Citation A widely respected higher education leader with a distinguished track record in academics, administration, policy formulation, faculty development and management of higher education institutions, Dr. Ajay M. Bhamare is Principal of the Ramanand Arya DAV College (Autonomous), Mumbai (estb.1988). During his long innings in Indian higher education, Dr. Bhamare has served in several important positions at the University of Mumbai (estb.1857). A commerce postgraduate of Pune University awarded a Ph D by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar University, Aurangabad, Dr. Bhamare began his long career of service to Indian higher education in Mumbai rising to high offices in the University of Mumbai, enabling this vintage varsity to upgrade academic standards, syllabi and curriculums, and modernise its administration and management systems. In the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23, Mumbai University is ranked India’s #1 public multidisciplinary university. In 2004, he was appointed Principal of the privately promoted Ramanand Arya DAV College, Bhandup, Mumbai which was conferred autonomous status by the University Grants Commission, in 2021. In the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23, Ramanand Arya DAV College is ranked among India’s Top 5 higher education institutions for its bachelor of business administration/management degree programme. In addition to discharging his duties as Principal of Ramanand Arya DAV College, Dr. Bhamare is also Chairman of Board of Studies at the University of Mumbai, and Dean of its faculty of Commerce and Management, and a member of the Senate, Management Council and Academic Council of the university. Moreover, he is a designated assessor of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and member of the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), Maharashtra. In his capacity as Chairman of the Board of Studies, Dr. Bhamare has initiated an ambitious programme to revise and upgrade commerce and business management syllabi of Mumbai University — which has over 700 affiliated colleges — to align them with the changing needs of business and industry. “India’s higher education institutions need contemporary syllabuses, high-quality faculty, and efficient administration and management systems to deliver world-class education to scholars. Now my priority is to utilize my decades of experience in higher education to transform Ramanand Arya DAV College (Autonomous) into a high-ranking multidisciplinary university as mandated by the National Education Policy 2020,” says Dr. Bhamare. In recognition of his dedicated efforts to improve administrative standards and learning outcomes in Mumbai University and Ramanand Arya DAV College, the Editors and Board of Directors of EducationWorld are pleased to present the Extraordinary Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2022-23 to Dr. Ajay M. Bhamare. Also Read:EW Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23
Citation A well-known educationist, political scientist, writer and orator, Prof. Shri Prakash Mani Tripathi is a higher education veteran with over 40 years’ teaching, administrative and leadership experience. In his long and distinguished career in Indian higher education, Prof. Tripathi, an alumnus of Allahabad University, Prayagraj, has served as professor and head of the political science faculty, dean of the faculty of arts, and chief proctor of the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorakhpur University (Uttar Pradesh), and has published 28 books and 76 research papers in reputed journals. In 2019, he was appointed vice chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, Amarkantak (IGNTU), a Central university established in 2008. Since taking charge of IGNTU three years ago, Prof. Tripathi has successfully introduced several teaching-learning innovations, higher education management best practices and concluded multi-lateral academic and research collaborations with national and international universities to enable provision of high-quality tertiary education and research opportunities to youth from historically neglected tribal communities across the country. Sited in Amarkantak, a tribals-dominated region of Madhya Pradesh, IGNTU’s 13 faculties offer high-quality undergrad and postgraduate degree programmes to 3,912 students. In the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23, IGNTU is ranked among India’s Top 50 public multidisciplinary universities and #1 in Madhya Pradesh (pop.73 million). “Throughout my 40 years in higher education, my prime objective has been to ensure that students receive holistic education that prepares them not only for workplaces, but also for success in life. At IGNTU my mission is to empower students, especially tribal youth, with contemporary higher education to prepare them for employment and leadership positions in an increasingly multicultural globalising world. Simultaneously, IGNTU is also cognizant of the need to preserve and enrich the cultural heritage of India’s tribal communities,” says Tripathi. During his career of distinguished service in India’s higher education system, Prof. Tripathi has been conferred numerous awards including the Sri Nihal Singh Yadav National Award 2014 of the Indian Political Science Association for outstanding contribution to study of ancient India politics, and the Acharya Hazari Prasad Dwivedi Award 2020 of the Uttar Pradesh government for his contribution to Hindi literature. He also serves as a member of the Hindi Advisory Committee, Department of Defence Production, Government of India. For his sustained commitment to upgrade teachinglearning standards in the country’s public higher education institutions and determination to provide traditional knowledge as well as contemporary tertiary education and research opportunities to youth of India’s tribal communities, the Editors and Board of Directors of EducationWorld are proud to present the EW Extraordinary Education Leadership Award 2022-23 to Prof. Shri Prakash Mani Tripathi. Also Read:EW Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23
So, is Covid-19 over? No, it’s most certainly not over. I know that’s not the message you want to hear, and it’s definitely not the message I want to deliver. This virus has surprised us at every turn – a storm that has torn through communities… and we still can’t predict its path, or its intensity. -Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of World Health Organisation addressing the World Health Assembly (United Nations News, May 22) Online education is the new reality. Teaching fraternity must build new academic dynamics and come forward for developing quality e-learning content, developing SOPs to ensure online learning is not limited to exploitative market forces, and protecting against data imperialism. -Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister (Twitter, May 28) Let us assume that indeed the mosque was built on the site of a destroyed temple; does that mean we should open a gaping wound now, provoking civil strife today to avenge the past? Is there no case for letting old wounds that have long healed stay undisturbed? To destroy the mosque and replace it with a temple would not right an old wrong but perpetrate a new one. -Shashi Tharoor, member of Parliament, on the Gyanvapi mosque dispute (The Week, May 29) There is a need for a new legal framework for NEP to align it with the forward looking provisions of the NEP 2020. Otherwise, the policy will not be able to cross the hurdles created by existing legal provisions and age-old practices. -Manish Sisodia, education minister, Delhi state, on the National Education Policy 2020 (Financial Express, June 3) The problem in India is that often when you think an issue is resolved, it isn’t. It crops up in one form or other. -Aroon Purie, editor, on the Gyanvapi mosque controversy (India Today, June 13)
Punjab: Textbooks ban Chandigarh, May 1. Three class XII history textbooks have been proscribed for distorting facts related to Sikh history, said Yograj Singh, chairman of the Punjab School Education Board (PSEB), addressing the media. The decision to ban the texts was taken following a report by an inquiry committee constituted after a complaint was filed by farmer leader Baldev Singh Sirsa. Based on the report, punitive action has been suggested to hold officials serving when these texts were notified by the board, to account. The government’s ban order has been conveyed to the Director, SCERT (State Council of Educational Research and Training), and all district education officers for compliance with immediate effect, he added. Delhi: Centenary second chance New Delhi, May 2. To mark Delhi University’s (DU) year-long centenary celebrations which commenced on May 1, former students who dropped out of affiliated colleges in their final year will be awarded a one-time ‘centenary opportunity’ to re-register, write examinations and complete their degree programmes. “Undergraduate, postgraduate and professional course students who had enroled in mainstream programmes, students of the Non Collegiate Women’s Education Board (NCWEB), School of Open Learning (SOL) and External Cell are eligible to re-register. Former students should submit their registration forms for the centenary chance examination by June 14, 2022,” said an official order issued by DU’s Dean of Examinations. Dropped out students can also access DU’s online students’ portal for the purpose, it added. Faculties, departments, colleges and centres under the university have been notified to complete the confirmation and verification of re-registration forms by June 20. J&K: Woman vice-chancellor Srinagar, May 20. Prof. Nilofar Khan assumed office for a three-year term as the first woman vice chancellor of Kashmir University. A distinguished academic with three decades of teaching and admin experience within Kashmir University, Khan has served in several critical academic and administrative posts including Dean, College Development Council, Registrar, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science and Technology and Director, Institute of Home Sciences. Addressing the media, Khan said students’ welfare and implementation of NEP, 2020 would be her top priorities. Andhra Pradesh: Teachers arrested Amaravati, May 2. The Andhra Pradesh government ordered the arrest of 42 teachers of government schools statewide for indulging in malpractice during the annual class X examination. According to education ministry sources, officials detected the malpractices on the first day when photo copies of the Telugu language question paper were circulated from Kurnool district on WhatsApp an hour after the exam began. On the second and third days, the Hindi and English papers were similarly circulated on social media. “We immediately detected the involvement of some teachers who spread rumours about question paper leaks with the help of outsiders. This was gross mischief calculated to arouse anxiety among students and parents,” said a senior education department official. The suspect teachers have been charged under provisions of the AP Public Examinations (Prevention of Malpractices and Unfair Means) Act, 1997. This is the first time teachers in the state have been arrested under…
