EducationWorld May 15

Every person on this planet either is or should be involved in team building! Because  species homo sapiens is designed to be connected, interdependent in relationships with people. Every human being is designed to become a team player. A family is a team, an athletics squad is a team, corporate employees constitute a team, and a government office is ” or should be ” a team. During my long career as an athlete, coach, and sports psychologist working with families, and while providing consultancy services to business enterprises, it has become increasingly clear to me that the #1 issue on the minds of most sports coaches, team owners, entrepreneurs, executives, managers, and even shopfloor employees is, œHow do we ensure we work better as a team? Whenever and wherever people join together (or are thrown together) to get a job done, they willy-nilly become a team. And the first priority of any team should be to learn to function as a unit, as effectively and smoothly as possible. Since basketball was my career, it provided an excellent example of a team sport (when played correctly). I have learnt that the first imperative of team building is subordination of individual to team goals. However, in today™s world where individualism is becoming increasingly predominant, coaches and parents need to teach young people to become collectivist team players ” a formidable challenge. Implicit in team building are trust and communication, the cornerstones for establishing any type of team. What steps can we take to build successful teams? There are many traits, thoughts and skills that need to be developed. Chief among them are trust, care, communication, commitment and developing a common vision. Trust. Without trust there can™t be a team. Individualists tend to be untrusting because they are taught to look out for themselves and believe everyone will do the same. Trust is a sentiment which prompts individuals to rely on others. It can take a long time to build trust and all team players know it requires many initiatives to build trust. Care. Caring can be particularly problematic when members of a team don™t know each other well. A first step is for members to know at least one teammate in some depth. This can slowly be extended to all the players of a squad as the season progresses. There are many ways to accomplish this: big brother or sister relationships, sharing personal information in formal or informal settings, decreasing personal space in team meetings, and working together in pairs during practice games. A major force in team building is shared fun activities away from the gym or practice field ” dancing, cooking meals together, and/or camping. Communication. Effective communication is key to building team relationships. Too many people think communication is œtalking and spare little thought to the value of listening. Most listen only in preparation for what they want to say. In his best-seller 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey used the phrase, œListen first to understand. This…

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That China has a œforum on improving ideological work in universities and colleges reveals something about the nature of the relationship between the State and universities. At the forum in January, education minister Yuan Guiren warned the country™s universities and colleges œto maintain political integrity and never let textbooks promoting Western values appear in our classes, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Earlier that month, the Chinese Communist Party had issued œa guideline on ideological work in colleges, which underscored faculty™s role as facilitators on the front line of championing the concepts of Marxism, Chinese Dream, socialist core values and traditional culture, Xinhua reported. In December, President Xi Jinping said œthe higher learning institutions shoulder the important tasks of studying, researching and publicising Marxism, as well as training builders and successors of the socialist cause with Chinese characteristics. Why have senior Communist Party officials apparently stepped up ideological pressure on universities in recent months? œThe Chinese authorities are surely concerned about the possibility of an escalation and politicisation of popular protest as economic growth slows and social problems intensify, says Elizabeth Perry, Henry Rosovsky professor of government at Harvard University whose current research focus includes the politics of higher education in contemporary China. Prof. Perry says that since the suppression of the student-led Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and ensuing œbattery of stringent party controls on universities, œstudents and professors have been among the few social groups notably absent from the rising tide of popular protest that has swept across China in the last couple of decades. œThat campus compliance cannot be taken for granted was made clear by the recent Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong, in which university students played a prominent role, she adds. Mike Gow, global postdoctoral fellow at NYU Shanghai, whose Ph D thesis examined the relationship between Chinese universities and the State discerns a different motivation. He argues that the Chinese Communist Party views œhigher education as being a key sector in which consensus to their overarching view can be negotiated, particularly in relation to president Xi™s ˜China Dream™ discourse. In Xi™s first address to the nation as president in 2013, he called for an effort to œpush forward the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and strive to achieve the Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Since then, the China Dream has become the defining slogan of his presidency, while remaining vaguely defined as a concept. Attempts have been made to make it integral to people™s thoughts via billboards, chart-topping songs and textbooks, with universities seen as a key means of promoting the concept. The 12 œcore socialist values linked to the China Dream, as articulated by Xi, include prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony and freedom. œThe ˜announcements™ are clearly aimed at party officials in universities and colleges charged with overseeing the higher education sector, not necessarily directed at academic staff, says Dr. Gow. A Communist Party secretary is the head official in Chinese universities, while the university president…

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University staff SHOULD be free to criticise senior management and expose wrongdoing without fear of dismissal or disciplinary action, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. In a momentous verdict which confirms the right to freedom of expression at work, the Strasbourg court found that a professor at a Latvian university had been unfairly sacked after he spoke out against nepotism, plagiarism, corruption and mismanagement in his department. Andris Rubins was head of the department of dermatological and venereal diseases at Riga Stradins University when he went public with his allegations in March 2010. This action followed a series of emails he sent to the university™s rector which concluded with Prof. Rubins stating his intention to expose various malpractices unless the institution reversed its decision to merge his department with another, which would have abolished his post. Six weeks later, he was informed that his contract had been terminated because of a breach of œgood morals. This decision was upheld in 2012 by a Latvian court which found he had shown disloyalty towards his employer and had acted without integrity in issuing œthreats to the rector. The court stated that œa calm and positive atmosphere and a respectful attitude among colleagues best contribute to achieving constructive dialogue, and said Prof. Rubins should have kept his concerns within the university. However, a majority of judges at the European court ruled that his dismissal amounted to unjustified interference in Prof. Rubins™ right to freedom of expression and violated Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which guarantees this right. Employees do owe their employers a duty of loyalty and discretion, but in this case the truthfulness of Prof. Rubins™ claims had not been challenged and they were in the public interest, the judges said. The ruling, published on January 13, may provide added protection to whistleblowers in the UK, as some matters are not covered in the list of qualifying disclosures under current employment law, according to Makbool Javaid, partner and employment law specialist at Simons Muirhead and Burton. The court ordered the respondent, the Latvian government, to pay Prof. Rubins ‚10,280 (Rs.6.86 lakh) in compensation and legal costs, although it did not uphold his claim for damages of almost ‚159,000. But two of the seven Strasbourg judges dissented, saying he had been sacked for attempted blackmail of the rector, rather than for going public with his accusations. (Excerpted and adapted from )

