around his government’s priorities. “Until now, she (Dr. Sheinbaum) has been extremely careful not to antagonise Lopez Obrador, nor suggest she will be anything but the continuation of his project,” says Dr. Andrews, adding that this “makes it very difficult to accurately predict what she is going to do on all fronts, higher education included”. Pardo’s background as an academic (she is also the daughter of academics) has, however, raised hopes that she might be more sympathetic. Not everyone is convinced. Alma Maldonado, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, says she has seen little sign that Dr. Sheinbaum might treat universities differently, pointing out that she is known as “the copy” and has embraced all of President Lopez Obrador’s reforms, including recent proposed changes to the judiciary. But Dr. Sheinbaum’s education adviser, Rosaura Ruiz, an Unam professor, recently signalled a potential departure from the past when she said in an interview that “nothing has been decided” on Mexico’s controversial science law passed in tumultuous fashion in 2023, and since the subject of a legal challenge. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: Mexico: Textbooks rewriting anger
(Dr. Larry Arnn is President, Hillsdale College, USA. [email protected]) As in India and much of the world, politics has been turbulent in America for years. Perhaps it is worse here. President Trump has been impeached twice by our House of Representatives, but both times acquitted by the Senate. After all that, he is still front runner for the presidency in an election scheduled for November. President Biden, showing signs of age for years, performed poorly in a face-off debate with President Trump on June 27. Now he has withdrawn from the race and the Democratic Party must choose a new candidate at its August 19-22 convention, probably incumbent vice president Kamala Harris. That candidate will have just ten weeks to campaign before the election on November 5. It is a mess. This election is consequential for every area of policy, including education. I prefer the Republican platform, which supports the wave of decentralisation sweeping across the US. ‘School choice’ is the term we use for it. It takes several forms, the biggest being charter schools, about which I have written in a previous column. Charter schools are exempt from many of the bureaucratic controls that plague our system. In contemporary America, more than half the employees in public schools are not teachers. Legions are employed to formulate complex rules about what and how to teach. Little wonder that American students score poorly in reading and math assessment skills. Students of charter schools do better. Since 2019, public school enrollment in America has fallen 3 percent. On the other hand, charter schools enrolments have risen by 7 percent over the same period. Homeschooling has also become popular across the nation. People are fleeing a system that doesn’t perform. This trend is important. Schools thrive when authority is located in the school. Learning happens in the soul of each student. Teachers and parents who know the student are the best people to enable and empower. They may not possess the expertise of high-brow intellectuals, but education doesn’t become rocket science until later years. Up to that point, common sense, native intelligence, love, and hard work are sufficient to guide the learning of the young. Just as every puppy is born to bark and wag its tail, every human child is born to learn. Parents are seldom experts in caring for babies. Somehow they have always managed. In America, government has become larger, relative to everything else, and steadily more centralised for three generations. As this has happened, money has moved farther away from the people who earn and provide it and from their needs. In America, school choice is reversing this trend in education. In India, a very large percentage of students attend private schools. I think this is a healthy development. Also read: LETTER FROM AMERICA: In praise of charter schools
Like the previous six Union budgets presented by her, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s seventh consecutive budget has missed the opportunity to make adequate provision for foundational literacy and numeracy and basic education for India’s 265 million in-school children – writes Dilip Thakore Long-tenured finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s seventh consecutive Union Budget 2024-25 has attracted favourable comment from industry leaders, academics, media pundits and the commentariat, and brickbats from the rejuvenated opposition party leaders. As usual, industry spokespersons have lauded it. Especially for continuity and attention to macro-economic stability. They derive comfort from the BJP/NDA 3.0 government’s sizeable allocation for infrastructure capex (Rs.11.11 lakh crore of a total budget expenditure of Rs.48.21 lakh crore), overdue attention to boosting the growth of MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) and skilling India’s youth to prepare them for gainful employment. On the other hand, leaders of opposition parties who received a new lease of life in General Election 2024 in which the BJP’s brute majority in the Lok Sabha was reduced to 240 from the earlier 303 (and the Congress party’s tally almost doubled from 52 to 99), have condemned Union Budget 2024-25 for paying little more than lip service to inflation and unemployment, especially of India’s huge youth population streaming out of education institutions. Media coverage of the budget has varied between sombre editorials and jokey coverage in dailies which report only parts of the budget. To provide a holistic picture of the latest income and expenditure balancing act of the BJP/NDA government which has been in power at the Centre since 2014, and especially to assess its provision for long-neglected education and human resource development that your editors believe is the essential precondition of national development, we present a holistic overview of Union Budget 2024-25. The objective is to evaluate the extent to which it will enable high potential but chronically mismanaged India to move towards attaining middle class nation status. Although in India, the ritual of drawing up the annual Union Budget is projected as an arcane and complex science, stripped down to basics, the budget of the Central government (and state governments) is essentially an income and expenditure balancing exercise, not very different from balancing budgets in households countrywide. As in every household, the task of government is to do its utmost to increase income to fund expenditure. Except that unlike private households, by virtue of its control of the Reserve Bank of India, the Central government has the power to print additional currency unlimitedly, i.e run up a fiscal deficit. Unlike Mr. Micawber (David Copperfield) who dreaded fiscal deficits (“annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness; annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds naught and six, result misery”), governments don’t fear debtors prison. In Union Budget 2024-25, the fiscal deficit of the Central government is estimated at Rs.16.13 lakh crore, welcomed almost unanimously because it is on a “downward glide path” (4.9 percent of GDP cf. 5.6 percent in 2023-24), and…
Raymond Ravaglia is former director of pre-collegiate studies, Stanford University International students often bedazzled by the prospect of enroling in American universities are likely to make sub-optimal choices leading to dashed hopes for life after graduation More harmful than not knowing, is believing something false to be true. Higher education, with its mix of self-appointed experts, high cost of failure, and aversion to deviating from collective wisdom, is a domain in which false beliefs abound. International students far removed and often bedazzled by the prospect of enrolling in American universities are likely to make suboptimal choices leading to dashed hopes for life after graduation. While great expectations cannot be entirely prevented, they can be punctured, and their influence dissipated. Myth 1. Advanced Placement is a national curriculum. For students from countries with heavy-handed education ministries and highly regimented board examinations, it can be hard to accept that the United States does not have a national curriculum. In search of the nearest to a de facto national curriculum, Advanced Placement (AP) emerges as a logical choice. What most parents and students abroad are unlikely to be aware of is that universities have been suspicious of the quality of Advanced Placement for at least 30 years. This is why although a score of 3 is widely regarded as a pass, few top-ranked universities award credit for less than 4. The truth is that AP does not impact admissions like respected international curricula do. While Stanford University’s Admissions Office requires international students in IB or Cambridge International GCSE affiliated schools to submit board exam results, AP exam results are a weak signal, having little impact on admissions. Myth 2. Graduate student experience is equivalent to the undergraduate. While