Better rankings survey I have been following the annual EW India Higher Education Rankings for the past three years. Well deserved congratulations to EducationWorld and C fore for a comprehensive higher education institutions rankings survey (EW May) under the new subject-wise categories of multidisciplinary, engineering & technology, liberal arts and humanities, medical & life sciences and agriculture. Unlike previous years when universities were ranked under the broad heads of private and government, this year’s rankings according to domain specialisations are better as they enable students to choose the best higher ed institution for academic programmes of their choice. Sunil Kashyap Noida Extraordinary achievement It is commendable that EducationWorld has taken the lead to celebrate and felicitate budget private schools (Pictorial Essay, EW May). It was also interesting to read about the extraordinary achievement in education leadership citation of K. Tulasi Vishnu Prasad, president of the Sri Rama Rural Academy, Guntur that provides low-priced boarding school education to rural children. Congratulations and gratitude to him for his public service. I am hopeful your citation will inspire others to follow in his footsteps! Tanuja V via e-mail Futile exercise Your disaggregation exercise of private and government universities into several subject categories in the latest EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23 (EW May) makes little sense to me. The National Education Policy 2020 has mandated all higher ed institutions to transform into multidisciplinary universities over the next ten-year period. Snehal Raisinghania via e-mail Ten years is a long period – Editor Schools’ larger role The Karnataka Education News report ‘Bible thumping row’ (EW May) highlighting the controversy over a Christian missionary school in Bengaluru ‘forcing’ children to carry Bibles to school, has been blown out of proportion. This controversy can easily be resolved if the school makes scripture class optional for students. As an alumnus of a Christian minority school, I recall that there was never any compulsion to attend scripture classes. Attendance was voluntary and optional. The role of schools is to not only prepare children with the competencies required for success in vocations, but to also teach them to live in peace and harmony with people from all religions and cultures. Asad Khan Bengaluru National language futility I agree with your editorial ‘History lesson for home minister’ (EW May) that exposes Union home minister Amit Shah’s lack of knowledge of India’s past. In my opinion, school textbooks across all state and national examination boards must incorporate the history of reorganisation of the states of the Indian Union on the basis of language in 1956. In our country admired worldover as a melting pot of cultures and traditions, it is foolish to impose a national language. Although I am not opposed to learning Hindi as a second language, I oppose Hindi imperialism. Sathyanarayana Rao Chennai Shocking U-turn It was shocking to read about the highly rated Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi’s mindless withdrawal of an invitation to BJP national spokesperson Guru Prakash Paswan on the occasion of B.R. Ambedkar’s birth…
Jindal law school scholarships Sonipat, June 3. The Jindal Global Law School (JGLS) of O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU), Sonipat will award 500 scholarships to students joining the school in the new academic year 2022-23. “JGLS has decided to award 500 scholarships to meritorious students who join JGLS with high merit in the entrance exam and whose annual parental income is less than the limit prescribed by the university, in the new academic year 2022-23. During the past 13 years since it was established, O.P. Jindal Global University has awarded scholarships valued over Rs.250 crore with almost half the students who graduated having received some scholarship amount. This is important to ensure equity and access while maintaining the highest standards of excellence in legal education,” says Dr. C. Raj Kumar, founding vice chancellor of the O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat (Haryana). According to Raj Kumar, JGLS scholarships are awarded on the basis of merit-cum-means. Students from households with annual income above Rs.30 lakh are ineligible. Merit is determined by scores in the national level entrance exam LSAT-India. “We strictly implement the household income criterion to ensure that the scholarships are awarded to those who need it most,” he said in a statement issued by O.P. Jindal Global University. In the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23, JGU is ranked India’s #1 private liberal arts and humanities university. BYJU’s latest acquisition Bengaluru, May 11. Great Lakes E-learning Services Pvt. Ltd, a Delhi-based company of the Bengaluru-based edtech BYJU’s Group has acquired Singapore-based Northwest Executive Education (NEE), a global provider of executive education programmes. “NEE, with its portfolio of high-quality leadership programmes from some of the world’s best universities will augment the high quality, skill-based professional learning offerings of Great Learning to collaboratively realise the goal of becoming the world’s largest provider of executive education, continuing education and lifelong learning,” said Mohit Jain, founder-CEO of NEE in a media statement. Northwest offers executive education programmes of universities such as MIT, UC Berkeley, Yale, UCLA, University of Chicago, National University of Singapore, among others on business management, leadership, technology, healthcare, and innovation to executives in 50 countries. Great Learning collaborates with the best universities worldwide including Stanford and Northwestern universities (USA), National University of Singapore (NUS), Deakin University (Australia), IIT-Madras, IIT-Roorkee (India) and others to enable them to deliver degree, diploma and certificate programmes. “The guiding philosophy of both companies is to make high quality education accessible, and equip learners with the skills required to succeed in the new digital economy. NEE will augment Great Learning’s efforts to provide learners across the globe with best in-class learning opportunities from the world’s top universities,” says Mohan Lakhamraju, founder-CEO of Great Learning. Fynd’s new programmes Mumbai, May 24. Reliance Industries-backed Fynd, India’s largest omnichannel platform and multi-platform tech company, invites its fourth batch of students. The academy provides technical and practical skills training to freshers and working professionals. Applicants who clear the generic Fynd Academy Entrance Exam are eligible to enrol in courses of their…
The annual EducationWorld Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings were introduced in 2019 to acknowledge and felicitate higher education institutions (HEIs) — especially newly-promoted, low-profile HEIs. Special juries of knowledgeable educationists are constituted to recommend conferment of the EW Grand Jury Awards upon higher ed institutions implementing best practices. To select progressive higher education institutions across the country, we invited nominations from educationists, individuals and higher ed institutions themselves supported by evidence of best practices in 12 categories including extraordinary leadership, campus design excellence, quality of campus life, best management practices, future-ready institutions, among others. Evidence-supported nominations were received from 510 higher education institutions countrywide. To assess the evidence and rank nominated institutions in each category, this year’s Grand Jury comprised eminent educationists Prof. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru and education advisor to the Karnataka government, Prof. Dilip Kumar Dureha, former vice-chancellor of Lakshmibai National Institute of Physical Education Deemed University, Gwalior and Dr. Hiren Ghelani, IT entrepreneur & coordinate member of Saurashtra University and Gujarat Technical University. The Grand Jury duly assessed the nominations and supportive evidence and ranked the Top 5 HEIs in each category.` Extraordinary Leadership These awards acknowledge extraordinary education leaders from among low-profile and newly emergent private higher education institutions. We are grateful to the EducationWorld grand jury for this award. Carved out of Bangalore University in 2017, BCU is sited in the heart of the garden city with our Central College established 150 years ago. This award acknowledges the excellent administrative leadership provided by the BCU management to build upon this legacy. During the Covid pandemic, our management made extraordinary efforts to transition to online teaching-learning. We automated all administration, examination and finance systems, and examinations were conducted and results declared on schedule. BCU is among the first varsities to implement NEP 2020 with plans to introduce the four-year undergraduate and integrated Masters programmes. Moreover, we have introduced study programmes in new-age disciplines such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, cyber security, internet of things. — Prof. Lingaraj Gandhi, vice-chancellor, Bengaluru City University Social & Community Impact Awarded to institutions which have meaningfully engaged with communities, at local or national levels, to effect positive socio-economic change with lasting impact. Our faculty and students are honoured to accept this award for social and community impact as KIIT University’s primary objective is to accelerate social change through provision of high-quality education. We offer not only excellent academics but character building education to students by providing opportunities for community and social service. KIIT University students are encouraged to volunteer at our affiliated Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), which provides free education, board and lodging to 30,000 students from marginalised tribal communities. For instance, under our Art of Giving project, KIIT students train KISS children in communication and soft skills. Achyuta Samanta, founder, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Bhubaneswar. Campus Design Excellence Attractive and conducive campuses providing state-of-the-art enabling infrastructure…
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Social justice warrior Anoushka Jolly (13) was the youngest contestant to pitch her entrepreneurial idea Kavach (‘shield’ in Hindi), an anti-bullying app with a pre-revenue valuation of Rs.50 lakh, to investors on the popular business reality show Shark Tank India — the India edition of the eponymous American show — and win funding of Rs.5 lakh. The first season of Shark Tank India received 62,000 entries, of whom only 67 succeeded in raising funds. The sole child of Manu Jolly, an entrepreneur and chartered accountant Monika, Anoushka is a class VIII student of the high-ranked Pathways School, Gurugram. She began her crusade against bullying at age nine (2018). Experiences of how picking on vulnerable children hurt and demoralised them motivated Anoushka to start the Anti-Bullying Squad (ABS), Gurugram to raise awareness about this issue trivialised in schools and colleges. In 2019 at age ten, Anoushka was ranked among the Top 3 for pitching ABS to the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, a US franchise that teaches entrepreneurship skills to 11-18 year-olds. Thus far, ABS has positively impacted 100 schools and universities countrywide. Driven by the belief that whatever is reported can be resolved, Anoushka started ideating Kavach to enable children/parents to report bullying incidents anonymously with a provision for school managements to access them. With the help of technical mentors — Prajakt Deotale, employed at Microsoft, UK and Vaibhav Vats, the Delhi-based co-founder of Digiperform, an education start-up — Anoushka designed a mobile app in August 2021 and launched it in March 2022. “School director Captain Bajaj supported and helped me spread word about my app. Pathways is where I found the courage to raise my voice against this important issue. I am grateful for that,” she says. Anoushka has already charted her plans for the future. “I have invested my funding of Rs.5 lakh into the development and marketing of Kavach,” says this go-getting youngster set to go places. Also Read: Young Achiever: Avani Prashanth