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The president of Saudi Arabia™s flagship graduate research university has rejected calls for him to condemn restrictions on freedom of speech in the country. Jean-Lou Chameau, the president of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), told Times Higher Education that universities have to reflect the societies within which they exist, and that the greatest long-term impact would be achieved by instilling the values of openness and creativity in a generation of graduates. The former president of the California Institute of Technology was speaking amid continuing international outcry about the imprisonment and public flogging of Raif Badawi, a blogger who criticised Saudi Arabia™s clerics. In January, 18 Nobel laureates wrote to Prof. Chameau, calling for œinfluential voices in KAUST to be œheard arguing for the freedom to dissent, without which no institution of higher learning can be viable. Some have interpreted the letter, which counted South African novelist J. M. Coetzee among its signatories, as a warning that KAUST could be marginalised by international scholars unless it does more to further freedom of speech. But Prof. Chameau says he has never used his position as a higher education leader to speak out about œpolitical issues. œI believe we have to remain focused on developing the university™s science programme and on educating young people in an environment that is open, diverse and creative. It is always easy to criticise organisations or universities, but we have to remember that different parts of the world work in different ways, he says. According to Chameau, openness and diversity are enshrined in KAUST™s royal charter, granted by the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud in 2009, adding that researchers are free to publish and discuss their work œas they want. KAUST is unique in the country in allowing women to be educated alongside men. On campus, women are not required to wear a veil and are allowed to drive. Some observers question whether the accession of King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, after the death earlier this year of King Abdullah, will lead to the implementation of more conservative education policies, or curtailment of the scholarship programme that has allowed thousands of young Saudis to study in foreign universities. However, Chameau says he has seen œno sign of any change in government policy and adds that he is proud that 35 percent of KAUST™s students are women. Having a diverse student body, he says, is œpart of the DNA of KAUST. When King Abdullah founded KAUST, he gave it a massive $10 billion (Rs.62,360 crore) endowment with the aim of rekindling science in the Arab world and building a knowledge-based economy in Saudi Arabia. Having recently celebrated its fifth anniversary, the institution now hosts 840 students, 132 academic staff and 401 postdoctoral researchers. However, Chameau declines to reiterate the target set under his predecessor, Choon Fong Shih, for KAUST to be ranked among the world™s Top 10 science and technology universities by 2020. œWhatever was said at the time, becoming a destination university, an Imperial…

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The results of the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings 2015 released in March show that the UK boasts 12 of the 100 most renowned higher education institutions in the world (up from ten last year), while its two strongest performers, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge have improved their positions. The US remains dominant in the annual rankings, claiming 43 of the top 100 universities and eight of the top 10, although the total number of American institutions is down from 46 last year. For the fifth consecutive year, the rankings highlight an elite group of six US and UK ˜super-brands™ which hold a significant lead over the rest. Although the order has changed over the years, the institutions in the top six have remained constant: Harvard University, Cambridge, Oxford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. œWhat we are finding year on year is that universities in this group of six tend to stand out well above the seventh and eighth-placed institutions, says THE rankings editor Phil Baty. œThey seem to be in a super-league all of their own. Germany remains the best-represented nation after the US and the UK, with six Top 100 universities (the same as last year). Its neighbour France now boasts five institutions in the table (all of them based in Paris), up from two last year. Asia™s best performer, the University of Tokyo, slipped one place to 12th position. Meanwhile, China™s top institution, Tsinghua University, climbed 10 places to 26th, and Peking University leaped from 41st to 32nd place. (Excerpted and adapted from )

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Examination malpractice and resigned tolerance thereof is by no means an exclusively Indian phenomenon. One in seven Russian students readily admits to cheating in university exams, reveals a national poll of undergraduates. One in 25 students reports having paid someone else to write at least one mid-term or final-year paper, according to the annual Monitoring of Education Markets and Organisations Project (Memo), which received responses from 3,000 Russian undergraduates in 2013. The project confirms the widespread belief that œcheating is blossoming in Russian universities, says Igor Chirikov, senior research fellow at the Institute of Education at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow (HSE), which conducted the poll. Even those who don™t admit to cheating have a high tolerance for academic dishonesty, with half of students in economics and management, questioned for a separate survey, stating that cheats should receive no more than a caution if caught, says Dr. Chirikov, who also works at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. œThese expectations correspond to the actual behaviour of faculty members, he writes in a journal article detailing the findings. According to a parallel Memo survey of academics, œthe majority of them usually just give cheaters a warning or lower the grade, says Chirikov. With few Russian universities tackling plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty at the institutional level, œcheating is blossoming both among students and faculty and reinforcing corruption practices outside academia, he warns. While acknowledging that the wider acceptance of corruption in Russian society has contributed to the phenomenon, Dr. Chirikov also speculates that œcheating has become a response to boring and meaningless education. œStudents cheat when they are cheated, argues Chirikov, whose claims are published in a paper titled The Mystery of Russian Students: Poor Learning Experience, High Satisfaction in the spring edition of the HSE journal Higher Education in Russia and Beyond. The paper says data from a 2013 poll of over 4,000 economics and management undergraduates at 11 leading Russian universities indicates that 70 percent of students spend most of their time in class writing down what a lecturer says. Students in Russia are œrarely challenged intellectually and œdo not engage much in creative and intellectually challenging activities, says Chirikov. (Excerpted and adapted from )

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William Bowen, a former president of Princeton, calls it œHarvard envy. Other American universities try to emulate the Ivy League, which raises costs. They erect splendid buildings, lure star professors with fat salaries and hire armies of administrators. In 1976, there were only half as many college bureaucrats as academic staff; now the ratio is almost 1:1. No wonder average annual fees at private universities have soared to $31,000 (Rs.19.34 lakh) in 2014, an increase of around 200 percent since the early 1970s. Each new graduate in America is now about $40,000 (Rs.25 lakh) in debt. People who sign up for costly arts degrees may end up poorer than if they had never been to college. Digital technology can make college cheaper without making it worse, says Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University (ASU) in Phoenix and co-author of Designing the New American University. This idea is not new. For a few years now, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have enabled universities to beam lectures to wide audiences at a tiny marginal cost. The problem has always been that taking a Mooc is not the same as attending college in person. MOOCs are cheap, but students cannot bump into each other in the library and swap ideas, chit-chat or exchange body fluids. ASU seeks to mix online and face-to-face instruction in a way that makes both more effective. For example, one reason why college costs so much is that many students fail to graduate on time. Only three-fifths finish a four-year degree within six years. This may be because they are ill-prepared when they arrive: shaky numeracy leads many to drop out of courses that require maths. ASU uses technology to diagnose and address such shortcomings. All students are tested on arrival and given remedial help if needed. Early results look good: ASU has almost doubled undergraduate enrolments since 2002, to 82,000, kept its degree costs reasonably low ($10,000 a year for in-state applicants) and increased the share of students who graduate after four years from under one-third to half. The goal is to raise that to two-thirds in this academic year. Providing more of its coursework online also helps a university to serve students based in remote locations. Phil Regier, dean of online studies at ASU, says the number of students who study remotely is growing fast. They pay the same fees as in-state students who live on campus. This works out well for the university, which can educate more fee-paying students without building bigger lecture halls. Extra sources of income are handy at a time when the state of Arizona is cutting funding for higher education. Crow is quick to spot opportunities: ASU has linked up with Starbucks, a coffee chain, to provide online degrees for company staff. The notion that online degrees are inferior is also starting to fade. Top-ranked universities such as Pennsylvania State and Columbia now offer them in many subjects. Georgia Tech has had an online-only Masters degree in computer science since…