no one believes graduate and undergraduate experiences are similar, people often believe stories heard from older family friends and relatives about big public universities in the US — that they are equivalent or near equal. But there are tremendous differences between being a graduate and undergraduate student, not least of which is that graduate students are usually paid to be there while undergrad students pay for the privilege. Other differences include class sizes, faculty interaction, and housing. This uneven distribution of resources invariably makes graduate school enjoyable, and undergrad life less than ideal. Myth 3. Students graduate in four years. Most international students are aware that university undergrad programs in the US are of four years duration. What they don’t know is that most students take longer to graduate. Only 50 percent of international students, and 44 percent of domestic students, entering university as undergraduates emerge from the academy with a degree within four years. Indeed, the fact that four-year degrees typically take longer to complete is why the statistic most often given in the discussion of graduation rates is the six-year graduation rate. Myth 4. University selectivity is all important. While there are clear economic benefits to earning a university degree, many misconceptions exist about the importance of choosing a top-ranked university as measured…
The Great Nicobar Betrayal Curated by Pankaj Sekhsaria THG PUBLISHING Rs. 499 Pages 100 Flash floods, wildfires, cyclones, droughts, landslides and earthquakes are climate catastrophes which are Mother Nature’s reaction to relentless industrialisation in the name of development. But is anyone heeding these warnings? Certainly not the incumbent Government of India. Within a two-year period, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) have granted final environmental clearance to a project, ironically titled ‘Holistic Development of Great Nicobar Island’. The Andaman & Nicobar Islands — comprising pristine forest totaling an area of 3,185 sq. km in the eastern Indian Ocean and inhabited by tribal communities — are India’s last outpost in the east. Researcher-academic and currently senior project scientist, DST-Centre for Policy Research, IIT-Delhi, Pankaj Sekhsaria is a vocal and articulate critic of environmental and ecology damage being inflicted countrywide by government and industry. In this slim volume (100 pages with photographs) he presents a compilation of critiques, essays written by experts warning of magnitude of devastation this unspoilt island will suffer if this project is implemented. It proposes to establish a Rs.40,000 crore transshipment port at Galathea Bay (a prime nesting site of the giant leatherback turtle), an international airport, a gas and power plant, a greenfield township with luxury hotels and tourism attractions spread over 160 sq. km to host and house 3.5 lakh citizens from mainland India. The environmental impact will be deforestation of over 1 million trees, several centuries old, displacement of the last remaining indigenous population of Shompen tribals and The Great Nicobarese people, and destruction of the natural ecology of the island. The proposed budget for this project is Rs.72,000 crore, to which add inevitable project over-runs of Rs.28,000 crore to arrive at a round Rs.100,000 crore. The reasons given by NGT for implementation of this project are: Boosting defence capabilities. The Indian Ocean has emerged as a key intersection zone of Indian and Chinese strategic interests. Elimination of poaching of flora and fauna. The project document cites media reports of marine resources — corals, sharks and fish — being illegally poached. Economic considerations such as the potential for international trade and cargo transshipment, tourism, and employment of 350,000 inhabitants from mainland India. In 2023, the Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways invited expressions of interest (EOI) for the construction of a port in Galathea Bay. Ten firms have submitted their EOIs. Among them Adani Ports, JSW Infra, Royal Boskalis Westminster, Rail Vikas Nigam, Container Corporation of India, and Essar Ports. In 1978, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had rejected proposals for construction of a transshipment port at sites in the A&N islands, including Port Blair, citing its potential impact on the islands’ endemic tribal culture and ecology. And it was declared a Notified Protected Area. In 2021, through a slew of de-notifications, the Government of India abolished all property rights of the indigenous population, the Galathea Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, forest protection of over 200 sq. km…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) It’s raining accolades for Indore teenager Ved Lahoti (17). A student of Allen Career Institute, Kota, Ved chalked up an incredible 355 of a maximum possible score of 360, the highest ever in IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) Advanced — held on May 26. IIT-JEE (Mains), the joint entrance examination of India’s globally reputed 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), is reportedly the world’s toughest admissions exam written by 1.4 million higher secondary school-leavers of whom 2.5 lakh qualified for IIT-Advanced, of whom 17,740 were accepted into the IITs. By virtue of his top score Ved has been admitted into the top-ranked IIT-Bombay’s four-year B.Tech (computer science) degree programme. The younger of two children of Yogesh Lahoti, a construction manager in Reliance Jio, and homemaker mother Jaya, Ved attributes his extraordinary academic success to consistent preparation. Starting with participation in science Olympiads, regular practice tests and thorough analysis of test papers by Allen, Kota teachers, parental support and most of all, to the support of grandfather R.C. Somani, a retired engineer. “Much before I moved to Kota, my grandfather used to help me strategise and draw up balanced study schedules which enabled my regular study habit,” acknowledges this young whiz. An academic topper throughout school (SICA Senior Secondary School and Rankers International) in small town Indore, Ved believes there’s no substitute for a disciplined study regimen. “I was always interested in computer science and math while in school and determined to study in a top-ranked IIT. After I completed the class X CBSE board exam, my parents decided to enroll me in a two-year Allen Tutorials IIT-JEE test prep program. They believed that Kota’s highly competitive culture would rub off on me. It did. During my two years with Allen, I followed a daily schedule of 10-12 hours of rigorous study and restful eight hours of sleep,” says Ved, who has formally challenged IIT-JEE to show cause why they deducted five marks in IIT-JEE Advanced. Having set the stage for his future at IIT-B, Ved intends to make a career in AI and quantum physics research. “India doesn’t have a good reputation for deep, breakthrough research. I hope to change that,” he says. Wind beneath your wings!
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) A class XII student of Mumbai’s CBSE-affiliated Navy Children School, Kaamya Karthikeyan (16) became the youngest Indian to scale Mt. Everest — the highest point on Planet Earth. On May 20, she accomplished this eight-hour gruelling feat from the Nepal side for the first time after pioneer woman mountaineer Bachendri Pal four decades ago. Conquering new heights is Kaamya’s mission. Since age ten (2017), she has ascended Africa’s highest Mt. Kilimanjaro (5,756 m); Europe’s Mt. Elbrus (5,642 m), Australia’s Mt. Kosciuszko (2,228 m), South America’s Mt. Aconcagua (6,962 m), and North America’s Mt. Denali (6,190 m). Born into an adventure sports-loving family — Western Navy Commander S. Karthikeyan and her mother Lavanya, an early childhood educator — Kaamya developed interest in mountaineering on her father’s knee as he recounted his several Himalayan mountain-scaling expeditions. “My father has been my role model, coach and in recent years, climbing partner as well! But it was my mother who accompanied me on my first Himalayan trek,” she recalls. Starting with weekend treks in Lonavala near Mumbai at age three, by the time she was nine, Kaamya had completed several high-altitude Himalayan treks with her parents including Roopkund, Harki Dun and Chandrasheela in Uttarakhand, and reached the Mt. Everest base camp. In 2017, she scaled Stok Kangri peak (6,153 m) in Ladakh. Kaamya has no regrets about the time invested in her mountaineering expeditions. She believes it has enhanced her academic performance. However, the downside of her climb-every-mountain compulsion is the expense involved. “For instance, Kaamya’s recent Mt. Everest expedition cost Rs.30 lakh. We drew Rs.17 lakh from family savings and the rest through sponsorship for which I’m eternally grateful,” says mother Lavanya. Kaamya is now bent on completing her mission to climb every major mountain worldwide. “I have drawn up a plan to climb Antarctica’s Mt. Vinson Massif in December this year and become the youngest girl ever to accomplish this mission,” she says with élan. Go girl!