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Bengaluru-based Avani Prashanth (15) recently bested India’s top professional and amateur women golfers to qualify for the 19th Asian Games 2022 scheduled to be held in Hangzhou (China) later this year. A natural on the greens who started to swing the club at age four, Avani is the highest ranked (#116) Indian among amateur women golfers worldwide, and the first Indian to compete in the final round of the National Women’s Amateur Championship of Augusta National Golf Club, Georgia (USA), which nurtured golf legend Tiger Woods. This teen is also among 100 prodigies selected from 68 countries to be presented the Global Child Prodigy Award 2022 in Dubai later this year. The younger child of M.S. Prashant, a corporate executive and homemaker Surekha, Avani, a class X student of the garden city’s top-ranked Greenwood High International School (CISCE), who spent her five early years in Nigeria, attributes her success to home and school support, especially principal Aloysius D’Mello who never denied her permission to compete. “I would never have made headway in a sport I am so passionate about,” she acknowledges. When she turned five, Avani played her first US Kids Golf Qualifying tournament at the IBB International Golf and Country club, Abuja (Nigeria) finishing on top to qualify for the US Kids Golf European Championship in Gullane (Scotland). The following year, she finished seventh in the European Championship which qualified her to compete in the US Kids Golf World Championship at Pinehurst, North Carolina (USA). Since then Avani has competed in the US Kids Golf World and Golf European championships, finishing among the Top 5 four times at the World Championships and thrice in the European Championships. All this hasn’t come without effort. Avani invests three-four hours daily after school on the greens of the Karnataka Golf Association under the tutelage of British coach Laurence Brotheridge. She also follows a rigorous fitness regimen prescribed by strength and conditioning coach Deckline Leitao at the school gym, and abides by a strict nutrition plan. With over 100 trophies occupying pride of place on her mantelpiece, currently Avani is practicing intensively for the Hangzhou Asian Games 2022, and working on qualifying for the Paris Olympics 2024, even as she is preparing for her CISCE class X board exam. Go girl! Also Read: Young Achiever: Suraj Karkera
Set to celebrate its silver jubilee next year, this K-12 school for children of armed forces officers has earned an excellent reputation for providing holistic, values-based education to its 3,700 students including 1,489 girl children, writes Baishali mukherjee Sited on a ten-acre eco-friendly campus on the banks of River Hooghly in the British East India Company’s first factory town of Barrackpore (pop.1.5 lakh) — a 90-minute drive from Kolkata — the CBSE-affiliated Army Public School, Barrackpore (APS-B, estb.1998) has earned a statewide reputation for providing holistic, values-based education to its 3,700 students, including 1,489 girls mentored by 130 teachers. In the latest EW India School Rankings 2021-22, this low-profile school is ranked among West Bengal’s Top 40 co-ed day schools and #2 in Barrackpore. Established over two decades ago by patron Maj. Gen. Jitendra Singh (VSM) and chairman Brig. M.S. Dadwal under the aegis of the Army Welfare Education Society (AWES) — which runs and manages 137 Army Public Schools and 249 Army pre-primaries countrywide — APS, Barrackpore provides K-12 education to children of serving, short service commissioned and retired armed forces officers. Under the AWES charter, a small number (10 percent of total enrolment) of civilian children are also admitted into the school. “Our objective is to nurture children’s academic, co-curricular, and socio-emotional learning skills in a safe, secure and stimulating environment. Therefore, the curriculum integrates rigorous academics with sports, co-curricular and life skills education. Our mission is to shape students into well-rounded and confident school-leavers equipped with academic, social and life skills needed to succeed in their chosen vocations. With a teacher-pupil ratio of 1:20, we pride ourselves on providing individual attention to all children and also for excellent professional development programmes to our 130 teachers,” says Dr. Moitreyee Mukherjee, an alumna of Calcutta and Kalyani universities who brought two decades of rich teaching and admin experience in reputed schools (Nivedita School, Barrackpore, Air Force Sr. Sec School, Hindon, Ghaziabad) into APS, Barrackpore when she was appointed principal in 2015. In particular, Mukherjee is satisfied with the school’s smooth transition to online learning after the lockdown of education institutions countrywide on March 25, 2020 following outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. “During the past two years when schooling moved online, our teachers made extraordinary efforts to devise engaging online lessons and worksheets. Therefore, when our children returned to in-person schooling in February, teachers had little difficulty in making good the learning loss of students,” says Mukherjee. Since APS-B admitted its first batch of 450 pupils and 20 teachers in a modest building 23 years ago, the school has blossomed. Currently, the school’s campus spread over green acres, hosts ten state-of-the-art buildings interspersed with manicured lawns and Chinese herbal gardens. Academic facilities include 100 spacious technology aided learning (TAL)-enabled classrooms fitted with Smart boards, seven air-conditioned and wi-fi enabled labs including four science and three computer labs, three 200-seat multipurpose halls, and two well-stocked junior and senior libraries housing over 17,000 volumes and 27 subscribed magazines and journals. The school’s…
UoM (estb. 1853) has nurtured four Australian prime ministers, five governors general and eight Nobel laureates. Times Higher Education ranks it Australia #1 and #33 worldwide, writes Reshma Ravishanker The sixth continent’s second-oldest public higher education institution, University of Melbourne (UoM, estb.1853) has nurtured four Australian prime ministers, five governors-general and eight Nobel laureates — the most of any university Down Under. The London-based Times Higher Education ranks UoM Australia’s #1 university and #33 worldwide in its World University Rankings 2022. The China-based Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education ranks UoM among the world’s Top 35 universities in its Academic Ranking of World Universities 2022. Legislated by a special Act of the Parliament of Victoria in 1853, UoM admitted its first batch of 16 students and four professors in a cluster of buildings on the fringes of Melbourne. During the 1900s, UoM expanded significantly when the university amalgamated a number of undergrad colleges, and initiated a curriculum makeover in 2008. Under the new UoM model, students are encouraged to sign up for a general bachelor’s degree before undertaking specialised postgraduate and professional courses. Sited on six leafy campuses in the state of Victoria, UoM’s ten faculties offer bachelors, Masters and doctoral programmes to 52,000 students from 150 countries. The university boasts a substantial endowment of $1.33 billion (Rs.10,357 crore) Melbourne. The capital of the south-eastern state of Victoria and the continent’s second-most populous city, Melbourne (pop.5.31 million) has been adjudged the world’s #1 urban habitat for seven consecutive years (2011-2017) in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Global Liveability Index. A prominent financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region, this well-kempt metropolis offers a smooth public transport system and numerous shopping options. For those interested in the arts, Melbourne provides world-class theatre, concerts and galleries. And true to the tradition of sports-crazy Australia, UoM offers sports lovers opportunities to witness world-class events such as the Australian Grand Prix and Australian Open. Other attractions include the Melbourne Cricket Ground, National Gallery of Victoria, the World Heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building, Queen Victoria Market, Royal Botanical Gardens, Puffing Billy Railways, and the Melbourne Zoo. Within an hour’s drive of Melbourne are some of Oz’s most unspoilt beaches, rainforest, mountains and lakes. Mean temperatures average is 60C in winter and 310C in summer. Campus facilities. The university’s main Parkville campus hosts a mix of historic buildings and awards-winning modern architecture. Within walking distance of downtown Melbourne, the campus hosts ten faculties, state-of-the-art laboratories, IT-enabled classrooms, 12 libraries, specialty stores, cafes, gyms, a supermarket, and a seasonal farmers market. Sports facilities are extensive and include an athletics track, olympic size swimming pool, a cricket oval, tennis and squash courts, and fitness centres. UoM’s six other specialist campuses — Southbank, Burnley, Creswick, Dookie, Shepparton and Werribee —are spread across Victoria state. The Southbank Campus housed within the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music offers contemporary music studios and galleries. Established by the Victorian Department of Agriculture, a short ride from central Melbourne is the Burnley Campus which offers courses…
Under India’s ambitious overhaul of higher education, the country aims to internationalise universities, taking advantage of strong domestic offerings. But its elite institutions continue to struggle to attract overseas students to their Indian campuses. At the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) — arguably the country’s most prestigious universities and its best known higher education brand abroad — international students make up just a fraction of overall learners. Recent years have seen IITs pay attention. In 2019, heads of IITs met to tackle the issue, noting that the low number of foreign students is negatively affecting their institutions’ global rankings. Since then, many institutions have lowered fees for international students, offered scholarships to ease fee barriers and introduced goals to increase their numbers. But such efforts appear to have helped only marginally, if at all. Sanjeev Sanghi, former dean of international programming at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT-Delhi), concedes that IITs have failed to significantly increase share of overseas learners — partly due to a reluctance to change admissions requirements. “Currently, we have 113 foreign nationals in Masters and Ph D programmes in IIT-Delhi out of about 10,000 students total. So it’s still a very low number, but we don’t want to make any relaxation on entrance criteria,” says Prof. Sanghi. The figure is slightly lower than in 2019, when IIT-Delhi set a target of 500 international students by 2025. Among undergraduates, the picture is no better, with the proportion of foreign students dipping even lower. Prof. Sanghi estimates that of an undergraduate class of 1,200, international students number in single digits. “At undergraduate level a lot of universities are trying to get students — but for IITs it’s almost non-existent and that’s because of our entrance system,” he says. To enter one of India’s 23 IITs, applicants must pass a rigorous entrance exam jointly set up by these institutions. In India, many students prepare for years, often receiving tailored tutoring, a fact illustrated by the country’s massive home-grown coaching industry. “We are very particular (at IIT-Delhi) that anyone who enters the undergraduate programme has to clear our entrance exam — we’re not saying that international students are not smart enough, but the entrance examination is a very tough competition,” says Prof. Sanghi. Years ago, the IITs created a Direct Admission for Students Abroad programme to admit international students based solely on their high school grades. But it was limited in scope, and once admitted, students often struggled, recalls Sanghi. For now, at least, those barriers look unlikely to change much. Without the willingness to change their entry criterion, the prospect of IITs’ Indian campuses becoming more international in the future seems slim.