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An emeritus professor at the London School of Economics and a highly-respected economist of Indian origin, Lord Meghnad Desai a life peer of the House of Lords, the second chamber of the British parliament is well-known in India as a television panelist and commentator popular for his forthright views on political and economic issues. Newspeg. On March 17, Desai inaugurated the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics (MDAE) in upscale south Mumbai. The academy is set to admit its first batch of 30 students in July. The launch of MDAE, sited in the commercial capital’s 30-storey World Trade Centre in Cuffe Parade, was a big ticket event which attracted heavyweights of the finance and academic world. Among them: Dr. Ajit Ranade (head of the academic board of MDAE and chief economist of the Aditya Birla group of companies), Dr. Tushar Poddar (chief India economist and managing director of Goldman Sachs), Niranjan Rajadhyaksha (executive editor of Mint), Dr. Indu Shahani (vice chairperson of MDAE) and P.D. Singh (managing director of J.P. Morgan, India). The objective of the boutique academy is to œlearn, think, apply and prepare students to take leadership positions in the global economy. History. Born in Vadodara, Gujarat, Desai is an alumnus of Ruia College, Mumbai, who was awarded a Masters in economics by Bombay University in 1960 and a doctorate scholarship by the University of Pennsylvania. He signed up with the London School of Economics in 1965 where he served as a professor of economics from 1983-2003, and was appointed a Labour Party peer of the realm in 1991. Following his long stint in academia, Desai has authored several highly acclaimed books including Rethinking Islamism: Ideology of the New Terror (2006), The Route to All Evil: The Political Economy of Ezra Pound (2007), Dead on Time (2009), The Rediscovery of India (2009) and his latest Hubris: Why Economists Failed to Predict the Crisis and How to Avoid the Next One (2015). Direct talk. MDAE has been designed as a postgraduate institution of excellence which will infuse students with the academic rigour and applied skills to meet the needs of the globalised workplace. Our pedagogy will marry theory with real-world practice and equip students with sophisticated economics and finance know-how when they enter the workforce, says Desai. Future plans. According to MDAE spokespersons, the academy is designed as an exclusive boutique institution which will admit high-quality economics and finance graduates (tuition: Rs.2.25 lakh for the 11 month programme). They will be mentored by well-reputed domestic and foreign faculty handpicked from MIT (USA), LSE and Warwick University (UK). The alumni of MDAE are sure to be brilliant, and I look forward to their shaping the future of economics in India and worldwide, says Desai. Way to go! Shweta Nair (Mumbai) Brummie Indophile Sir David Eastwood is vice chancellor of the University of Birmingham (UoB, estb. 1900), ranked among the Top 100 worldwide by reputed London-based rating agencies Quacquarelli Symonds and Times Higher Education. A highly-respected academic with over 32 years experience…

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After the BJP-led NDA coalition government was sworn in at the Centre a year ago, religious arguments on television and public platforms have become shriller and often hostile. Indeed even before the general election of last summer, in February 2014, The Hindus: An Alternative History, written by prominent American professor of Indian religions Wendy Doniger, was in effect banned in India after her publisher declined to fight a suit filed by a Hindutva activist unhappy with its content. In an essay published in The New York Review of Books, Doniger deplores œthe clash between pious and academic ways of talking about religion, and about who gets to speak for religious traditions. While India has numerous theological colleges, there are few forums where students can engage in the academic study of religions and therefore, œshared assumptions underlying this discipline are largely unknown in India, she laments. This comment raises an important question: What is the academic study of religion? Certainly it™s not theological study for pious believers trained to propagate certain beliefs. Nor is it a grouping of zealous skeptics intent upon destroying cherished religious beliefs with ideological sledgehammers. Academic study of religion is focused on examination of religious texts, beliefs and phenomena with two objectives: interdisciplinary study and open space for inquiry. I can visualise numerous impediments to this pedagogy in India. An initial difficulty is the association of religious studies scholarship with colonialism and Western scholars™ attempts to categorise or impose their cultural assumptions on Indian and other colonised people. But this argument about the origins of religious studies education is inaccurate, irrelevant, and somewhat outdated. It minimises the undeniable contributions of many dedicated Western scholars to the study of Indian religions, and ignores the nuances and self-awareness that contemporary religious studies scholars bring to their subject. Beyond this initial problem, there are four home-grown difficulties. The first is a cultural bias in Indian higher education and wider society. Indian education is heavily biased towards technical and professional training. Therefore, certain widely-held notions in society about what constitutes œmodernity, œsecularism, and œprogress make study of religions in higher education institutions  less-than-respectable. A second difficulty flows from political activism. India has a highly aggressive religious right (sangh parivar) ready, willing and able to resort to violence to enforce its narrow definitions of India and Hinduism. Consequently introduction of formal religious studies education as defined above is quite likely to become a flashpoint in India™s œculture wars. A third impediment is legal. Until Parliament clearly defines dangerously ambiguous laws such as s. 295 (a) of the Indian Penal Code which punishes œdeliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs, religious studies educators may find themselves dividing time equally between classrooms and courtrooms. A final difficulty is institutional: to establish successful religious education faculties, colleges and university managements need to be willing to promote and defend the right of students and scholars of religious studies to engage in their work unimpeded.…