Conceptualised as the island republic’s first autonomous university funded by government, SMU has quickly acquired an international reputation for dispensing rigorous business management, economics and finance education. Reshma Ravishanker Promoted in the new millennium, the publicly-funded Singapore Management University (SMU, estb.2000) has quickly acquired an international reputation for dispensing rigorous business management, economics and finance education. In the latest QS Global MBA Rankings 2024, it is ranked #43 worldwide and #6 in Asia. SMU’s eight schools — accountancy; economics; social sciences; Lee Kong Chian School of Business; computing and information systems; Yong Pung How School of Law; College of Integrative Studies and College of Graduate Research Studies — offer a wide range of undergrad, postgraduate and Ph D programmes to 12,000 students mentored by 407 faculty. SMU spokespersons claim that its core curriculum develops “students’ broad knowledge of the world, interdisciplinary and contextual perspectives, understanding of self and society, and capability in key 21st-century skills”. Conceptualised as the island republic’s first autonomous university funded by the government, SMU is modeled on the top-ranked Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Indeed, it began its innings with a five-year collaboration agreement with the Wharton School. In 2004, SMU received a gift of S$50 million from the Lee Foundation following which the government resolved to pay in $3 for every dollar donated, resulting in $150 million being added to SMU’s endowment fund. Since it was promoted in the new millennium year, SMU has produced several distinguished alumni including Devanshi Kanoi Chitlangia, founder, Worldviral Education; Ben Toh Zhi Sian, group head of Bancassurance; Bonnie Wong Shi Yun, chief operating officer, Creative Eateries; Derrick Lee, co-founder, Accredify, and Timothy Tio, vice president, Mizuho Bank. Singapore. Once a British colony and untidy port, over the past six decades Singapore has evolved into an independent island nation, globally renowned for its spick ’n span environment, transformation into Southeast Asia’s business and financial entrepot and most prosperous, modern and well-administered country notable for civic discipline and high per capita income (US $49,000). It boasts an excellent public transport system and public parks, museums, restaurants, nightclubs and tourist destinations including the verdant Botanic Gardens — a Unesco World Heritage site. Singapore’s climate is tropical — warm and wet most of the year. December is the coolest month and May the warmest, with average temperatures ranging between 22-33oCelsius. English is the language of administration, business and technology. Other languages spoken are Malay, Chinese (Mandarin) and Tamil. Campus facilities. SMU’s campus in Bras Basah, Singapore’s central business district sprawls across 11 acres and comprises seven state-of-the-art buildings fronted by trees and lawns. Facilities include the Li Ka Shing, Kwa Geok Choo Law libraries, seminar rooms, 260-seat Mochtar Riady Auditorium, campus centre, a multi-purpose hall, cafes, bookshop, medical clinic and a convenience store. Moreover, students have access to a swimming pool, gym, sports hall, du Suantio Gallery and Arts & Cultural Centre, and over 150 student clubs. Admission. Admission into SMU’s undergrad programmes is competitive and merit-based. The minimum requirements…
Currently celebrating its 12th anniversary, this nursery-class XII school is ranked among the Top 20 co-ed day schools in Punjab and #1 in Jalandhar in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2023-24 Paromita Sengupta Sited on an eco-friendly four-acre campus off the Jalandhar-Hoshiarpur highway, the new-age Ivy World School, Jalandhar (IWS, estb.2012) has quickly acquired an excellent reputation for providing high-quality ICT (information communication technology)-driven academic and co-curricular education to its 1,749 students mentored by 96 teachers. Currently celebrating its 12th anniversary, this nursery-class XII school is ranked among the Top 20 co-ed day schools in Punjab and #1 in Jalandhar in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2023-24. A constituent institution of Vasal Education Foundation (estb.2005), this CBSE-affiliated school was promoted by well-known businessman-philanthropist Sanjeev Kumar Vasal with the objective of nurturing students into “global citizens with knowledge, skills and values in an ever-changing world”. Vasal Education runs and manages six K-12 schools and preschools in Punjab (pop.16.3 million). “Our objective is to provide every child an opportunity to become a self-driven learner under the mentorship of well-trained teachers and the integrated support of digital media. We enable global exposure through diverse learning resources to develop our students into well-rounded, responsible citizens prepared for success in their professional and personal lives,” says Vasal. To fulfill this objective, the school’s management has invested liberally in state-of-the-art academic and sports infrastructure. IWS’ green campus houses air-conditioned academic and admin blocks with an aggregate built-up area of 16,187 sq. m. The academic block houses 55 spacious smart classrooms, seven modern science and computer laboratories, hi-tech multimedia, music and art rooms, a 760-seat auditorium, a dining hall and separate junior and senior libraries with an aggregate 10,000 volumes. “Ivy World School was conceptualised to meet the needs of young 21st century learners. Therefore, our curriculum is specially designed to challenge and engage students and develop their multiple intelligences, with teachers trained in contemporary, learner-centric pedagogies through in-house programs and workshops. Additionally, we are a fully new digital technologies equipped school with AI and AR incorporated to enhance teaching-learning experiences and achieve best outcomes for all students,” says Sanjeev Chauhan, Director-Principal of IWS. An alum of Punjab University, Chauhan has brought over three decades of teaching and admin experience at the top-ranked Lawrence School, Sanawar into her new assignment. Inevitably, sports education is accorded high importance at IWS. The school’s impressive sports infrastructure includes dedicated grounds for football and cricket, synthetic lawn tennis, badminton, basketball, table tennis and squash courts, an indoor shooting range, a roller-skating rink and an all-weather 25 metre swimming pool. Unsurprisingly, IWS students have excelled in state and national-level cricket, badminton and other sports tournaments. Co-curricular education — dance, music (offered in collaboration with the Gurugram-based Torrins Academy), theatre, carpentry, sculpture, art and craft and painting — is also an integral component of the curriculum. Moreover, environment and sustainability education is given top billing with students encouraged to nurture flora and fauna and tend to the school’s on-campus vegetable garden.…
With the unrelenting march of automation and artificial intelligence, a spectre of unemployment and redundancy is haunting executive suites as much as college campuses. Therefore a fever to skill, reskill and upskill is pervading middle class India, if not less aware segments of the population writes Summiya Yasmeen After the Covid pandemic that swept the nation and took an officially estimated 533,570 lives (perhaps 10x the number, according to informed unofficial estimates), a new contagion is spreading countrywide: fear and loathing of unemployment and redundancy. With the unrelenting march of automation and artificial intelligence, a spectre of unemployment and redundancy is haunting executive suites as much as college campuses. Therefore a fever to skill, reskill and upskill is pervading middle class India, if not less aware segments of the population. With the ruling BJP/NDA government at the Centre and particularly BJP which has enjoyed a majority in Parliament for over a decade, receiving a shellacking from the electorate — its absolute majority in the 543-seats Lok Sabha was reduced from 303 to 240 in the recently (June) concluded General Election 2024 to a great extent on the issue of rising youth unemployment — in the Union Budget 2024-25 presented to Parliament on July 23, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has given top billing to employment and skilling the country’s children and youth. “The Union Budget 2024-25 focus is on employment, skilling, MSMEs and the middle class…. This year, I have made a provision for Rs.1.48 lakh crore for education, employment and skilling,” said Sitharaman. In her 145-minute budget speech, she announced several skills education initiatives to skill 41 million youth over the next five years; model skills loan schemes of up to Rs.7 lakh to 25,000 students per year; upgradation of 1,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and an internship scheme for 10 million youth in 500 top companies. (see box p.53). This sudden awareness within the BJP leadership which hasn’t been serious about according high priority to public education — with the exception of Prakash Javadekar, all Union education ministers including incumbent Dharmendra Pradhan have been insular autocrats with no accountability to the media or public — has pleasantly surprised informed monitors of the neglected education sector. “Although a separate Union ministry of skill development was established in 2014 and ambitious targets were set by the Central and state governments, actual results on the ground remain far from set targets. While Budget 2024-25 has announced some significant skills education schemes, the government needs to do more to strengthen implementation of skilling programmes and the skill ecosystem in the country,” says Ajay Khanna, chairman of the Committee on Skill Development of PHD Chamber of Commerce & Industry (estb.1905), a Delhi-based industry promotion and advocacy organisation. Although opposition parties in Parliament especially Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Congress party which has ruled at the Centre and in most states for over half century, seem oblivious, skills education aka vocational education and training (VET) and foundational literacy and primary education, have been foolishly…
There’s much to admire about the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop.72 million). For a start Mahatma Gandhi — the “greatest man in flesh and blood to have ever walked upon this earth” according to Albert Einstein’s memorable tribute — was born there. So was Sardar Patel, not far behind. The people are remarkably hardworking, blessed with an entrepreneurial culture and a puritan save-and-invest ethic. That’s why Gujarat has also nurtured extraordinarily successful businessmen and industry leaders starting with the Sarabhai, Mafatlal, Lalbhai clans of pre-independence years down to the Ambanis and Adanis who provide some hope of modernizing a nation given to priding itself for exotic poverty. However following Gandhiji’s assassination in 1948 and Sardar Patel’s death in 1950, this high-potential state has transformed into a sink-hole of corruption. For instance a recent investigation has revealed that Rajkot’s chief town planning officer has accumulated assets including gold and silver bullion, petrol station pumps and agricultural land valued at Rs.28 crore, a sum 1,128 percent more than his entire lifetime’s legal earnings. With the benefit of hindsight it’s now clear that the state’s descent into a cesspit of corruption began with the imposition of liquor prohibition in 1960. Since then while all other states of the country have lifted prohibition because the corruption it breeds substantially outweighs its benefits, prohibition is still official policy in Gujarat (where liquor is freely available at a price). In the interim this policy obstinacy has corrupted the police force and infected the entire administration. According to US immigration data, Gujaratis constitute a large percent of the annual tide of 725,000 illegal immigrants from India who climb every mountain, and ford every stream to enter the US illegally. Yet according to leaders of the ruling BJP government at the Centre — Prime Minister Narendra Modi served a long term (2002-2014) as chief minister of Gujarat — what the nation needs is the Gujarat model of development. No comment.