A rise in the number of international students from Europe going to Canada seems to be the “product” of Brexit, according to an analysis of latest trends in immigration data. Figures from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on the number of study permit holders in 2021 from various countries show there is an increase of between 10-80 percent from some western European nations last year compared with pre-pandemic levels. This compares with total holders of Canadian study permits, as at December 31, 2021, of 621,000 from all countries, a figure that was still 3 percent below the number of permit holders at the same time in 2019. Canada-based recruitment platform ApplyBoard, which highlighted the figures in an ‘insights’ blog, says 37 of 44 European countries saw growth in study permit numbers last year that were higher than overall growth. “While it’s well-documented that Covid-19 created pent-up demand for international education from students in all countries, this concentrated spike in interest across Europe looks to be a product of Brexit,” says the blog. “European students who previously would’ve opted to take advantage of reduced tuition fees at UK institutions are now casting their search wider, pursuing education opportunities in Canada.” Data from the UK suggests there has been a collapse in undergraduate recruitment from European Union nations in 2021-2022, the first academic year since a Brexit-induced change in rules that mean EU students face higher fees and no access to government-backed loans. UCAS data on undergraduates, as well as figures on issued study visas, suggest that student mobility has been particularly limited in Eastern European countries. However, the numbers in the UK from western European nations, where Canada has mainly seen an uplift, still appear to have fallen by substantial amounts. For instance, while about 3,800 UK study visas were issued to German citizens in 2021, UK universities had about 6,400 entrants from Germany in 2019-20. Among the largest European nations, German citizens represented the biggest rise in Canadian study permit holders last year, growing 70 percent from 2019 to about 5,000. Also Read: Canada: Scathing micro-degrees criticism
South Korea’s incoming education minister may struggle to make the sweeping reforms necessary to address critical problems in the country’s higher education sector. Kim In-Chul, who is likely to assume the post after president-elect Yoon Suk-yeol takes office in June, served two consecutive terms as president of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, where he was a professor. He also headed the Korean Council for University Education (KCUE), which represents four-year universities in the country. But academics say that Prof. Kim will have to contend with strong political forces to push through any meaningful changes to the sector, which is grappling with steeply dropping enrolments. South Korea is known globally for its strong education, but the subject is also a political hot potato, with candidates for the presidency largely skirting it during their campaigns. “We can hardly expect dramatic change and innovations in education policies at the moment,” says Suyoun Byoun, a higher education researcher. Dr. Byoun doubts that the new government is “likely to gain enough public support to start new innovations” aimed at reforming the sector, which she describes is in “urgent” need of consolidation. “It will be challenging for Prof. Kim to make big changes because education policy is such a politicised issue,” agrees Jae-Eun Jon, an associate professor of education at Hankuk, who notes that already plans to merge the country’s ministries of education and science have been kicked down the road. Still, Dr. Jon is hopeful that the incoming minister will push forward “urgent agendas for higher education”. Top among these include dropping enrolment due to Korea’s demographic decline, which has already prompted closure of universities and is expected to get worse. Another is addressing Korea’s urban-rural divide, with universities outside Seoul seen as less prestigious and are often strapped for resources. Perhaps more controversially, Prof. Kim may fight for raising tuition fees, which have remained frozen for 13 years. Dr. Jon predicts that institutions will lobby hard to release tuition caps, something the incoming minister has previously supported. Still, she cautions this may not prove easy. “This is a bipartisan issue that two big parties must agree on, so (lobbying for an increase) wouldn’t be an easy task,” Dr. Jon says. Currently, the government evaluates universities on numerous indicators to determine its financial support, putting “much burden and pressure on HEIs, taking away resources and energy” from their other activities, says Dr. Jon. The future education minister should also focus on giving universities more leeway to manage themselves, says Hyun Chong Lee, executive director of the Higher Education Research Institute at Hanyang University. “His top priorities should be issues of university autonomy and accountability. To pursue these two goals, he must focus on (universities’) sustainable development,” says Prof. Lee. But if Korea’s next education minister is to succeed, his greatest obstacle may be changing the minds of the very institutions under his charge. “Considering the resistance of HEIs to change, which I think most problematic, the government also needs to stimulate and support their change…
Academics in Afghanistan fear that the past semester could be their last before the Taliban closes universities ahead of major reforms. The country’s fundamentalist regime, which took over nine months ago, has already put its stamp on higher education. It has forced out female faculty members and segregated students by gender, establishing physical barriers between men and women and changing schedules to divide them into separate classes. In recent weeks, women have been banned from attending academic conferences or participating in graduation ceremonies with men. But despite these increasingly restrictive measures, many women students have at least been able to continue attending courses — something that lecturers fear could change soon. While the Taliban has denied rumours that it intends to shutter universities, its reassurances have been met with scepticism, with academics broadly believing that the regime intends to keep institutions closed until it can restructure university curricula to conform with its extreme religious outlook. “They have big plans for higher education…and they want to just buy time to bring those changes according to their own views,” says one academic, who requested to remain anonymous for his safety. He worries that the resumption of higher education under the Taliban thus far is only a short-term measure “and that our rulers, the Islamic emirate, reached the conclusion that it’s not a good idea continuing this system”. Already, constraints imposed by the Taliban have forced faculty and students to find roundabout ways of continuing daily activities. In universities, male lecturers are banned from meeting female colleagues or students in their offices or even in public. “We need a third person to bring messages. Everything becomes very ridiculous. In this century, we use a third person to communicate,” the lecturer says. Another lecturer, who works at Herat University and also asked to remain anonymous, believes that sweeping changes are in store for higher education — an opinion he said is shared by his colleagues. “I think (the Taliban) will change curriculums in all fields of studies, particularly law schools. They will add religious topics,” he says. Like others, he noted that the Taliban had already reneged on its promise to continue girls’ secondary education with closure of girls’ schools in April — not a good sign for universities, which, unlike schools, are co-educational. At least one university has stated that it will further separate male and female students, with men coming to campus on odd number dates, and women on even dates. The announcement was made by Kabul University, but was believed to come from the ministry of education. Also Read: Afghanistan: Girls’ schools shut by Taliban hours after reopening
Chinese graduates of Australian universities are ill-suited to their country’s workforce needs, often applying at the wrong time, in the wrong way and with wrong credentials for the most promising job openings. Research by Beijing-based recruitment platform Lockin has identified a “mismatch” between the career aspirations of Chinese returnees from Australian universities and the qualities sought by employers. Lockin’s appraisal adds to fears that the perceived diminishing value of overseas degrees is threatening Chinese enrolments, which generated more than 10 percent of Australian universities’ revenue in 2020, and as much as 30 percent in some institutions. “While many international graduates still enjoy an edge in salaries in China, it can often take them longer to land their first job compared to domestic graduates,” says the report. “Their time abroad can mean they… lack connections and relevant experience. The timing of their applications may also be out of sync with Chinese domestic campus recruitment schedules.” The analysis found that three-quarters of Australian returnees last year had sought positions in the investment and finance sector, which accounted for only 9 percent of job openings. Roughly four times as many opportunities are available in China’s “vast” technology sector which has dominated the graduate employment market for at least half a decade. The analysis identified other “pitfalls and challenges” for returnees from Australia, who tended to have relatively poor English skills and unrealistic salary expectations and lacked insights into Chinese career structures and resume protocols. And while rankings drive many Chinese students’ university choices, their prospective bosses are far more interested in their demonstrated ability to work. Some 17 out of 20 employers last year expressed “clear preference” for internship experience — about one-third more than in 2017. Shane Dillon, Vietnam-based founder of recruitment platforms JOB+ and Cturtle, says employability and return on investment are “critical” to international enrolments. “An employer’s top priority is skills and the best way students can show this is through work experience,” he says. The study analysed job applications from more than 1 million graduates of foreign universities, including 200,000 who had studied in Australia. Also Read: China to consider return of medical students from India: EAM