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I™ll be graduating in mechanical engineering next year. I am confused whether to sign up for an M.Tech or MBA postgrad programme. Please advise me on which study programme is more financially rewarding. Ashok Rao, Chennai Make the decision based on your aptitude and interests rather than monetary considerations. An M.Tech degree programme will provide technical knowledge and training while the MBA programme prepares you for management positions in business enterprises. Since the training challenges as well as opportunities are different, evaluate your aptitude and skills before taking a decision. I™m keen on a career in the diplomatic service after completing my B.Com degree programme. What are my options? Nalini Iyer, Bangalore To make a career in the diplomatic service(s), you need to clear the UPSC (Union Public Service Commission) exam. Depending on your performance in the exam, you will have a choice to be assigned to the Indian Foreign Service. However, you can also opt to work in corporate/public relations with MNCs, international banks, foreign embassies etc. After completing class XII in 2016, I want to study abroad either in the US, UK or Australia. Would it be advisable to go abroad for graduation or postgraduation? Also advise me on the tests I need to write to qualify for admission into foreign universities. Manish Chawla, New Delhi US universities offer a four-year bachelor™s degree programme with flexibility to combine subjects from varied disciplines. Students also have the option of pursuing two majors and acquiring international work experience through OPT (optional practical training) under which they are allowed to work for 12-29 months after completion of their degree programme. Hence, the US is a favoured higher education destination. If you have the required funds, signing up for a bachelor™s degree programme in the US is a good bet. Admission is based on academic record, standardised test scores (SAT and TOEFL for US, TOEFL/IELTS for the UK and IELTS for Australia), statement of purpose, application documents etc. Most top-ranked universities in the US require SAT II scores in addition to SAT. I want to enroll in a BMS (bachelor of management studies) programme after Plus Two. What are the admission criteria? Rahul D™Souza, Mumbai BMS is an excellent undergrad degree programme for students planning a career in management. Further study through an MBA/MMS programme will accelerate your progression in the corporate world. BMS entrance exams are usually held around May. The basic eligibility requirement for BMS is at least 50 percent average in class XII in any discipline. After my graduation in commerce and completion of the company secretary course in 2016, I™m keen on working for the United Nations or its associate agencies. Please advise. Subroto Mukherjee, Kolkata The UN and associated agencies such as Unicef, Unesco, etc employ people from a variety of disciplines including developmental economics, social work and international relations. It would be advisable to pursue a postgraduate programme in any subject and thereafter apply for jobs advertised by these agencies. Please remember that they have a…

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Duly qualified gynaecologists find ready employment in government and private hospitals, nursing homes, pharma companies, and private clinics   Indra Gidwani FOR THE SIMPLE REASON that contemporary India provides a mere 500 professionally qualified allopathic doctors per million population, the medical profession is one of the country™s most sought after career options. Moreover it™s noble, well-remunerated and offers a gamut of specialisation choices. Popular among them is gynaecology, also known as obstetrics, a branch of medical science that focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of women™s reproductive systems. Again within the broad discipline of gynaecology, a certified medical practitioner can work as a specialist in gynaecologic oncology, critical care medicine, reproductive endocrinology and/or maternal fetal medicine. In addition, the gynaecologist™s job description requires dealing with all medical conditions of women™s reproductive systems including gynaecologic cancer and multiple organ syndromes. Moreover, treating problems relating to pregnancy and fertility are also routine. study programmes The essential academic qualification for a gynaecologist is an MBBS degree. Students who have passed the class XII school-leaving exam in physics, chemistry and biology have to write the all-India or state mandated medical entrance exams for admission into an undergrad MBBS programme. After completion of the mandatory MBBS and a one-year internship, aspiring gynaecologists usually sign up for postgraduate programmes which are usually of three-years duration with the diploma in gynaecology (DGO) being two years. Three-year MD/MS degrees are awarded by universities affiliated with the Medical Council of India and the DNB diploma by the National Board of Examination, an independent autonomous body under the Union ministry of health. Among the reputed medical colleges offering specialised programmes in gynaecology are Christian Medical College and Hospital, Ludhiana; Armed Forces Medical College, Pune; Dr. Somervell Memorial CSI Medical College Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram; Motilal Nehru Medical College, Allahabad; KEM Hospital and Seth G.S. Medical College, Mumbai; and the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, Guwahati. Remuneration Prospects With demand for skilled professionals rising by the day, duly qualified and certified gynaecologists find ready employment in government and private hospitals, nursing homes, pharmaceutical companies and private clinics. A gynaecologist with five-ten years™ experience is well-qualified to start a private practice or pursue a teaching career in a medical college or engage in medical research. For certified gynaecologists, entry-level remuneration ranges from Rs.15,000-30,000 per month. After four-five years™ experience, earnings  rise to Rs.40,000-80,000 and senior gynaecs take home Rs.100,000-200,000 monthly depending on experience. œWith so many advancements in the science of gynaecology, it™s an exciting and financially rewarding profession given the huge shortage of gynaecologists countrywide. According to a recent report of the National Health Mission, there are an estimated 70,000 practising obstetrics/gynaecs in the country whereas the demand is for at least 100,000, says Dr. Kiran Coelho, an eminent Mumbai-based gynaecologist with over 30 years experience attached to Lilavati, Hinduja and Holy Family Hospitals who lists a large number of Bollywood stars and personalities as clients. Professional Profile A recipient of two gold medals in the MBBS exams of the Karnatak Medical College,…

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Premchand Palety is the chief executive of the Delhi-based multidisciplinary research company C fore All universities have the potential to catalyse massive industrial and socio-economic change in their local environments. A case in point is Stanford University. When the university was established in 1885 in Northern California™s Bay area, it was known primarily for its orchids with hardly any industry around it. But by nurturing and developing its unique research-based entrepreneurial culture, Stanford University has created a multi-billion dollar globally famous hi-tech industry in its neighbouring Silicon Valley and millions of technology jobs worldwide. It all began in 1939 with faculty member Frederick Terman encouraging two of his students ” William Hewlett and David Packard ” to incubate a new technology business within the Stanford campus by applying the university™s path-breaking ICT (information communication technology) research. Hewlett-Packard Inc was thus born with an investment of US $538 (Rs.33,893) in 1939. Since then, HP has blossomed into a transnational IT hardware, software and peripherals manufacturing behemoth with offices in more than 170 countries, annual revenue of $111.48 billion (Rs.700,824 crore) and a global headcount of 324,000 employees. After HP, more than 3,000 companies including Sun Microsystems, Google, Cisco Systems, eBay, Yahoo, Logitech and Dolby Labs were incubated as students™ projects in Stanford University. The relatively unsung Terman is to a great extent responsible for the ICT revolution that began in the mid-20th century and has radically transformed industry, communications and lifestyles of humankind. Though the first western universities sprang up in Paris and Bologna in the 12th century, Germany is the birthplace of the modern research university where teaching is supplemented with research and the creation of new knowledge. Defined by meritocracy and autonomy, these universities created and disseminated new information and knowledge. However in Germany, their growth and development was interrupted by the 30-years™ war in Europe culminating in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), and in the 20th century by the two World Wars. Therefore American students and faculty who had either studied or taught in European, especially German universities, played a major role in developing and nurturing similar institutions in the then relatively isolationist USA. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1860), Cornell University (1868), Johns Hopkins (1876) and the University of Chicago (1890) were established in quick succession modelled on German research universities. After the American Civil War (1861-1865) when the US emerged as a major industrial power and enjoyed peace and a stable political environment, they blossomed and significantly influenced the socio-economic development of the country. Today, the American research university model has evolved into the gold standard of higher education and is being emulated by many countries. In India, for several reasons only a few universities have been successful in establishing themselves as research institutions, and therefore have had little success in catalysing industrial and socio-economic development. For the past 16 years, I have been actively involved in several initiatives which have evaluated institutes of higher education in India. As such, I have visited a large number…