The media spotlight on pre and post wedding celebrations of Anant Ambani — the last and youngest son of industry tycoon Mukesh Ambani, listed among the world’s Top 20 wealthiest individuals by the authoritative Forbes magazine — has aroused varied and conflicting reaction among public intellectuals and commentators. The bash reportedly cost the amiable, self-effacing tycoon who presides over blue-chip megacorp Reliance Industries (annual revenue: Rs.1,000,122 crore) an estimated Rs.5,000 crore. Unrepentant socialists and left liberals have unanimously condemned the Ambani wedding extravaganza as a vulgar display of wealth and conspicuous consumption. Yet the plain truth which the lefties woke army (led by fifth generation Nehru scion Rahul Gandhi) will never acknowledge is that if India had taken the free markets (capitalist) road way back in 1947, we would have been enjoying an annual GDP of $20 trillion cf. $ 3.5 trillion today. They have a collective memory-loss about their full-throttle endorsement of Nehruvian socialism. Now they are unanimous in their condemnation of the few entrepreneurs — Tata, Birla, Ambani and Adani — who beat the beggar-thy-neighbour system designed by them. On the other hand there is a small minority that believes that citizens have the right to do as they please with their post-tax incomes and accumulated wealth. The unrestrained largesse of the Ambani clan hugely benefited armies of food and (non-alcoholic) beverages caterers, interior designers, digital equipment and sound providers and flower-sellers, not to omit the efficient event organisers. From a business perspective, the latest Ambani wedding bash was excellent advertisement for the Jio World Centre, surely the most well-furbished and equipped business convention centre worldwide which is likely to prove a money-spinner for the Ambanis. A brilliantly choreographed initiative for combining pleasure with business. Also read: Ambani-Adani 1000x wanted
Contemporary India hosts 3,500 engineering colleges that graduate 1.5 million engineers annually. Among them are the country’s 23 globally famous IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), the first of which was established in 1961. But all this investment has provided sparse harvest. On July 10, a bridge collapsed in Mahishi village in the Saharsa district of Bihar. Nothing exceptional in this news report. Except that it marked Bridge Collapse #13 in 21 days in Bihar (pop. 104 million). The response of the state government was to suspend at “least 15 engineers” for the series of recent bridge collapse incidents reported from various districts, including Siwan, Saran, Madhubani, Araria, East Champaran and Kishanganj. In an ingenious initiative Chief Minister Nitish Kumar instructed officials to conduct a survey of all old bridges in the state and identify those that require immediate repair. Breast-beating liberals and soft-state socialists advance numerous reasons: upper castes oppression of the poor; rotten education system; women’s rights; deprivation of tribal communities, and dozens more. But the root cause is collapse of rule of law and accountability. Your editor offers an embarrassingly simple solution. The Bihar government’s in-service engineers should be randomly tested through the year by a panel of respected academics. If they fail testing, not only they, but the vice-chancellors and professors who awarded them degrees should be fired. Ditto departmental engineers within the administration who promoted them to positions of authority. Admittedly, a drastic remedy. But desperate situations — 13 bridges collapsing within 21 days in the early stages of the monsoon qualifies as a desperate situation — call for drastic solutions. Even so, they are not as drastic as in neighbouring China where peremptory exile to hard labour on a state farm in the rural interiors — if not a bullet in the back of head — is normative. Time for this country’s soft establishment to develop spine. Also read: Bihar: Quality education still a challenge, says Nitish
IIT-K-SAIL MoU Kanpur, July 26. The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the public sector Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) for collaboration in research, development, and consultancy projects. “This collaboration with SAIL marks a significant step in advancing IIT-Kanpur’s engagement with industry. We also propose to strengthen R&D for technology innovation in the steel industry through promotion of an s.8 (non-for-profit) company with the steel ministry’s support. This will leverage our inherent strengths in digital technologies, modeling and simulation, to address critical challenges faced by the country in the steel sector,” said Prof. Manindra Agrawal, Director of IIT-Kanpur, after the signing ceremony. Added Amarendu Prakash, chairman of SAIL: “SAIL will be the first customer for products developed by start-ups incubated at IIT-Kanpur.” Youth Ideathon 2024 New Delhi, July 24. ThinkStartup and the Management Entrepreneurship Professional Skills Council (MEPSC) of the Union ministry of skill development and entrepreneurship together with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) launched the 4th edition of Youth Ideathon (YI24). This innovation and entrepreneurship festival for schools intends to harness the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of youth across India. The theme of YI24 is ‘iStartup a Good Thing for India’. This is a five-stage competition that will be held online. It is open to all school students countrywide in two categories: Junior (classes IV-VIII) and Senior (classes IX-XII). Students will compete in teams of 3-5 members from each participating school. YI24 will culminate in a grand finale on October 6. In 2023, Youth Ideathon attracted over 1.5 lakh students from 8,000 schools. This year, over 2 lakh students from 10,000 schools are expected to participate. “If you have to build future job-creators, you have to catch them young, harness their creativity and introduce them to the power of innovation and entrepreneurship. Youth Ideathon endeavours to empower the next generation nurturing high-potential student ideas with incubation support,” said Shivani Singh-Kapoor, co-founder, ThinkStartup, speaking on the occasion. Scaler School scholarships Bengaluru, July 25. The Bengaluru-based Scaler School of Technology (SST) announced full scholarships valued at Rs.15 crore to 100 high school students who topped the recently concluded Indian National Mathematics Olympiad 2024 for enrolment in SST’s undergraduate programme in software development. Moreover SST will waive the entire admissions process for the Top 100 students, permitting them easy access to learning experiences at SST. “A serious incentive mechanism is needed to motivate more of our bright students to prepare seriously for globally reputed contests. We are doing our bit by empowering the Top 100 students in India to not only get direct admission into the Scaler School of Technology, but also providing them a 100 percent scholarship. I sincerely hope India climbs the ladder of globally prestigious contests, and attains #1 rank in the next few years,” said Abhimanyu Saxena, co-founder, SST. HCL-upGrad partnership Mumbai, July 22. The Noida-based HCLTech Ltd (annual revenue: Rs.1.1 lakh crore) announced its partnership with upGrad Enterprise, the corporate skilling and workforce development division of Mumbai-based…
Kerala Challenged children sports program Thiruvananthapuram, July 3. In collaboration with SCERT (State Council of Educational Research & Training), the state’s education ministry released an “inclusive sports manual” with the objective of promoting the track and field sports talents of differently-abled school children and ensuring their on-field participation. “Steps are being taken to conduct competitions prescribed in the manual this year itself. A Healthy Kids programme which nurtures the physical and mental health of children by initiating them into sports and games, will be implemented for primary students of state-run schools,” said education minister V. Sivankutty addressing the media. Moreover under an initiative to support autistic children, model autism complexes will be established in all 14 districts of the state at an estimated cost of Rs.37.80 crore, added the minister. Delhi Students’ crime scene visits New Delhi, July 10. Delhi University’s (DU) forensic science postgrad students will soon be authorised to visit crime scenes as interns to examine forensic evidence. DU has mooted a proposal to the Delhi Police to allow them to visit crime scenes together with investigators. DU’s faculty of anthropology has prepared the proposal tabled for approval by the varsity’s Academic Council, which will meet at month end. In a letter, the faculty has requested the police to enable forensic science students to acquire field experience. The proposal also seeks minor modifications in the curriculum of DU’s M.Sc (Forensic Science) course for final semester students to include visits to crime scenes through police stations. Himachal Pradesh Outstanding teacher awards Shimla, July 14. The state government is all set to award teachers and school leaders for outstanding contribution to education. “The objective of instituting these awards is to promote teaching as a career, encourage teachers to adopt best teaching-learning practices, and enhance the reputation of teachers within society,” said chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, addressing a press conference. According to Sukhu, 24 teachers will be awarded in two separate categories. “In addition, six special awards will be presented to teachers who have made outstanding contribution towards innovation, implementation of state flagship programs, and special initiatives. Awardees will be shortlisted based on recommendations of a state-level committee constituted under the State Award Scheme,” he added. Uttar Pradesh Imperious teacher Aligarh, July 28. Visuals captured on camera of a government primary school teacher in Gokulpur district sleeping in the classroom while her students waved handheld fans around her, have gone viral on social media, sparking widespread outrage. Basic Education Officer Rakesh Kumar Singh said that while the matter is being investigated, the teacher has been suspended. Meanwhile, another video of the same teacher beating students has also surfaced. A probe by the Block Education Officer confirmed that the sleeping video and the footage of children being beaten star the same teacher, but the latter video footage was shot a few years earlier. Assam Inter-state cooperation Guwahati, july 1: A 13-member delegation from Himachal Pradesh led by education minister Rohit Thakur, arrived in Assam’s admin capital for a detailed meeting with…