Incidents of cheating in online examinations have hit a record high, according to proctoring data that shows that one in 14 students was caught breaking the rules last year. Analysis of data on 3 million tests globally that used the ProctorU invigilation platform found that “confirmed breaches” of test regulations — incidents where there is clear evidence of misconduct — were 6.6 percent of all cases. This is 14 times higher than the 0.5 percent misconduct rate detected in the 15 months prior to the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, which triggered the widespread adoption of online assessments and, with this, a surge in the use of online proctoring services such as ProctorU. But it also represents a steep increase on 2020, when breaches were confirmed in 3.9 percent of tests — indicating that the problem is getting worse as students become more accustomed to online tests. The data is based on tests conducted in about 1,000 centres around the world, mostly in the US, the UK and Australia. The confirmed breach rate for higher education assessments only — excluding professional exams — was even higher than the overall average, at 7.2 percent. ProctorU founder Jarrod Morgan, who is now chief strategy officer of the Alabama-based parent company Meazure Learning, says he is concerned that the rate of cheating is so high even though students know they are being watched by an invigilator. Confirmed breaches included candidates looking at papers or books they should not have had, other people being present in the room during an assessment or a student attempting to take a test on behalf of a classmate. Morgan says rates of cheating would likely be even higher at universities that did not use online proctoring, and he worries that high levels of rule-breaking could devalue students’ qualifications. “It doesn’t take long before the whole thing starts to collapse; the value of a degree or grade comes from society agreeing that if you get it from such a place, it means something,” he says. “If we start to think it doesn’t mean as much because we know people have cheated their way through the courses, the whole thing starts to get shaky.” Dr. Thomas Lancaster, a senior teaching fellow and expert in academic integrity at Imperial College London, says that while it has been well-documented that misconduct has risen during the pandemic, it was surprising to see such an increase among students being monitored online via a process that has been criticised as being “more invasive than face-to-face proctoring. That suggests to me that students feel under so much pressure that they have been forced to resort to unfair means in this situation,” says Lancaster. Also Read: Germany: Online exams cheating spurt
Russian institutions are leading the charge in cracking down on student opposition to the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, with hundreds of students estimated to have been expelled already. With Russian academia increasingly cut off from the outside world, student dissidents are finding themselves targeted by the very institutions tasked with nurturing their critical thinking. On March 9, Russia’s ministry of internal affairs reportedly ordered Saint Petersburg State University to expel 13 students who participated in anti-war protests, in what academics say is an escalation of the crackdown on free speech. While no official figures exist, hundreds of students have likely been expelled for their opposition to the war, says Vladimir Ashurkov, a Russian activist and executive director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a Moscow-based non-profit established by opposition politician Alexei Navalny. Ashurkov, who now coordinates the Freedom Degree project, which fields queries from students facing expulsion, told Times Higher Education that the initiative has been flooded with requests in recent weeks. “Many of the letters we receive begin with: ‘I’m very scared,’” he says. “Some of them are trying to challenge the expulsion and to re-enrol; some of them are looking for opportunities to transfer to another university, including foreign options; some of them are just shocked and frustrated, but all of them need advice and moral support.” Even at universities that stop short of expelling students, scare tactics are “blatant and offensive, and they target the brightest and most promising students. Students are being rejected by supervisors, fired from laboratories and told they’ll face problems defending their theses,” he says. Ashurkov notes one case in which students were told they should apply for academic leave to “volunteer to help rebuild the destroyed cities of Ukraine, because it will help their protest energy to find a better use”. In another, a female student was advised to get married quickly to change her Ukrainian surname. He describes administrators as zealous in their pursuit of offenders: “We have the impression that university managers are playing the key role in the attempts we’re seeing to silence students — not on orders from above.” Also Read: Ending Russia-Ukraine war: A solution Indian Embassy in Kyiv is “helpless” &”powerless”: Ukraine-returned medical student Ukraine and China returned medicos fear uncertain future Ukraine invasion not entirely unprovoked
In this age of rudderless drift towards liberalism fuelled by mobile phones and social media apps, educators need to confront new threats posed by the internet and dangerous apps, writes Lawrence Fray During the past two decades, progressive schools have successfully moved from the treadmill of lecture-based instruction to more personalised forms of learning where students construct knowledge, develop skills and, through efficient formative assessment, participate in directing their own learning. Their teachers have progressed from being ‘sages on stages’ to ‘guides by the side’. However, there is no shortage of people — including educators — who view the educational pathway as a well-defined functional process where the most praiseworthy hallmark of a successful school is delivery of high board examination scores leading to a seat in a renowned university which, in turn, leads to a high-flying career. Hence, excessive summative testing and intensive and (sometimes detrimental) tutoring and high university admission cut-offs buttress a pedagogy that leaves little space for orderly personal development.
As the country’s education institutions begin to regain post-pandemic momentum in a fractious era of religious and communal discord while suffering ravages of climate change, government and private educators would do well to revisit the education philosophy and teachings of this extraordinary visionary sage J. Krishnamurti, writes Dilip Thakore The 127th birth anniversary of philosopher, seer and educationist J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) came and went on May 11 with muted, if any, celebrations. Even on the tranquil, verdant six-acre Vasant Vihar campus of the Krishnamurti Foundation India (KFI) in Chennai, and presumably in Krishnamurti foundations established in Britain, USA and Spain. Nor was the birth anniversary of this visionary sage celebrated in any of the six centres and high-ranked primary-secondary schools with an aggregate enrolment of 2,000 students mentored by 270 highly qualified teachers established by KFI countrywide. That’s because during his long life span in which he delivered public discourses, engaged in discussions with teachers, students, Vedantists, Buddhists and other religious seekers, and gave press and radio interviews and his own writings which were edited and compressed into 80 books and 17-volumes covering philosophy, education and art of living, JK (as he was popularly known) repeatedly emphasised that the message rather than the messenger was important. “What is said, is important, not the person. It is like if you have a telephone, you don’t give importance to it, you keep it clean, but what is said through the telephone becomes all important. Similarly, the person who is speaking here is not at all important. I would like to point this out over and over again,” said Krishanmurti, who during his lifetime consistently discouraged ardent followers to raise him to the status of a guru or cult figure. The trustees of the Krishnamurti Foundation India (regstd.1928) have assiduously respected the philosopher’s wish. Although KFI’s arboreal Vasant Vihar campus sited in Chennai’s upscale Adyar suburb hosts the administrative office of KFI-cum-study centre where JK delivered discourses on education, living and spiritualism for over half a century, a book shop and JK’s carefully preserved bedroom sporting sepia photographs, statues and sculptures in his form and shape are conspicuously absent. A single rock formation in the central garden marks the spot where Krishnamurti delivered discourses for over half a century. “The prime objectives of KFI are dissemination of JK’s teachings to the general public; acquiring, preserving and publishing his works and materials relating to life, education and research; rural upliftment activities including education, village health and livelihood programmes; promoting afforestation, water conservation and eco-friendly practices, and conducting cultural and humanitarian programmes in the light of Krishnamurti’s teachings. We practice what he preached in our six study centres which include five co-ed boarding schools and a day school in Chennai. Essentially, JK believed that children need holistic education, defined as continuous development of the intellect and preparation for transforming into good human beings living orderly lives in harmony with people and nature. This is his teaching that we are striving to keep alive through the…
-R. Kasturi (Bhubaneswar) A confrontation between the odisha government and Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) has prompted the Supreme Court to issue a stay order against the state government and Odisha Public Service Commission from proceeding with recruitment of professors and lecturers for the state’s 11 universities and affiliated colleges. This confrontation dates back to last year when under the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Act, 2020, the state’s BJD government vested the power to select and appoint faculty for state universities in the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC). However, according to UGC — the apex level organisation (estb.1956) that governs all higher education institutions countrywide — the directive is in violation of its regulations which stipulate that appointment of all vice chancellors and faculty in the country’s 1,043 universities and affiliated colleges must be made after UGC approval. Taking exception to the BJD government short-circuiting this well-established recruitment process, Ajit Kumar Mohanty, a former JNU professor, filed a writ petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Act, 2020 and prayed for annulment of all appointments made under it. Meanwhile, OPSC had selected and issued appointment letters to 639 lecturers. In addition, on May 24, another 186 candidates selected for assistant professor posts were directed to get their documents verified. However, admitting Prof. Mohanty’s petition on May 20, the Supreme Court issued a stay order on the recruitment process for three months and directed the state government to respond to the writ petition. But on the ground that education is a concurrent subject under the Constitution, the state government continued with the recruitment process. This prompted UGC secretary Rajnish Jain to write to OPSC warning that “continuation of the recruitment process will be in the teeth of the stay order dated May 20, 2022 granted by the Hon’ble Supreme Court”. Although initially OPSC spokespersons stated that the apex court’s stay order would not impact the appointment of 908 professors and lecturers, on May 26, the state government put the recruitment process on hold. The document verification of 186 candidates and interviews for assistant professors scheduled for June have also been put on hold. The ill-advised disregard of the apex court’s stay order — until better counsel prevailed — has not gone down well in Odisha’s academic circles. Dominant opinion in the academy is that UGC’s regulations for recruitment of faculty in higher education institutions are well-established and safeguard against favouritism and nepotism. “Most members of OPSC are political appointees and supporters of the ruling party. OPSC’s role is to test and select candidates for administrative positions in government. Their members are not competent to test, interview and appoint university VCs, professors and faculty. This is a prescription for inducting party favourites and under-qualified candidates as university faculty. At a time when the new National Education Policy 2020 mandates thorough reform and upgradation of higher education, the BJD government’s initiative to delegate the task of selection and appointment of higher education intellectuals to OPSC is totally regressive,” says the vice…