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In March when the annual World University Rankings (WUR) league tables of the London-based rating agencies QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) and THE (Times Higher Education magazine) were released, there was palpable and pervasive despair and disappointment in India ” in the media, politicians, government, academia, students, and the general public. Although the Indian subcontinent has a higher education tradition stretching back to the 5th century BCE when Nalanda University attracted scholars from around the world, not even one of India™s 693 universities ” the three presidency universities of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras established in 1857 included ” made it into the Top 200 league tables of either rating agency. In the QS Top 200, IIT-Bombay is ranked #222, with the top-ranked by THE being the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (#276-300). The continuously poor ratings of Indian universities have prompted some academics, scholars and politicians to downplay and dismiss the WUR league tables as inconsequential, irrelevant and inapplicable to our universities. However, such sceptics are becoming a minority with even President Pranab Mukherjee and prime minister Narendra Modi voicing concern that our best higher ed institutions, exemplified by the globally-respected IITs, do not figure within the Top 100/200. The common excuse offered by apologists of the Indian academy is that the evaluation parameters and criteria of these offshore rating agencies are unsuited to the mission and/or educational philosophy of Indian higher ed institutions, which accord priority to social inclusion rather than developing meritocracies. Moreover we don™t produce a sufficient number of Ph Ds, teaching and research are not attractive for young professionals and  R&D budgets are too small. Therefore, some influential academics argue in favour of designing a national ranking system in sync with the objectives, philosophy and strengths and weaknesses of Indian institutions of higher education. This is spurious and disingenuous reasoning. Why does the nation experience pride and excitement when Saina Nehwal is ranked the world™s #1 badminton player? Or when India won the ODI (one-day internationals) ICC Cricket World Cup in 2011? Or when an Indian ” even if settled abroad ” wins the Nobel Prize, or when ISRO succeeds in launching a spacecraft to Mars? Likewise, if and when one of our universities is ranked within the global Top 100, it will generate pride within Indian academia and the country. The plain truth is governments worldwide refer to the WUR to measure their academic global competitiveness. In Asia in particular, the QS, THE and even the Shanghai Jiao Tong WURs have sparked a ˜reputation race™, with universities and governments closely monitoring the criteria for assessing and ranking universities, and getting their acts together to improve the standing of their best universities in the BRICS and Asian universities league tables, if not in the WUR. In this respect China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea have achieved significant progress with several of their varsities ranked in the Top 200 and some even in the Top 100. Against this backdrop, the attitude of most Indian academics is negative, if…

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A project paper titled ˜3D Geo-Data Management in Geo-RDBMS in Multi-user Access and Creation of Web-based Environment for Semantic Query Execution™ ” a smart city development blueprint ” has won engineering students Poorvak Kapoor (23), Dhruv Bajpai (22), Akshay Bhasin (20) and Abhinav Bhadoria (20) of IMS Engineering College, Ghaziabad, the first prize in version 6.0 of Unisys India™s Cloud 20.20 online technical project contest. The results were announced on February 20. Bangalore-based Unisys India ” a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based Unisys Corp, USA (annual revenue $10.5 billion (Rs.65,372 crore) ” introduced the contest in 2009 to encourage new thinking in engineering colleges countrywide. Following several rigorous rounds of evaluation, including a technical paper challenge, webinars and telephonic and face-to-face interviews, these youngsters with the support of their Unisys mentor Siddharth Dash and college faculty guide Vaibhav Kumar, bested 1,413 entries from 894 colleges countrywide, including entries from the premier Indian Institutes of Technology, International Institutes of Information Technology and National Institutes of Technology. The Rs.1.25 lakh first prize was awarded together with a job placement offer from Unisys. œAfter conceptualisation, we spent 16 hours a week for six months to design and develop a 3D geo-data application (aka smart city modeller) which harnesses solar energy. Using python (a high-level programming language) and Google Earth, we developed the application which generates a virtual 3D representation of any architectural structure and the sunlight it receives, and suggests alterations to the structure™s architecture such as the strategic placement of windows, doors and ventilators to let in maximum natural light. Our objective is to build smart cities in smart times, explains Akshay, the quartet™s spokesperson. Encouraged by their famous victory against formidable opposition, the innovative quartet is set to scale new heights. œEven though we are preparing intensively for our final semester examinations, we are also in the initial stages of designing a top-secret and high potential web development application followed by a start-up company, says Poorvak. Way to go! Balasubramaniam K. (Bangalore) Manya Agrawal Dehradun-based Manya Agrawal (17) was crowned paralympics champion in the 10 m women™s pistol event in the National Shooting Championship 2014 held in Pune last December. This is the third consecutive time this class XII student of the city™s top-ranked (all-India #4) Ecole Globale International Girls School (EGIGS) has won this event. Moreover, after bagging gold in the World Shooting Championship in Suhl, Germany, last July, she has qualified for the Paralympic Games scheduled for 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. Born without a left arm, Manya took to the state-of-the-art indoor shooting range of Dehradun™s Unison World School in 2011. œI received great encouragement from our principal Veena Singh who insists that all girls master at least one sport. Unfortunately, my coach Shivlal Dogra shifted to EGIGS two years ago and I was obliged to follow him, reluctantly, says Manya, whose mantelpiece at home displays trophies won in three district-level, three state, three national and two international championships. But success has not come without effort to this gritty…