“This is a budget that will take the country’s villages, poor and farmers on the path of prosperity. In the last 10 years, 25 crore people have come out of poverty. This budget is a budget for the continuation of the empowerment of the newly emerged Neo Middle Class.” PM Narendra Modi on the Union Budget 2024-25 (Mint, July 23) “Coaching has become commerce, a flourishing industry with high returns… Every time we read a newspaper, the front one or two pages are filled with ads from coaching centres. Every penny spent on advertisement is coming from the students, every new building is coming from the students.” Jagdeep Dhankhar, Vice President of India, on the death of three students at a coaching centre in Delhi (July 29, Rajya Sabha) “It’s a critical moment. I’m a boy from Bombay and it’s great to see an Indian woman running for the White House. And my wife is African American, so we like the fact that a Black and Indian woman is running for the White House.” Salman Rushdie, author, endorsing Kamala Harris, Democratic nominee for the US Presidency (India Today, July 29) “… Since the government is already slow walking its promise of more visas to the Chinese, this moment must trigger action on the real culprit: woeful Indian education.” Ashoka Mody, former Princeton University professor, on why India’s economic growth increasingly depends on foreign expertise, particularly from China (The Hindu, July 30) “Our employment problem is mainly an education problem. Substandard schools and colleges have produced millions of semi-educated, unemployable young people with degrees, but no real skills. Overhauling the entire education system will take decades.” Swaminathan Aiyar, economist-columnist (The Economic Times, August 1)
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) A draft of Tamil Nadu’s state Education Policy (SEP), developed as an alternative to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, has been submitted to the ruling DMK government by the Justice Murugesan-led panel. After the DMK was voted to power in the legislative assembly election of 2021, while presenting the new government’s budget for 2022, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin announced that an exclusive education policy for Tamil Nadu would be formalised. In June 2022, he established a committee of experts from various fields, chaired by Justice (Retd.) D. Murugesan, to formulate the SEP. On July 1, the Murugesan Committee submitted a 550-page report in English and a 600-page report in Tamil, to the chief minister. Major recommendations include that the state government takes appropriate measures to ensure that ‘Education’ is brought back to List II (the states list) of the Constitution; that Tamil language should be the medium of instruction in anganwadis (mother-child care centres) and child development centres; Tamil is the first language of education right from primary school to university level; continuation of Tamil Nadu’s dual-language policy of promoting English and Tamil, and abolition of public examinations for classes III, V and VIII. Moreover, the Murugesan Committee has proposed that the admission age into class I in Tamil Nadu’s 39,300 government and government-aided schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Examinations (TNBSE) and nearly 5,000 Matriculation Board schools should be five years. This despite the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, prescribing the entry age for class I as six. The Justice Murugesan Committee’s recommendations for the proposed SEP has ignited a lively debate in academia about its provisions, and whether an SEP at variance with NEP 2020 is in the larger interest of children in the state (pop.84 million). “If Tamil is introduced as the medium of instruction through school all the way to university, it will surely enable students from rural backgrounds. However, if the DMK government wants education to be brought back in the States list, it should ensure that the education system won’t be diluted. It should ensure teaching-learning quality in the state is on a par with national standards,” says K. Palanivelu, a Chennai-based educationist and former director of the Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research at Anna University. This problem of standardisation necessary to enable mobility of students and later professionals, from Tamil Nadu to other states and abroad, worries other knowledgeable educationists as well. “As many as 72 competitive examinations are held every year across the country including IIT-JEE and NEET. If all states follow NEP 2020, there will be standardisation of syllabi and perhaps learning outcomes. This is especially important for maths and science. Moreover, the Murugesan Committee has recommended the primacy of Tamil as the medium of instruction. But the previous DMK government had decreed this 16 years ago. Yet the middle class paid no attention. It continues to send its children to private English-medium schools. Parents’ choice…
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A month after writing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to abolish the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) for admission into medical colleges countrywide, on July 24 the state’s cabinet headed by chief minister Mamata Banerjee passed an official resolution calling for the abolition of NEET. This official resolution came a day after the Supreme Court dismissed all writ petitions seeking cancellation and re-test of NEET-UG 2024. Evidently, Banerjee drew inspiration from the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly which unanimously passed a resolution urging the Centre to scrap NEET. On July 25, Karnataka became the third state — after TN and Bengal — to officially request exemption from NEET. The resolution to abolish NEET — a single Central government exam — is being interpreted as demand for state governments to control admissions into medical colleges within their jurisdiction. NEET-UG was first proposed in 2012 to eliminate the burden of school-leavers aspiring to become medical practitioners having to write multiple exams conducted by states in the hope of being admitted into one or other college, and more importantly to standardise numerous entrance exams. The suspicion was that some state governments were setting the admission bar too low and question papers were set to favour students from state board schools. On the other hand, state governments contend that the common NEET-UG exam is based on the syllabus of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), a subsidiary of the Union education ministry which has a mere 28,960 schools affiliated with it. This places students from the country’s other 66 school-leaving exam boards at a disadvantage. In this context, it’s pertinent to note that prior to 2012, CBSE used to conduct an All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) for admission into Central government medical colleges, while states conducted their own tests for medical colleges under their jurisdiction. In 2012, the UPA government at the Centre introduced the one-country, one-exam, NEET-UG for admission into all 706 medical colleges countrywide. After more than 80 writ petitions were filed opposing NEET-UG, in July, 2013, then Chief Justice of India, Altamas Kabir struck down NEET-UG as the common medical entrance examination. Challenging this judgement, the Medical Council of India (MCI) filed a review petition and on April 28, 2016, the Supreme Court upheld NEET-UG as the sole entrance exam for admission into medical colleges countrywide. However, ab initio the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal has been protesting that the centrally conducted NEET poses major challenges for students from Bengali-medium schools of the state. As a result, MCI agreed to NEET-UG being written in Telugu, Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil and Bengali. In 2017, question papers were set in different languages for NEET-UG. But immediately, protests surfaced that the Bengali language question paper was “tougher” than the Hindi language paper. The TMC alleged that the agenda of the BJP government at the Centre was to make sure that Bengali-medium students ranked lower, or not at all in the NEET merit list. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who was…
Dr. Prof. Anand Achari is Principal at VES College of Architecture, Mumbai Exploring ancient architectural design and construction practices offers a wealth of inspiration for designing sustainable buildings for the modern world. Cross-pollination of knowledge from the past and present is crucial In the relentless pursuit of modernisation and innovation, we often overlook time-honoured wisdom of the past. On the subject of sustainability in architecture, a concept many believe to be a recent development, there’s a wealth of knowledge to be derived from ancient civilisations. Earliest societies, with limited access to modern resources, developed ingenious techniques to enable people to live in harmony with their environments. By revisiting these techniques, we can unlock valuable insights for constructing sustainable buildings for the modern world. One of the hallmarks of sustainable architecture is Bioclimatic Architecture, which emphasises designing buildings to respond to the specific climatic conditions of their location. Earliest architects were intuitive practitioners of this approach. They utilised building orientation, layout, and materials strategically to maximise comfort and minimise energy usage. For instance, dwellings in hot, arid climates often featured small windows on sun-facing sides and larger openings on north facades to provide natural ventilation. Conversely, buildings in colder climes preferred south-facing windows to capture solar heat gain. The good news is that contemporary architects are embracing ancient bioclimatic design principles with renewed interest. Another nostrum of sustainable design is to minimise reliance on mechanical heating and cooling systems. Passive heating and cooling strategies through careful building orientation, and use of natural materials are making a comeback in sustainable architecture. They mandate thick walls made of materials with high thermal mass to absorb and release heat slowly, maintaining comfortable indoor temperatures