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Fifteen long-pending writ petitions dating back to 2016 challenging the process of recruiting 10,000 teachers for West Bengal’s 92,000 government schools are experiencing some traction. On April 7, Justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of the Calcutta high court ordered a CBI enquiry into the allegedly fraudulent teacher recruitment process. This order was challenged by the state’s Trinamool Congress government before a division bench. In light of the serious allegations of irregularities and fraud in the recruitment process, the division bench appointed a four-member committee chaired by Justice (Retd.) R.K. Bag to report if a CBI investigation is warranted. On May 13, the Bag Committee submitted its report confirming lack of transparency in the conduct of TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) 2016. According to advocate Arunava Bandyopadhyay, a member of the Bag Committee, “Among the 381 teachers recruited, the names of 221 had never figured in the list of those who passed TET”. Among those recruited was Ankita, daughter of school education minister Paresh Chandra Adhikari, whose name had been substituted for Babita Sarkar, who had cleared the test and was ranked #20. Incidentally, Paresh Adhikari joined the ruling TMC in 2018 following which Ankita was appointed political science teacher at Indira Girls School, Coochbehar on November 24, 2018. On May 18, seven orders were passed by the division bench of the high court directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to continue its enquiry into the alleged irregularities in TET 2016 and appointment of teachers. On May 21, CBI filed an FIR (first information report) against five members of an advisory panel of the School Service Commission (SSC) under s.120-B (criminal conspiracy), s.465 (forgery), s.417 (cheating) and s.468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. Recruitment of teachers for government schools is an emotive issue in West Bengal because teachers are relatively well-remunerated in a state where unemployment is pervasive, and small and medium scale industry salary scales are low. During 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government (1977-2011) when labour militancy and violence was officially encouraged, there was a continuous flight of capital and industry from the state. As a result, overt and disguised unemployment is rife and government — including teaching jobs are highly prized. In support of unemployed teachers, members of the All India Democratic Youth Organisation (AIDYO) and All India Democratic Students’ Organisation (AIDSO) have been staging continuous protests in College Street, a prime location in central Kolkata. Opposition parties have also seized the opportunity to excoriate the TMC government. “The recruitment process has been tainted and sullied by gross nepotism, favouritism and corruption with massive involvement of TMC government ministers. It has opened a can of worms and needs thorough probe,” says Subhendu Adhikary, leader of the BJP in the legislative assembly. Unsurprisingly, academics in Bengal are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the TMC government and chief minister Mamata Banerjee, serving her third successive term in office. There is deep disappointment within academia that…
-Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Following 82 weeks of lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic, 74,000 schools affiliated with the Karnataka state board reopened for on-campus offline learning on May 16 — three weeks earlier than scheduled. But right at the start of the new academic year 2022-23 while children are yet to receive new textbooks, a massive row has erupted over ‘saffronisation’ of textbooks by the state’s BJP government. Rumours that primary-secondary social science textbooks were being rewritten to project the BJP’s hindutva perspective began to circulate last September when former BJP education minister S. Suresh Kumar constituted a 15-member Textbook Revision Committee (TRC) headed by Rohith Chakratirtha, a Kannada language novelist and staunch BJP and sangh parivar (RSS/BJP family) supporter. These rumours were confirmed in March when media reports indicated that the committee has extensively revised class VI-X social science English and Kannada textbooks. According to these reports, chapters on Mysore’s Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, social reformer Basavanna, Dravidian movement pioneer Periyar and social reformer Narayana Guru, who opposed the caste system, which were in previous textbooks have been deleted. In addition, opposition Congress party spokespersons highlight that subtle textual changes have been made to rewrite history. For instance, a chapter titled ‘The Freedom struggle’ in the revised class X social science text reads: “In spite of the diversity in India, the Indian National Congress struggled to kindle patriotic feelings in India. They separated Hindus and Muslims through manipulative techniques”. Dalit activists are also up in arms against changes which obfuscate Dalit icon Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s severe criticism of the Hindu caste system. In a class VI textbook, the new version is: “In his old age, he quit Hindu Dharma and accepted Buddha Dharma that is part of the Indian tradition,” fudging Ambedkar’s criticism of Hinduism’s hierarchical caste system, in which Dalits are at bottom. The agenda of the RSS and BJP leadership, which tends to equate mythology with history, to rewrite history from a new hindutva and Aryan perspective is hardly a secret. But in peninsular India which has ancient Dravidian languages and culture, opposition to the RSS/BJP agenda is deep-rooted. Therefore, even before the new textbooks are out, seven Kannada language litterateurs including G. Ramakrishna and Devanuru Mahadeva have written to the government withdrawing their consent to include their works as lessons in the new texts, while some writers and educationists have resigned from government bodies. Senior writer and scholar Ham Pa Nagarajaiah has resigned his position as president of Rashtrakavi Kuvempu Pratishthana, a government-constituted committee to promote state poet-laureate Kuvempu’s works. Moreover, well-reputed V.P. Niranjanaradhya, who heads the Universalisation of Equitable Quality Education programme of the top-ranked National Law School of India University, Bengaluru rejected an invitation from the state government to honour him for his promotion of the National Education Policy 2020. “The state government has resorted to communalise and saffronise education and in this process, no curriculum framework, constitutional values and education policy have been followed. Since this exercise and the programme to which I…
-Dipta Joshi A prolonged feud between Maharashtra’s tripartite (Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party) MVA government and BJP-appointed state governor Bhagat Singh Koshiyari has thrown a spanner in the works of Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU, estb.1949). Following the retirement of vice-chancellor Nitin Karmalkar on May 18, the VC’s office of the 73-year-old university (ranked #2 in Maharashtra in the latest EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23), has been vacant. A vacancy at the top on the eve of the new academic year scheduled to begin in June is a serious matter for this state government university, which has 950 affiliated colleges. S.12 of the Maharashtra Public Universities Act (MPUA), 2016 mandates that the process for selection and appointment of an incoming vice chancellor should be completed at least one month before the “probable date of occurrence of the vacancy of the vice chancellor”. The Act prescribes constitution of a three-member search panel to shortlist candidates for the VC’s office. Governor Koshiyari has yet to appoint a chairperson of the search committee. Monitors of Maharashtra’s academic scene are unanimous that Koshiyari’s failure to initiate the process of appointing SPPU’s new VC is not an act of forgetfulness. Last December, the MVA government amended MPUA, 2016 to create a new post of ‘pro-chancellor’ in public universities to balance power between the state government and the chancellor. Clearly, the objective was to clip Koshiyari’s wings. Under the amendment, the state government’s higher education minister will occupy the pro-chancellor’s office. The amendment also cancels past practice of the search committee submitting a shortlist of five VC probables to the governor’s office. Instead, it directs the search committee to forward the shortlist to the government. Subsequently, the governor is obliged to select one of the two names forwarded to him by the state government. Although the amendment bill was passed in the state’s assembly on December 29, it still requires governor Koshiyari’s assent before it becomes law. Meanwhile, the MVA government has reiterated that SPPU’s new vice chancellor will be appointed under the amended bill. The backstory of antagonism between Koshiyari, a former RSS veteran and former chief minister of Uttarakhand, and the MVA government, is that since November 2019 when the Shiv Sena — a longstanding ally of the BJP — ended its 25-year alliance with the party and formed a coalition government with NCP and the Congress party, Koshiyari has been at daggers drawn with the MVA government and chief minister Uddhav Thackeray in particular. Now with prolonged delay in appointing SPPU’s vice chancellor becoming inevitable, the state government has appointed Prof. Karbhari Kale, VC of the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University, Lonere, Raigad district, to serve as pro tem VC of SPPU. However, seasoned academics warn against a prolonged top-level vacancy in SPPU. “Part-time VCs attend to administrative and academic emergencies and can’t make important policy and faculty recruitment-related decisions. Thus, handing additional charge of SPPU which has 950 affiliated colleges to a part-timer on the eve of the new…