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The Bangalore-based UL (Underwriter Labs) Pvt. Ltd ” a subsidiary of the US-based UL LLC (estb.1894) which offers a wide range of industrial, fire suppression, home and other safety auditing, inspection, test and validation services ” announced a partnership with Youth Service America (YSA) to launch two ˜Safer Roads, Safer India™ youth leadership programmes in India. Under the programme, UL-YSA will shortly invite creative solutions from young people in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai BMLand Pune to create safer roads and a safer India. Later this year, UL-YSA will award grants to 40 educators and 16 youth ambassadors to organise youth-led awareness, service, advocacy, and philanthropy activities. After being trained by experts in youth leadership and road safety issues, the grantees will conduct the largest youth-led road safety audit worldwide, mapping road safety in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune. Subsequently they will raise public awareness about road safety and educate their peers and community members to improve safety practices and lead community service projects. œThrough the Safer Roads, Safer India campaign, we are trying to canalise youth energy to create solutions for a better and much stronger road safety scenario in India, said R.A. Venkitachalam, vice president (public safety mission) of UL, speaking on the occasion. IIS™ new leadership centre Sushil Mantri, chairman and managing director of Mantri Developers Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru, formally inaugurated a new Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Leadership of the Bangalore-based Indus International School (IIS, estb. 2003), on its Sarjapur campus on April 25. A new mobile healthcare centre and a low-cost sanitary napkin machine were also gifted to benefit underprivileged households in the vicinity of IIS. œIndia stands on the edge of becoming a global leader, economically and culturally. The Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Leadership is a much-needed institution to build future leaders who will lead India in its growth trajectory. I applaud the efforts by the school to meaningfully educate children beyond the conventional learning system and make a positive difference to society and the country, said Mantri, speaking on the occasion. Added Sarojini Rao, principal of the IBO, Geneva-affiliated IIS who explained the objectives of the new centre: œThe Mahatma Gandhi Centre is one more initiative of Indus International to create leaders of tomorrow. The launch of the mobile healthcare centre and the low-cost sanitary napkin machine are two more endeavours to guide children to become responsible leaders of society. BMU-IBM initiative Dilpreet Singh, vice president and head of human resources of IBM India, Sunil Kant Munjal, chancellor,  BML Munjal University, Gurgaon (BMU, estb. 2014) and Prof. G. Anandalingam, dean of the Imperial College, London™s business school, inaugurated a business analytics laboratory on the BMU campus on April 21. Under the university™s career education programme, IBM will provide the software and case studies pedagogy to train BMU™s faculty. The objective of the programme is to enable BMU to graduate business managers with the requisite skill-sets to succeed in business and industry. According to BMU sources, on completion of the faculty development programmes at the start of…

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Arunachal Pradesh Engineering education drive The Union human resources development ministry has cleared the decks for setting up Arunachal™s first government engineering college at Toru in Papum Pare district, technical education minister Tapang Taloh informed media personnel in Itanagar on April 2. œThousands of students from Arunachal travel to other states every year to pursue higher and technical education which involves huge expenditure. The new engineering college will not only facilitate students to acquire engineering degrees with meagre financial outlays, but also reduce the economic burden of poor parents, the minister said. The new college apart, the ministry has also sanctioned upgradation of the Dera Natung and Jawaharlal Nehru colleges. On April 15, chief minister Nabam Tuki laid the foundation for the new college at Toru. Andhra Pradesh Teacher training colleges under scanner After taking engineering colleges to task, the Andhra Pradesh government is now evolving strategies to clamp down on ˜non-performing™ teacher training colleges in  state. Currently, there are 253 D.Ed and 300 B.Ed colleges operating in  ten districts statewide, a government spokesperson informed media personnel in Hyderabad on April 1. According to the spokesperson, the government is considering denying operational permission to most of these colleges in the academic year 2015-16 beginning July. Comments S. Jagannath Reddy, director, State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT): œEfforts are being made to close down D.Ed colleges which have been flouting rules for years leading to deterioration of teacher education in the state. If the government has its way, more than 50 percent of D.Ed colleges in the state will be denied permission to operate. Bihar Super 30 student bags full scholarship Abhishek Gupta, a student of Super 30 Patna, a voluntary organisation which provides free-of-charge tuition to students from poor households to write IIT-JEE ” arguably the most competitive public entrance exam worldwide ” has been offered a full scholarship by Tokyo University, says an April 16 communiqu© issued by the university. Gupta has been offered admission into the four-year international environmental sciences programme of the College of Arts and Sciences, Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo University. The scholarship covers Gupta™s admission and tuition fees, monthly allowance and residential accommodation expenditure. Impressed with Super 30 founder-promoter Anand Kumar™s IIT admissions track record ” 308 students have been admitted into IITs ” Tokyo University authorities invited Kumar to Japan. The scholarship award to Gupta is a response to Kumar™s visit to Tokyo University in 2014. Punjab Tablets primary education initiative Following the successful introduction of a tablet-based education programme in primary schools in the Gurdaspur and Tarn Taran districts on a pilot basis last year, the California-based Pixatel Systems Inc is set to adopt 50 primary schools statewide in association with the US Agency for International Aid (USAID) in the academic year 2015-16. The project will provide an adaptive learning platform focusing on teaching students maths, said project organiser Jasjit Singh, addressing news personnel in Amritsar on April 20. œIn Punjab, more than half of class V students cannot solve class III…

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œI thought of her as a breath of fresh air. Her predecessor from NDA-I, Murli Manohar Joshi, a professor of physics in Allahabad University and my contemporary, arguably was the worst HRD minister India has seen. But now I feel Smriti is giving even him tough competition. An anonymous vice chancellor quoted in a cover story on Union HRD minister Smriti Irani (Outlook, April 20) œA society that does not provide universal healthcare and universal primary education is morally repugnant in this day and age. In the modern world, there is simply no excuse. Morality apart, no economy can post sustained rates of economic growth if it does not have a healthy, educated population. Kanti Bajpai, educationist and foreign affairs expert, on why the Narendra Modi government needs to focus on important issues such as health and education (Times of India, April 25) œAn unknown number were refugees from Syria, Eritrea and Somalia fleeing war or persecution. They perished in part because the EU™s policy on asylum is a moral and political failure. The Economist on the hundreds of refugees drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to cross into Europe on overloaded boats (April 25) œMost Indian universities are rapidly degenerating into œmunicipality schools of higher education while most private institutions charge high capitation fees to grant admission and degrees. De-emphasising thinking, creativity, research and innovation, this system encourages intellectual cowardice. Varun Gandhi, BJP Lok Sabha MP, on the rapidly obsolescing Indian higher education system (Deccan Chronicle, April 29) œDoing business in India is insane. Ask any entrepreneur and they™ll tell you it™s like fighting a small war every day. And that™s just to manage things nothing to do with business… Anuvab Pal, author and playwright, in ˜Businessmen as Usual™ (The Economic Times, April 30)