through the year. Courtyards, a traditional feature of many ancient cultures, played a crucial role in passive cooling. Strategically placed courtyards provided shade, channelled cool breezes, and facilitated natural ventilation. Windcatchers, iconic towers in traditional Persian architecture, are another ingenious example. These structures captured prevailing winds, directing cool air into buildings while simultaneously enhancing air circulation. Modern architects are incorporating these principles into their designs, using careful building orientation, strategically placed windows, and light shelves to maximise natural light and ventilation while minimising reliance on mechanical energy sources. Ancient architects were acutely aware of the importance of local and natural materials. Readily available resources such as stone, wood, and earth, reduce costs of transportation and environmental imbalance. Techniques such as rammed earth construction, extensively used in the Great Wall of China, involved compacting local earth into walls, creating structures with exceptional thermal mass. This mass absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night, naturally regulating indoor temperatures — a passive heating and cooling solution that has become important today. Similarly, cob — a mixture of clay, sand, water, and straw — was used to create durable and energy-efficient dwellings. Beyond bioclimatic design, ancient civilisations also excelled in water management, a critical aspect of sustainable design today. Stepwells of Rajasthan and Gujarat are prime examples. These elaborate structures with…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 presented to the nation after an interregnum of 36 years, accords high importance to early childhood care and education (ECCE). To the extent that it mandates integration of three years of compulsory ECCE into the formal school education system reconfigured as 3+5+3+4 to replace the previous 10+2 system which had no provision for ECCE. However a new study of anganwadis in five districts of Karnataka reveals gross neglect of ECCE four years after NEP 2020 became law. Promoted under the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS, estb.1976), anganwadis are Central and state government run nutritional centres for newborns and lactating mothers which also provide rudimentary early childhood education to youngest children The report, released in early June titled ‘Study of Anganwadis in 5 Districts of Karnataka, India: Infrastructure Facilities and Schemes through the Anganwadis’ and written by Ensuring Social Protection (ESP), a collective of NGOs and activists, reveals that a mere 25 percent of 315 anganwadis surveyed provide milk to children five days a week as mandated by the state government; only 21 percent have functional toilets; 18.7 percent lack a functional filter for drinking water; and over 70 percent compromise on mid-day meals as “vegetable supply had been halted for four years”. The anganwadis surveyed have found cheaper “food alternatives” compromising the nutritional needs of youngest children. The timing of this report — soon after the state government announced plans to upgrade the state’s 65,000 anganwadi centres (AWCs) with an enrolment of 3.6 million children — has embarrassed the year-old Congress party government which against expectation, was voted to power in Bengaluru with a large majority primarily because it promised a wide range of freebies. Among them: including free bus travel for women, free electricity upto 200 units, and Rs.2,000 monthly assistance to women heading families. However, the mandate of NEP 2020 to integrate ECCE with primary schools is bad news for the state’s 69,000 anganwadi workers, who fear for their jobs. Therefore in early June, the state government assured them it will not promote any new pre-primary sections in its schools beyond the 2,786 already sanctioned. AWC workers were assured the government will focus on training them to deliver formal ECCE. Now with the ESP report exposing the pathetic condition and record of AWCs in fulfilling their primary mandate of providing nutrition to youngest children, educationists are sceptical about their preparedness to provide acceptable quality pre-primary education. “Anganwadis need significantly greater budgetary allocation. It’s sad that the Union Budget 2024-25 has not increased allocation to the ICDS programme. Nor did it talk about the government Poshan bhi padhai bhi and Saksham (nutrition with learning schemes) for anganwadis. If anganwadis are to be upgraded and AWC workers trained to deliver ECCE, the Centre and states need to substantially boost budgetary outlays for AWCs,” says Dr. Venita Kaul, professor (emirata) and founder-director of Centre for Early Childhood Education and Development at Ambedkar University, Delhi. As has been repeatedly highlighted by EducationWorld,…
Ronita Torcato (Mumbai) The highly reputed multi-campus Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS, estb.1936) — India’s first major postgrad institution for the study of social sciences including habitat education, gender, media, labour and management, rural development studies — has suffered a severe embarassment. On June 28, the management of the institute fired 115 teaching and non-teaching staff of the TISS Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies (ACWS) employed in its Mumbai, Tuljapur, Hyderabad, and Guwahati campuses. These TISS-ACWS employees were informed that their employment contracts would not be renewed. The reason advanced for this mass firing was that on June 30, the Tata Education Trust — one of several charitable trusts of the multi-billion dollar Tata Group of salt to software companies (annual revenue: Rs.13.8 lakh crore) — had ceased to pay toward their salaries and remuneration. However the 115 TISS-ACWS employees have been granted a last minute reprieve. On July 30, Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata Trusts, announced that TET will resume payment of the dismissed TISS employees’ salaries and restore the status quo ante. Explained Prof. Manoj Tiwari, Director of TISS, in an interview with the business daily Mint: “These staff were appointed under various projects under funding of the Tata Trust. The funding for these projects have stopped for the last few months. Considering this, we allowed these teachers to work under clock-hour basis in the institute. But now we are unable to garner financial aid, so we decided to stop (sic) their services. We will reappoint them once funding from the (Tata) Trust resumes.” Meanwhile the abrupt termination of such a large number of TISS faculty and staff has brought the low-profile TISS — ranked among India’s Top 100 universities under the Central government’s National Institutional Rankings Framework 2023 — in the national limelight and aroused indignation in India and abroad. Over 1,200 academics signed a joint petition dated July 9 calling upon the TISS management to reinstate the sacked employees. “The faculty, students and alumni of ACWS have contributed significantly to advancing critical scholarship in women’s studies. The ongoing uncertainty regarding job security, Ph D supervision and course instruction undermines their collective efforts,” reads the statement. The back story behind this contretemps is that for several years, the BJP government at the Centre has been packing boards of centrally-funded higher education institutions with ideologically aligned nominees, including at TISS (described as ‘Grant-in-Aid Institute’ by the Ministry of Education). Last June after TISS’ long-tenured director Prof. S. Parsuraman retired, UGC (University Grants Commission) — the country’s apex-level higher education regulator — appointed several government officials to the TISS board, tightening Central control over the institute. This provoked the Tatas’ loss of interest in TISS and a backlash against continuing to fund its operations. Given the good record of the Tatas in funding education institutions, academics are uncritical of them. Comments Dr. Kurush Dalal, director at Instucen School of Archeology, Mumbai. “If government wants control of TISS, it should pick up the bill. But that they will…
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow) A July 8 order issued by Uttar Pradesh’s BJP government which directed government school teachers to mark their attendance digitally — proclaimed as a first countrywide — was rescinded on July 16 after statewide protests by the teachers community. Political commentators in Lucknow, the admin capital of India’s most populous state (215 million), are unanimous that revocation of the July 8 order signals a major climb down by the state’s BJP government and acknowledgement of the political power of the teachers’ community. With by-elections for ten legislative assembly seats due to be held later this year, the BJP government headed by Hindu monk-turned-saffron robes-clad chief minister Yogi Adityanath has chosen the path of discretion over confrontation. Especially after the state BJP performed poorly in General Election 2024 when it won only 33 Lok Sabha seats — 29 fewer than in General Election 2019. Evidently, the BJP leadership in Lucknow has decided not to antagonise the 6.28 lakh-strong government teachers’ community on the eve of the important assembly bye-elections. UP’s government school teachers represented by the Uttar Pradesh Shikshak Sangh union objected to the daily digital attendance register on several grounds. One, that the privacy of teachers, especially women, could be breached as there was no saying how the selfies they would take to upload for attendance would be used. Secondly, that it was an “affront to teachers’ dignity” to suggest that teachers’ late-coming and truancy is widespread and thirdly, “technical glitches” could prevent them from registering attendance on time. Moreover, the union says teachers are often late because of issues beyond their control, such as bad roads and public transport shortages. The quick cave-in of the state’s BJP government to the teachers’ agitation has disappointed objective educators because it’s well-known that government primary-secondary school teachers in north India — especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — are highly indisciplined and responsible for the rock-bottom learning outcomes of children in UP’s government schools. According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the Pratham Education Foundation, 29.2 percent of 1,531 teens from 1,203 households in 60 villages in UP’s representative Hathras district can’t read class II level textbooks in any language and 54.3 percent can’t manage basic division sums. That an estimated 40-50 percent of highly paid (relative to private schools) government school teachers are absent every day is a related statistic. “Teachers with security of employment, salary and perks have a substantial say in the education system. Parents and their committees that check teaching and mid-day meals, among other things, also have a stake in the system. The only people who have no say in education is children. They cannot demand that they are taught and taught well. That is the tragedy of school education in UP and countrywide,” says Sarvendra Vikram Singh, former director of basic education. However Rajendra Prasad Mishra, vice president and spokesperson of the Uttar Pradesh Madhamik Shikshak Sangh (secondary teachers association), which has membership of 52,000 teachers from government aided secondary schools,…