-Autar Nehru A long-pending proposition endorsed by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 to internationalise isolationist Indian higher education has received some traction. On May 2, the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) — the apex body for higher education regulation — notified the University Grants Commission (Academic Collaboration between Indian and Foreign Higher Educational Institutions to offer Twinning, Joint Degree and Dual Degree Programmes) Regulations, 2022. According to UGC sources, following issuance of elaborate guidelines in April and May for twinning, joint and dual degree programmes, 48 respected foreign higher education institutions (HEIs) including Cambridge, Glasgow, Tokyo and Queensland universities have written to the commission expressing interest in collaborating with Indian HEIs. “These Regulations shall (sic) promote enhanced academic collaboration with foreign higher educational institutions leading towards academic and research excellence in Indian higher educational institutions. It is expected that academic and research collaboration as well as mobility of students and faculty through joint degree and dual degree programmes will be highly beneficial for the Indian higher educational institutions to achieve higher global rankings,” says a typical badly worded UGC communique to universities. While privately promoted universities, unmindful of government disapproval, started contracting academic collaboration agreements with foreign universities two decades ago, for reasons ranging from nationalistic pride, anti-elitism and fear of students being duped, Central and state government universities were prohibited from offering twinning and joint degree agreements with offshore HEIs. Now under the May 2 notification, government and private HEIs are permitted to sign twinning, joint and dual degree agreements with approved foreign varsities. It’s not a national secret that of India’s 41,000 undergrad colleges and 1,043 universities, a mere 10 percent in each category provide acceptable quality higher education. With the top 10 percent undergrad colleges notifying high 95 percent-plus cut-offs in class XII school-leaving examinations, the vast majority of higher secondary school-leavers are forced into second rung state government colleges dispensing poor quality education. Similarly, the great majority of college graduates are forced into sub-standard universities. According to several authoritative studies, 75-85 percent of India’s higher education graduates are unqualified for employment in Indian and foreign multinationals. Therefore, the only option for ambitious school-leavers is to venture abroad for higher study. Currently, over 1 million Indian nationals are enrolled in foreign universities mainly in the US, UK, Australia and Canada where they expend $10 billion (Rs.77,655 crore) per year. Unsurprisingly, there’s been consistent clamour for access to offshore study programmes which would enable Indian students to acquire high quality certification. Moreover, since cost of living is the major head of expenditure in foreign HEIs, twinning and joint degree programmes which allow students to complete 50-70 percent of degree programmes in India and the remainder in the partner HEI abroad, makes good quality higher education more affordable. “The new regulations are welcome as we are living in an age of collaboration where mutually rewarding partnerships have become necessary. Collaboration between reputed foreign and Indian universities will raise teaching-learning and research standards, and infuse internationalisation mindsets in India’s…
The spate of lawsuits being filed in courts countrywide by Hindu zealots and sangh parivar outfits questioning the titles of Muslim wakf properties on which religious mosques — some of them several centuries old — have been built, has the potential of inflaming religious passions and igniting rioting and mayhem which will destabilise the social order and derail the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery momentum. It’s pertinent to bear in mind that for the first time in the history of post-independence India, GDP growth contracted by 6.6 percent in fiscal 2020-21. Although in 2021-22 it recovered to 8.7 percent, this recovery is on the low base of the previous year. Moreover because of Russia’s Ukraine war, which has sky-rocketed crude oil prices and driven up foodgrains cost, GDP growth in the current fiscal is unlikely to exceed 7.5 percent even as unemployment and inflation have crossed the 7 percent and 7.8 percent plimsoll lines. Against this dismal backdrop, the last thing the country and economy need are communal violence and breakdown of law and order that’s certain to slow the economic recovery process. In Uttar Pradesh, a writ petition filed by five pious Hindu women demanding a judicial directive to the management of the vintage Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, to permit worship at a site within the mosque where a shivling, a sacred Hindu symbol, has been found, is being heard by a district court in the holy city. Not entirely coincidentally, several title suits filed by Hindu plaintiffs against mosque committees elsewhere claim mosques were built on ruins of Hindu temples and therefore, the right, title and interest of the land should revert to latter day Hindu worshippers. However learned justices of the bench should bear in mind that in ancient times when people were less educated and more intolerant of other castes, creed and cultures, it was normative for triumphant victors, and conquerors to demolish temples and churches of the vanquished and build mosques and sectarian churches to signal battlefield victories and territorial conquest. Few historians dispute that Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (1618-1707) was an unapologetic religious bigot who destroyed numerous Hindu temples and constructed mosques on their foundations. The Places of Worship Act, 1991 which freezes the character of temples, mosques and churches at their status on August 15, 1947, should be the final word on this issue. With elections looming in several states including Karnataka and Gujarat, the clear intent of the BJP ruling at the Centre and its affiliate sangh parivar outfits is to arouse hatred against the minority Muslim community for historical injustices rooted in the distant past, and consolidate the Hindu majority vote behind the BJP. It is dismaying that despite the clear directive of the Constitution to the judiciary to safeguard the secular and egalitarian character of democratic India, some judges and courts are pandering to the BJP leadership whose patent intent is to divide and rule India in perpetuity. Also Read: Hijab row in Karnataka again, over 20 students suspended
The once clean, green and well-governed state of Karnataka is fast-transforming into a Broken Windows society. Researched and developed by American academics James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in 1982, Broken Windows theory posits that if civic neglect and petty crimes are unpunished, there will be an outbreak of serious crimes and criminality in society. In the once salubrious city of Bangalore, continuous tolerance of petty everyday criminality — road traffic offences, shoddy public works execution, bribery in government offices, arbitrary garbage dumping — has precipitated a major crime wave. Recent news headlines report mass cheating in police recruitment exams; ruling (BJP) ministers demanding 40 percent commission for awarding civic work contracts and clearing contractors’ bills as alleged by the president of the Karnataka State Contractors Association, in a press conference. Evidence of a rising crime wave in this once well-administered state (pop.66 million) is piling up. On April 12, a civil contractor committed suicide because a cabinet minister refused to clear his Rs.4 crore bill without payment of a 40 percent bribe. With margins of civic works contractors reduced to razor thinness because of routine extortion of bribes by government employees, pot-holed roads, abandoned civic projects and collapsing bridges have become normative statewide. Moreover at a media conference, a BJP leader stated that cabinet ministership can be purchased for Rs.100 crore and the chief minister’s post for Rs.2,500 crore. Although Bengaluru city’s buildings aren’t pockmarked with broken windows as yet, the garden city’s obstinately potholed roads and rising crime wave are proof of the validity of Broken Windows theory.
The Indian badminton squad’s maiden victory in the Thomas Cup final staged in Bangkok last month marked a landmark in the history of Indian sport. In the final, the Indian men’s squad led by Kidambi Srikanth recorded a 3-0 triumph over Indonesia, whose players have won the international Thomas Cup tourney introduced in 1949, a record 14 times. Hitherto, the best Indian men’s teams had done was to reach semi-finals in the 1950s and in 1979. It is also pertinent to note that women shuttlers P.V. Sindhu and Saina Nehwal have also transformed latter day India into a force to reckon with in world badminton, the fast racquets game which requires lightning quick reflexes, intense concentration and huge reservoirs of stamina. Hitherto the general sentiment was that Indians were too weak, malnourished and under-trained to take on Danish, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese badminton players. Credit for reversing global opinion in this regard should primarily be given to Prakash Padukone and Pullela Gopichand, both winners of the annual All England Open Badminton Championship, who after their retirement established globally benchmarked badminton training academies which have nurtured India’s latter day badminton stars. Credit must also accrue to Indian corporates and private donors who funded the establishment of these and other badminton academies. The plain truth is that government-run institutions such as the Sports Authority of India and sports academies established by state governments beset with nepotism, casteism and corruption can never produce world champions. In the wider context, India’s emergence as a force to reckon with in several sports — especially cricket and badminton — is the outcome of the expansion of the middle class and retreat of socialism which mandates government dominance of education and all spheres of endeavour. Indian cricket and badminton standards have risen because of private capital infusion and branding in these sports. On the other hand, Indians are perpetual also-rans in games and sports dominated by government-managed associations. Food for thought.