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Six years after an expert committee first recommended the trifurcation of Karnataka™s showpiece Bangalore University (BU, estb. 1964), one of Asia™s largest varsities with 600 affiliated colleges boasting an aggregate enrolment of 700,000 students, the Congress government in the state has given the go-ahead for splitting it into three universities. Coincidentally on March 20, the state cabinet also gave the green signal for dividing the city™s municipal corporation, which has become an unwieldy urban sprawl, into three separate municipalities. Earlier in 2009, a ten-member panel constituted by the previous BJP government and headed by N. Rudraiah, former vice chancellor of Gulbarga University, had recommended trifurcating the 51-year-old varsity into three separate units for administrative convenience. According to a spokesperson of the state™s higher education ministry, the existing Bangalore University will spawn new universities in the Kolar and Tumkur districts, 67 km and 73 km from Bangalore in opposite directions. Each varsity will affiliate 200 colleges. The two new universities will begin operations from BU™s existing postgraduate centres in the forthcoming academic year (2015-16). With the number of BU™s affiliated colleges rising from a mere 200 in 1978 to over 600 currently, as confirmed by several expert committees, administrative supervision, conducting examinations and awarding degrees to 700,000 students of affiliated colleges has stretched BU™s resources to breaking point, and exacted a heavy toll on the quality of education dispensed. In India™s once most respected university, academic curriculums are obsolete; infrastructure is dilapidated and interference by quasi-literate, caste-obsessed rustic politicians in faculty and administrative appointments is continuous. In the inaugural EducationWorld India University Rankings 2015 league tables (see cover story), BU is ranked #47, well behind several state government-promoted ” Anna (7), Hyderabad (11), Annamalai (27), Pune (30), Osmania (37) and Mysore (43) ” universities. œThe decision of the state government to trifurcate Bangalore University is long overdue. The university was burdened with more than 600 colleges tied to it, and its resources stretched with the annual rigmarole of granting affiliation to undeserving colleges and conducting examinations. Between these two activities, there is little time or scope for BU to do what a university is supposed to do: focus on academic excellence, pursue innovative research and attract talent by way of collaborations. Trifurcation will allow the BU management and faculty to upgrade the quality of its undergraduate and postgrad programmes and undertake research, says Dr. S. Japhet, professor of sociology and director, Centre for Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at Karnataka™s showpiece National Law School of India University, ranked the country™s #1 law school. Though expert academic opinion is unanimously in favour of BU™s trifurcation to facilitate academic and research activities, there™s some wariness about the government™s proposal to share the already meagre faculty and infrastructure resources of the parent BU with the two new universities. Currently, BU operates out of two campuses: the Central College campus sited in the heart of the city, and a 1,100-acre Jnana Bharathi campus on the outskirts. With the cash-strapped Congress government in the…

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An april 23 directive of the Supreme Court stating that any college or university not accredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) by 2017 will be derecognised, has cast a shadow over 401 state-aided colleges in West Bengal. The Bangalore-based NAAC (estb.1994) is an autonomous institution that assesses and accredits institutions of higher education in India. More than 401 colleges in the state are unaccredited, which could result in their being disaffiliated by their parent universities (the University of Calcutta has 168 affiliated colleges) and becoming ineligible for grants from the Delhi-based UGC (University Grants Commission). Of the state™s 460 government colleges, 172 have never applied for NAAC certification and the validity period (five years) of 229 colleges has lapsed. According to informed academics in Kolkata, the two-year window between now and March 31, 2017 is insufficient for NAAC to assess and accredit the 401 currently unaccredited colleges in the state. In the circumstances, only 59 colleges in West Bengal are eligible for the Rs.2 crore ˜infrastructure grant™ under UGC™s Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (higher education improvement programme) to be disbursed to NAAC-accredited higher education institutions in fiscal 2015-16 and 2016-17. According to a West Bengal higher education official, 35 percent (Rs.70 lakh) of the grant of each eligible college is to be spent on creating new infrastructure, 35 percent for renovation or upgradation of existing facilities, and 30 percent for purchase of new equipment or facilities. For West Bengal™s perpetually cash-strapped colleges whose tuition fees ranging from Rs.600-900 per year are strictly controlled by government at rock-bottom levels, the modest grants conferred by UGC are very useful. Comments Siuli Sarkar, principal of Lady Brabourne College: œAfter the first NAAC accreditation, we received Central grants of Rs.1 crore under a number of heads such as our qualifying as a centre with potential for excellence. Among the universities, only Jadavpur University (estb.1955) and Vidyasagar University (estb.1981) have valid NAAC accreditation with the applications of 17 universities ” including Calcutta University ” pending. Academics and the intelligentsia in West Bengal are divided about the utility of NAAC accreditation. Some believe that UGC has done right by setting infrastructure, faculty and learning outcomes benchmarks and that its grants are incentives for compliance. Others are unenthused by expensive and bureaucratic assessment and accreditation processes, and UGC™s pitifully small grants. For instance, Asutosh College, Kolkata (estb.1916) was rated C++ by NAAC in 2002 but didn™t feel it worthwhile to renew its certificate when it expired in 2007. œUGC grants are too small to make a difference and even so they are paid out irregularly, on an ad hoc basis. We had to wait for long periods to receive them, causing delays in implementing our plans, recalls Dipak Kar, former principal of the college. Moreover, according to Dr. Sukanta Chaudhuri, former professor at Presidency and Jadavpur universities, the media headlines relating to West Bengal™s colleges being uncertified by NAAC are needlessly alarmist. œThe situation isn™t dire in Bengal and wonderful in the rest of…

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The control and command mindset of Maharashtra™s politicians will take a long while to be eradicated. Thirteen years after a full bench of the Supreme Court in a historic verdict in T.M.A. Pai Foundation vs. Union of India (2002) ruled that private unaided higher education providers have a fundamental right to establish and administer institutions of their choice, evolve their own admission processes subject to merit, and determine their own reasonable tuition fees, on April 21, the BJP state government passed the Maharashtra Unaided Private Professional Education Institutions (Regulation of Admissions and Fees) Act, 2015 through an ordinance. Under the Act, the state government will determine the tuition fees of every private professional (engineering, medicine, pharma, hotel management etc) education institution on the basis of the recommendation of a panel œset up under a high court judge, with a chartered accountant, a former vice chancellor among others on it, Maharashtra™s technical education minister Vinod Tawde informed media on April 21. According to Tawde, the Act is applicable to all degree, technical, medical, and agricultural colleges and universities, but not to Central and deemed universities and IITs, and the fees determined by the panel will remain unchanged for four years. Moreover, the Act bars unaided colleges from conducting their own admission exams, i.e regulating their own admissions. Unsurprisingly, the ordinance ” undoubtedly inspired by the judgement of the apex court in the Islamic Academy Case (2003) which diluted the T.M.A. Pai Foundation verdict by decreeing the establishment of admissions regulation and fees monitoring committees under retired high court judges in every state ” has aroused the ire of promoters and managements of private unaided colleges. They point out that two years later in 2005, in Inamdar vs. State of Maharashtra, the Supreme Court upheld its ratio decidendi in the T.M.A. Pai Foundation Case and reiterated that neither the Central nor state governments have the right to appropriate admission quotas, or arbitrarily determine the fees of private professional colleges they haven™t financed or subsidised. œThis Act is patently unconstitutional inasmuch as it flies in the face of the Supreme Court™s elaborate and considered full-bench judgements in the T.M.A. Pai and Inamdar cases. The BJP government in Maharashtra is pushing this invalid Act to win the electoral support of the middle class which has become accustomed to heavily subsidised higher education. The retired judges and so-called experts are old world types who have no idea of the costs of education provision in these days of severe faculty shortages and the mandate of the Sixth Pay Commission to raise the remuneration of  lecturers and professors to six digits per month. If the government wants to reduce tuition fees of private colleges, it should multiply the number of its own colleges and drive us out of the business. The state government is disincentivising education entrepreneurs from promoting excellent, globally benchmarked colleges of professional education which is hurting Indian industry and the economy, says a medical college promoter, who preferred to remain anonymous. After having secured…