Condemnable contempt Your well-designed cover and story ‘Dharmendra Pradhan’s second innings priorities’ (EW July) should serve as a wake-up call to the hon’ble minister who clearly suffers a communication skills deficit. I couldn’t agree more that the second time education minister should speak up forcefully in Union cabinet meetings demanding greater budgetary allocation for education. Time he became aware that he presides over a ministry responsible for the future of the world’s largest child and youth population. The minister’s contempt for the media especially towards EducationWorld, for several decades the country’s #1 education magazine, is condemnable. As member of Parliament and minister, he is obliged to answer to the public through the media. This is fundamental in a democracy. Saisha Chandra Chennai Urgent overhaul needed Your well-researched Special Report ‘Rectifying NTA exams disaster’ (EW July) exposes NTA’s shocking mismanagement of NEET-UG, the common medical entrance examination written by 2.4 million school-leavers. You have uncovered ugly truths about a faulty exams system replete with question paper leaks and marks for money scams. One hopes the newly constituted K. Radhakrishnan committee holds meaningful consultations with students, parents, assessment and cyber experts to quickly establish a tamperproof exams system. If the hon’ble education minister is to be believed, a switch to SAT-like computer-based multiple times a year testing is in the offing. The extreme mental distress our children have had to endure because of the NEET mess calls for urgent overhaul of the exams system. Lopamudra Sen Kolkata Teacher accountability Re Education Notes (EW July) titled ‘Show-cause notices’, my congratulations to Rohit Thakur, Himachal Pradesh’s education minister, for issuing show-cause notices to teachers of 116 schools which reported pass rates below 25 percent and 30 schools recording zero pass percentage. Well-paid government school teachers should be held accountable for poor academic outcomes. Sheela Jabin Bengaluru Appalling negligence I have been keenly following the NEET-UG scam on social media and read your insightful Special Report on this controversy (EW July). I am appalled that in a national entrance examination of this scale, a multiple-choice question in physics had two possible answers. It is shocking that such ambiguous questions — which a committee of IIT-Delhi experts constituted by the Supreme Court had to solve — are presented to students without second revision. What are the qualifications of the so-called experts appointed to set NEET question papers and why are they not held accountable? Dheeraj Krishna Hyderabad Upskilling mantra Your Teacher-to-Teacher essay ‘Successful management of lifelong learning’ (EW July) reflects the sentiment of Union Budget 2024-25 presented in Parliament by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 23 . Looks like she had her ear to the ground! I agree with author Nikhil Pingle that with technologies evolving fast, economic landscapes are shifting. Upskilling is the mantra to success as skills — if any — acquired in college and universities no longer guarantee lifetime employment. The rise of ICT and globalization of commerce mandates acquisition of new skill-sets, digital skills in particular. Job seekers can navigate…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) Under fire for the NEET-UG exam scandal from opposition parties as well as a swelling number of monitors of India’s failing education system, Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has constituted an Education Advisory Council (EdAC) to advise the ministry of education (MoE) on critical aspects of implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 four years after it was presented to Parliament and the nation. The proposed eight-member EdAC will be professedly an independent body to advise MoE, the Women & Child Development ministry, agencies, and institutions involved in education, to accelerate implementation of NEP 2020 which is proceeding at glacial pace. With the BJP and allied parties seriously lacking intellectual heft and getting little support from academics in top-ranked universities, the onus of writing up numerous documents and roadmaps for implementing NEP 2020 has devolved upon Dr. K. Kasturirangan, chairman of the NEP 2020 drafting committee, who has written the FLN (foundational literacy and numeracy) and NIPUN (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding) documents for early childhood education. But with octogenarian Dr. Kasturirangan experiencing health problems, the promised curriculum frameworks for teacher education and adult education are stalled. Informed academics in Delhi are also questioning the necessity of establishing EdAC as yet another education advisory body when NEP 2020 has already mandated over half a dozen school and higher education monitoring committees. For instance, to oversee and regulate higher education, NEP 2020 mandates establishment of a Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) with four verticals viz, National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC), National Accreditation Council (NAC), Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC), and General Education Council (GEC). Similarly, several supervisory and regulatory agencies — especially an SSSA (State School Standards Authority) in every state — has been decreed for school education. However one of the major terms of reference of the new EdAC is to “revamp and rejuvenate” CABE (Central Advisory Board of Education) to “enhance coordination and collaboration between the Centre and states”. Under the BJP/NDA rule, CABE has fallen out of favour and no CABE meeting has been held since 2019. But with several state governments expressing opposition to common entrance exams (NEET-UG, CUET) and greater say in framing their own education policies, wisdom has dawned upon the mandarins of the ministry to revive CABE which offers a forum for state education officials. Greater cooperation between Delhi and state capitals is necessary if NEP 2020 on which the BJP/NDA government has placed a large bet, is to be implemented. Some educationists interpret the establishment of EdAC as a move towards greater centralization with nominal reference to the revival of CABE. “As soon as it was voted to power at the Centre in 2014, the BJP abolished the Planning Commission on which states were represented and replaced it with NITI Aayog comprised of Central government appointees, doing away with the federal character of the planning body. Now EdAC is likely to replicate this initiative. This is dangerous. Education is not just about classroom academics.…
The Olympic games being staged in Paris have evidently fascinated middle class India, if not the remainder of the population. Daily television viewership in India of the games staged between July 26-August 11 has reportedly ranged between 100 and 120 million, with the nation cheering the modest performance of our 117 track and field athletes. Even if India doesn’t perform well in international sports and games arenas, there’s little doubt that this country provides perhaps the largest number of sports spectators worldwide. For India’s establishment and educators in particular, the Paris Olympics offers several takeaways. For one, the aesthetic beauty and efficient administration of the host city which enabled the clinical efficiency with which the games were organised. It’s impossible to believe that any of India’s ill-administered metropolitan cities can host Olympic games in the foreseeable future. Yet this is a good time to start working towards that objective. The seeds of orderly civic governance have already been planted in the Constitution by the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution (1992) which mandate de-centralisation of governance and administration to the ward level. As often argued on this page, if civic wards managed by elected property owners are empowered to levy and collect property taxes and administer themselves, reporting to empowered municipal corporations headed by directly elected mayors, urban India would experience a dramatic transformation for the better. The second takeaway is that we have to devise ways and means for India with its population of 1.4 billion to emerge as a respectable sports and games nation. It’s embarrassing that small countries with populations of 1 million and thereabouts bagged gold medals which at time of writing, India hasn’t won even one. According to a recent Unesco report titled Global State of Play, two-thirds of secondary and over half of primary students worldwide don’t receive required minimum weekly physical education, and two-third of countries spend less than 2 percent of their education budgets on physical education. In contemporary India, the condition is worse with most children denied even unstructured play opportunity. From youngest age, they are burdened with academic load and tuition. The plain truth is that the prevalent model of selecting and training middle class children for international sporting excellence is flawed. The US, Australia and China examples are proof that world champions emerge when the pool of children playing sports and games is of oceanic size and every public primary and secondary school offers sports grounds and facilities and integrates play into the curriculum. This requires several multiples of the annual outlays that the Central and state governments allocate for education. That’s not impossible as our Special Report in this issue illustrates.