Opium Inc, written by Thomas Manuel, published by Harper Collins piblications is priced at Rs.599. The book is an The Crown, Indian farmers, merchants, ship-builders and sepoys were heavily involved in the opium trade forcibly imposed on imperial China It’s a matter of speculation whether the intractable issue of demarcation of the 484-km Sino-Indian border which stretches from Kashmir all the way down to Arunachal Pradesh in the north-east, is connected with a strong, ineradicable memory of the opium wars of the 19th century which Chinese historians unanimously describe as its century of humiliation. The plain truth is that although the subcontinent was under the rule of the East India Company and later the Crown, Indian farmers, merchants, ship-builders, and sepoys and police were heavily involved with the opium trade forcibly imposed upon imperial China. In this fascinating history of British India’s opium trade with imperial China, then the world’s wealthiest and most prosperous country — a dominant status that the 100 million-strong Communist Party of China (CCP) is determined to re-establish — Thomas Manuel, modestly described as a journalist and playwright, but a historian par excellence, skilfully connects the triangular opium trade between Great Britain, India and China which resulted in two opium wars, to the discovery of camellia sinensis (aka tea), the cup that refreshes but does not inebriate, in 17th century England. When Catherine Braganza, the neglected consort of King Charles I, made the fragrant beverage the most fashionable drink in the country, the demand for tea then grown only in China “became a national obsession”. But as Manuel recounts, while tea imports into Britain soared, “the Chinese had no particular interest in British manufactures or cloth that could balance the (trade) equation”. China’s Qing dynasty emperor “would accept only silver, the equivalent of cold hard cash”. Therefore, the Brits had to “find something the Chinese wanted and as much as they, the British, wanted tea”. That something was opium, the sticky gum harvested from the poppy plant. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the East India Co and later the British Raj, transformed the prosperous agriculture economies of Bengal and Bihar into “opium producing machines”. And for almost two centuries, they forcibly dumped huge quantities of this addictive narcotic in China, with devastating effect upon the hapless Chinese masses, to earn the silver for importing tea into Britain and colonies of the Empire, explains Manuel. This highly profitable drug trade made the East India Company fabulously rich and built the fortunes of numerous company officials and shareholders who flooded English banks with deposits which funded the Industrial Revolution and the British conquest of India. But in the process, the flourishing farm economies of fertile Bengal and Bihar were transformed into monoculture opium producing geographies, ruining their soil and mixed farming cultures, from which they have never recovered. Alarmed by the soaring number of people wrecked by opium addiction, in 1729 imperial China banned the import and use of the narcotic in the country. Undettered, the East…
The Three Khans, written by Kaveree Bamzai, published by Westland books publications is priced at Rs.599. A compelling narrative of the careers of Bollywood’s three Khans — major figures of the Hindi film industry Ramachandra Guha is one of few historians to have considered with any degree of seriousness the role of Hindi cinema in keeping India’s chaotic diversity together. Kaveree Bamzai’s engaging book extends Guha’s basic premise by examining the creation of a shared cultural space, even as it compellingly traces the journey of Bollywood’s three Khans — Aamir, Shahrukh and Salman — major figures in the Hindi film industry and a globalising India. Not only has Hindi cinema produced a shared vocabulary of visual aesthetics, music and aspirations, but its evolving ideas of heroism are embodied in the person of male protagonists who have given form to the deepest desires of a generation. Bamzai cites scholarly studies on subjects of politics, economy and culture, deftly marshalling her resources as she negotiates the complex political terrain of recent history from 1980 to the present, foregrounding the three Khans as they emerge from these times and go on to redefine stardom, each in his own unique fashion. That Hindi films are an accurate guide to the nation’s changing political contours is a thesis made conclusively in several studies. Stars double up as characters in films and as embodiments of the most desirable political qualities current for the times. If Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar were distilled expressions of Nehruvian socialism and secularism, Rajesh Khanna represented the romanticism of the 1960s. The rise of the brooding, angry hero Amitabh Bachchan’s persona reflects the angst of India’s troubled 1970-90 era. In the mid-eighties, Bamzai engagingly writes, a beleaguered nation rediscovered youth and aspirational desire in prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Political and economic reforms resulted in the technology boom that changed the shape of business and communication, and marked the heady beginnings of conspicuous consumption in sync with globalisation. The films of Shahrukh, Aamir and Salman during these years define expectations of the times, as well as the imminent disappointment and eventual lost sheen of these promises. Woven into the narratives of several characters enacted by these stars is the subterranean story of the times told through the unfolding events of their films. Though the three Khans are assessed collectively, their individual careers even as they correspond to the same timeline, trace different graphs of success and celebration. Aamir Khan was the first to acquire fame in his uncle Mansoor Khan’s production Qayamat se Qayamat Tak (1988). This film, argues Bamzai, subtly redefined gender dynamics through its portrayal of a younger and softer hero who is the object of desire of its ‘innocent yet determined’ heroine. Salman Khan whose first hit came with Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), a movie that correlated blatant consumerism with the Hindu joint family, carried the burden of awareness that the other Bandra boy Aamir, whom he had met occasionally, was already a star. Distant from both these two…
Almost two years since it was legislated in July 2020, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has gained little traction. The outcome of high-powered committees chaired by former Union cabinet secretary the late TSR Subramanian and space scientist Dr. K. Kasturirangan, and three years in the making, NEP 2020 was presented to the nation after an interregnum of 34 years. Slow traction in implementing NEP 2020 was highlighted during the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings Awards 2022-23 function staged in Delhi NCR on May 28. Two panel discussions — ‘NEP 2020: Roadblocks to Implementation’ and ‘Will NEP 2020 Flexibility Provisions Dilute Higher Education?’ — featuring vice chancellors and principals of the country’s premier higher education institutions, reported status quo and lack of urgency in implementing NEP 2020, which mandates radical reform of the country’s fast-obsolescing education system. Heavily influenced by a 484-page report of the nine-member Kasturirangan Committee, NEP 2020 proposes abolition of the apex-level University Grants Commission and All India Council for Technical Education, which supervised and regulated arts, science and commerce and technical higher education for over half a century, and their replacement by a single Higher Education Council of India (HECI). Under HECI, the policy mandates establishment of a National Higher Education Regulation Council, National Accreditation Council (NAC), Higher Education Grants Council and a General Education Council to regulate (“light but tight”), accredit, fund and set academic and skill standards. Somewhat contradictorily after mandating this elaborate structure for regulating the country’s 41,000 undergrad colleges and 1,043 public and private universities, NEP 2020 proposes abolition of the current system under which most undergrad colleges are affiliated and governed by parent universities which conduct common examinations and certify graduates. NEP 2020 expresses aspiration that undergrad colleges will transform into autonomous, multidisciplinary, degree awarding universities as they are upgraded by NAC in a phased manner. Other proposals of NEP 2020 permitting reputed foreign universities to establish campuses in India, and establishing a National Research Foundation remain in limbo. In the end, the consensus of the learned panelists was that the inherent contradiction in NEP 2020 between greater regulation and institutional autonomy should be resolved in favour of the latter option. Quite simply, the State is bankrupt of the human and financial resources required to establish the regulatory superstructure mandated by NEP 2020. Revival and renaissance of higher education needs to be entrusted to academics and institutional managements without interference from government. The regulatory system has been tried and tested, and has failed. More of the same is a prescription for stagnation and mediocrity. Also Read: EWIHER 2022-2023:India’s Top 100 Private B-Schools
Overdue recognition of liberal arts & humanities
NEP 2020 acknowledges that liberal arts education is necessary foundation for applying a humanistic (moral and ethical) lens to all science, commerce and professional education, writes Kathleen Modrowski Somewhat belatedly liberal arts education has experienced a renaissance during the past decade through promotion of several well-funded private universities in India. According to the latest Union education ministry report, a third (32.7 percent) of all undergraduate students are enrolled in liberal arts/humanities and social sciences study programmes. The plain truth is that for over half a century, liberal arts education has been the fall-back option of school leavers who didn’t do sufficiently well in their higher secondary exams to qualify for entry into the country’s top-ranked engineering colleges, especially the globally renowned IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and the limited number of medical colleges. However, following rising awareness in society that professional education without a foundation of expansive liberal arts learning was churning out engineers and doctors who knew precious little about society, law, history and the Constitution, cutting-edge liberal arts syllabuses and curriculums inspired by the UK’s Oxbridge and America’s Ivy league colleges started to be designed in private and several public universities. Also Recommended:India’s top private liberal arts & humanities universities The most recent All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE 2019-2020) lists 407 universities as privately funded. A substantial and growing number of them have designed strong humanities programmes. This is an overdue and welcome development because the Indian subcontinent has an ancient tradition of holistic and multidisciplinary learning. India’s ancient Nalanda and Taxila universities, founded in the 5th century CE and 7th century BCE, were globally respected and attracted thousands of scholars from around the world. But for various historical and sociological reasons, by the 13th century, Nalanda had disappeared and Taxila became a distant memory. Throughout history education and society have been shaped by the social, economic and political realities of a particular era. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century, fast evolving new technologies have altered the purpose of education. Increasingly education — especially higher education — became specialised and vocational. Ancient wisdom that institutions of higher learning should not only respond to the immediate material needs of the people, but also teach the social sciences, history, culture, good citizenry, literature and the arts, fell out of fashion. Moreover, education became increasingly influenced by government policy. And governments are usually eager to prioritise economic growth to meet the material needs of citizens, whereas the goal of education is — or should be — to teach moral and ethical values and nurture learned graduates steeped in knowledge of history and culture. Educated individuals must be able to practise the highest values of their societies while addressing the material needs of the majority struggling at the base of their social pyramids. However, providing balanced education is not the role of government. It requires foresight of the administration, faculty and students in academic institutions of higher learning. If higher education institutions focus solely on…