Addressing a post-budget meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry, arguably the largest representative body of private organised sector big business, on July 30, even if somewhat belatedly Prime Minister Narendra Modi clarified the BJP/NDA government’s economic development ideology. He described India Inc leaders as “wealth creators” and “driving force of India’s growth story”. Decoded, this means that socialism — the dominant ideology which posited government-promoted public sector enterprises (PSEs) as the driving force of the economy with the mission to dominate its “commanding heights” — has been given a quiet and overdue burial. This public endorsement of private enterprise and entrepreneurship is necessary and commendable because Rahul Gandhi, the de facto chief of the Congress party and officially recognised leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, doesn’t seem to have learned any lesson from post-independence India’s disastrous romance with socialism officially adopted as the national ideology at the behest of his great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, against the advice of Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Inorganic Nehruvian socialism was continued by Rahul’s grandmother Indira Gandhi, who unmindful of the subcontinent’s sophisticated banking traditions dating back several centuries, nationalised the country’s major banks. In addition, she nationalised insurance, copper, and coal industries. Simultaneously she tightened the licence-permit-quota regime to prevent expansion of private industry. Unfortunately, PSEs charged with the task of sparking a new industrial revolution in newly independent India, proved unequal to the task. National savings poured into PSEs for over four decades provided an average ROI (return on investment) of 1-2 percent cf. 12-15 in private industry. As a result, the expected PSE surpluses for investment in the social sector (education and health) never materialised transforming high-potential post-independence India, with an average annual GDP growth of 3.5 percent cf. 8-10 percent in China (post-1978) and the tiger economies of South-east Asia, into one of the poorest countries worldwide. On the other hand in 1978 under the guidance of Deng Xiaoping who proclaimed that “to be rich is glorious”, communist China “took the capitalist road”. After that landmark year, China’s annual GDP growth rate leapt forward to 10-12 percent. Now some 40 years later, it has risen to $18 trillion, second only to the US while India’s GDP is an embarrassing $3.5 trillion. In his tirades against the BJP and PM Modi, Rahul Gandhi also routinely abuses Ambani & Adani — India’s most successful businessmen and largest taxpayers. This is reminiscent of continuous disparagement of private industry and business during his grandmother’s regime. Contrary to Rahul’s belief, it is the duty of the Prime Minister — regardless of his political party affiliation — to encourage the country’s successful businessmen and entrepreneurs and proclaim them abroad. Informed public opinion should discourage reversion to anti-private enterprise socialism which has beggared the nation. Also read: “I believe Nehru’s greatest failure was to ignore primary education…”
When I witness my UK-based nephews dismantle a 450 cc Harley-Davidson motor-cycle and put it back together in a jiffy, and finish household plumbing and repair jobs using sophisticated electric tools, I so regret my own education in an upscale boarding school in India where vocational education was conspicuously missing from the curriculum. Presumably, school children of this day and age are more self-reliant and invested in technology — especially new digital gadgets. However it’s very doubtful if formal vocational education in a useful trade — carpentry, electrical, plumbing, gardening etc — is provided with serious intent in India’s 1.5 million schools and 45,000 colleges. As a result, the average Indian adult is useless in the matter of repairing minor equipment (electricity, kitchen appliances, motor-car and white goods) at home or in workplaces. The plain truth is that a mere 4 percent of India’s 560 million workforce is formally skilled. The overwhelming majority of our technicians and blue-collar workers are informally trained professionals with antiquated knowledge and tools handed down from one generation to the next. That’s why across the country, bridges are falling, highways are potholed, railway accidents are frequent and the quality of manufactures is poor, making them uncompetitive in global markets. The heavy cost of neglecting public education in general and skills or vocational education in particular in the post-independence decades has impacted the country with stunning force in the new age of automation, new digital technologies and artificial intelligence. Suddenly there is the prospect of even well-educated individuals experiencing redundancy, obsolescence and career stagnation, if not unemployment. Therefore, as discussed in our cover story in this issue, belated skilling, reskilling and upskilling fever is raging across the country, manifesting as much in executive suites as in college campuses. Yet it’s a moot point whether skills education can be provided on a mass scale to a 560 million-strong workforce in quick time. As propounded in our Special Report feature on the Union Budget 2024-25 presented to the nation on July 23, a strong foundation of quality early years and primary public education is a necessary prerequisite of acceptable quality vocational education and training (VET). But unfortunately making adequate provision for public education has been a blindspot of governments, policy formulators and the establishment for several decades. Some eminent economists and pundits believe that overhauling India’s obsolete education system will take years. Yet we provide a solution to raise adequate resources to modernise the country’s outmoded education system. In our special report, we present a schema to raise almost Rs.8 lakh crore which is 5x of the Centre’s provision for education in Budget 2024-25. For details, read our second lead feature in this new ideas-packed issue. Happy Independence Day!
Serial entrepreneur Rohan Rai is the Bengaluru-based co-founder of his latest offering Edupull (estb 2023), an edtech company that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to provide class XII school-leavers and undergrads customised roadmaps and career pathways in multiple Indian languages free-of-charge to enable them to make informed higher education choices. About 25,000 students – 35 percent of whom are from Tier II and III cities — have till date registered for Edupull’s invaluable services. Newspeg. In April, Rai signed partnership agreements with six higher ed institutions in India (Uttar Pradesh) and overseas (Spain) for the digital platform’s study abroad and campus ambassador programs. Additionally, the “Write a Review and Add a College” features have also been introduced to allow students to share their experiences and add new colleges to Edupull’s database. History. Born and raised in Patna, Rai moved to the national capital after his Plus Two to enroll in a physics (hons) degree program of the prestigious St. Stephen’s College, but dropped out in his freshman year driven by a deep desire to pursue computer science and engineering at IIT Delhi instead, where he pressed on to study for an integrated Masters program. His professional career began at Qwest Software Services followed by a brief stint at Bizense, a startup. “A three-year stint at InMobi, which rose to becoming India’s first unicorn startup in 2011, was a pivotal moment that ignited my entrepreneurial spirit. Witnessing this success firsthand reinforced my belief in the transformative potential of mobile technology,” says Rai. Despite his demanding corporate life, he first started exploring moonlighting projects such as Dev42, a software service company, and apparel venture Kuchaur. In 2013, Rai quit corporate life and decided to go solo. The same year, he promoted Kritter, a tech-driven advertising platform, which marked the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey. This was followed by Aroscop, a full-service marketing and advertising agency, in 2017. Six years on, Rai together with his former InMobi colleagues Kshitij Sooryavanshi and Arjun Som promoted Edupull in 2023. Direct talk. “I have observed the struggle of students from diverse linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds in navigating their higher education pathways, and strongly believe that given the right guidance early on, dreams can become reality. Edupull was born out of an urgent need to provide comprehensive, accessible, and personalized educational guidance to students regardless of language or background. The combination of AI technology and data analytics makes our digital platform a powerful tool for students looking at higher ed options. Strategically targeting the vernacular market through city-specific performance marketing campaigns has enabled Edupull to attract 25,000 students in a short span of 12 months,” says Rai. Business model. The company sustains its business through strategic partnerships with colleges and brands, without relying on student subscriptions. In addition to its existing revenue streams from these collaborations, a significant portion of Edupull’s revenue comes from study abroad applications and admissions. “By partnering with educational institutions and brands, we have created a mutually beneficial ecosystem that supports…
NEET-UG 2024: Deep rot symptom
– Dr. Krishna Kumar is honorary professor of education, Panjab University, and a former Director of NCERT The 200 questions that NEET-UG asks candidates to solve are multiple choice questions. Students drilled into speedy cracking of questions are certain to get high rank. What have these skills to do with becoming a good doctor? This summer’s awful story of NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test – the centralised national exam for undergrad admission into the country’s 706 medical colleges, written by 2.4 million school-leavers in 2024) reveals how far things have gone in a wrong direction. But the NEET story is merely a symptom of what has happened to our system of education. If you start from June 4 when NEET-UG results were declared, you can recognize all efforts made by the authorities and institutions to ignore grave lapses. When it became impossible to ignore protests, attempts were made to use adhesive tape to make things look normal. The images of 18-year-olds protesting in New Delhi’s sweltering heat will not endure in the ever-changing world of the new digital media, but the troubles afflicted by NEET will. Can the expert committee appointed to look into them provide applicable solutions? Can the National Testing Agency (NTA) which conducts NEET and other entrance tests learn from the experience and improve itself? These questions are not real, in the sense that they don’t reveal how deep the rot has penetrated. Even if NEET had delivered a result without convulsions, we would still be unsure if the successful candidates are better suited to pursue the medical practitioner’s career than those who did not succeed. The 200 questions NEET-UG asks candidates to solve at furious speed are like ones asked in any Multiple Choice Question (MCQ)-based exam. They are all drawn from the NCERT’s senior secondary level textbooks for three science subjects. If you ‘master’ (meaning, memorise) these textbooks, and if you’ve been drilled into speedy cracking of question items, you are certain to get a high rank. What have these skills to do with becoming a good doctor? Will these skills help a medical practitioner maintain her devotion to the profession throughout a long career? Not really. All that NEET does is to offer a process to eliminate a vast number of candidates and arrange the rest into a ranked order. It is no secret that success in NEET depends on being professionally coached. The legal battle for and against re-doing NEET is led by coaching institutions. In televised debates one saw several famous coaches of the different science subjects, but not one teacher from a regular higher secondary school. NEET and other competitive exams have pushed science school teachers to the margins. Schools have no choice but to allow students to attend coaching classes in school time, and NEET candidates seldom worry about (the school-leaving) board exam results. A few years ago, the IIT admission test allotted a certain percentage of marks to students’ board exam performance. Later, this arrangement was cancelled. By usurping the…