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Unesco (united nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) released its annual EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2015, simultaneously in Delhi, Paris and New York on April 9, forty days before a new agenda is scheduled to be adopted at the forthcoming World Education Forum in Incheon (Republic of Korea) from May 19-22. In 2000, at the World Education Forum in Dakar (Senegal), 164 governments agreed on the Dakar Framework for Action, popularly known as the Education for All (EFA) agenda. It set six goals ” expanding and improving early childhood care and education; ensuring all children, particularly girls, have access to free and compulsory education of good quality; young people and adults have access to appropriate learning and life skills; 50 percent improvement in adult literacy by 2015; gender equality in education by 2015, and measurable improvements in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills. The recently released EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015 is a progress report on the Dakar Framework, highlighting gaps and offering recommendations for debate at the World Education Forum in Incheon. With specific reference to India, GMR 2015 says the country has made considerable progress in early childhood care and education (ECCE) with the percentage of children in the 0-5 age group attending anganwadis and/or pre-primaries having risen from 20 percent in 1999 to 60 percent in 2012. However, it also notes that the corresponding increase in Nepal is from 15 to 85 percent and in neighbouring Pakistan from 64 to 78 percent. For providing universal access to primary school, GMR 2015 gives India full credit for achieving almost 100 percent enrolment of girls and boys ” up from 85 percent in 1999. Moreover, it estimates the number of children out of primary school at a mere 1.4 million cf. Pakistan™s 5.4 million. With reference to transition to lower and upper secondary education (appropriate learning and life skills), the report doesn™t specifically comment on India™s progress. On average, lower secondary gross enrolment ratio (GER) rose from 60 to 81 percent between 1999 and 2012. South and West Asia™s progress in accelerating adult literacy is also a disappointment. Without mentioning India specifically, the report laments that while the adult illiteracy rate was projected to fall by 26 percent between 2000 and 2015, the reduction will fall short of the target by 50 percent. With adult education not on the radar screens of the Central and state governments, there™s no way that India™s record is likely to be better. However, on the issue of gender parity, India has achieved considerable progress. œOf the eight countries with data, four were at gender parity in 2012, with Bhutan, India and the Islamic Republic of Iran reaching the target over the period, while parity has been achieved in Sri Lanka since 1999¦ Gender disparities at the expense of girls have reduced significantly in India where the GPI stood at 0.70 in 1999 and rose to 0.94 in 2012, with the country likely to achieve parity in 2015, says the report. And lastly…

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Your cover story ‘22 Extraordinary Education Innovators’ (EW April) was extraordinary. The inspiring accounts of these innovators who have persevered to ideate and implement solutions which are changing the way education is being delivered in schools, are the only hope of Indian education. I was particularly inspired by Geeta Ramanujam’s creative idea of using story-telling as a learning tool in classrooms. Even teachers in rural schools where infrastructure facilities are minimal can use the time-tested art of story-telling to enliven classes and improve learning outcomes.  Congratulations to the 22 education innovators. Reading about them made me more optimistic about the future of education in India. May their tribe increase! Megha Rathi Bangalore Oasis invitation Thank you for the cover story featuring 22 exceptional education innovators (EW April). I appreciate the efforts of your entire team in putting all this information together. I will be pleased to partner with and help people who would like to adopt the Oasis Foundation model — social innovation labs, museum schools, etc — and replicate it. Pradeep Ghosh President, Oasis Foundation Bhopal Child-unfriendly budget Your special report feature ‘World’s largest child population cheated. Again’ (EW April) is hard-hitting and exposes the Union Budget 2015-16 as the country’s most children-unfriendly ever. It’s shocking that the BJP which promised to double education spending to 6 percent of GDP has done just the opposite and slashed education and child welfare spending. The most cruel is the 50 percent cut in the Centre’s allocation to the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme from Rs.18,000 crore last year to Rs.8,355 crore in Budget 2015-16. Like you, I don’t buy the finance minister’s reasoning that state governments will make up the deficit as they will now receive a greater share of the Centre’s tax revenue as per recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission. State governments are steeped in corruption and callously indifferent to the nutrition and education needs of underprivileged children. Please send a copy of your magazine to prime minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley so they can comprehend the magnitude of their betrayal. They have indeed cheated India’s children of their right to nutrition and quality education. Aruna Chatterjee Mumbai   System failure As an educator, I am deeply concerned by the recent incident of mass-scale cheating in school exams in Bihar, the symptom of a deeper malaise that afflicts Indian education (Education News, p.16, EW April). I believe it’s the system, and not students, which has failed society. Bihar is certainly not the only state where educational malpractices have descended to such an abominable level. Unless strong corrective measures are taken, the cheating pandemic will become common across the country. Mass cheating is deeply linked with inefficient teaching, poor institutional management, college admission rackets and corruption in distribution of state government scholarships. It’s a sign of social decadence we can’t afford to ignore. All stakeholders need to come together to put Indian education back on track. Samik Ghosh Principal, The Scindia School Gwalior Review CBSE papers I…

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œA DISPASSIONATE EXTERNAL observer would be bewildered by middle-class India™s capacity to look away when confronted with enormous injustice and suffering; by our society™s cultural comfort with inequality, writes former civil servant turned social activist Harsh Mander in his latest book Looking Away ” Inequality, Prejudice and Indifference in New India. This observation is an echo of the frequent lament of the editors of EducationWorld who repeatedly deplore the open, uninterrupted and continuous injustice and oppression of the underprivileged, a defining feature of this nation-society fashioned by heirs of Mahatma Gandhi and the founding fathers of India™s extraordinarily compassionate Constitution. Perhaps in no sector of the economy is the Indian middle class™ œcultural comfort with inequality so glaringly manifest as in education. The collective conscience of the Indian establishment ” media included ” is unmoved by the grassroots reality that of the country™s 450 million children (below age 18), only 10 million middle and upper class children  in the age group 0-5 receive professionally administered early childhood care and education. Of the remaining 148 million only half receive early childhood nutrition and nominal education in the country™s 1.6 million anganwadis established by the Central government under its Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme. Yet, despite a mountain of evidence indicating that early years education is critical for the growth and development of children, in the Union Budget 2015-16, the allocation for ICDS has been slashed from Rs.18,195 crore in 2014-15 to Rs.8,335 crore this fiscal. The story is no different in public/government primary education. Government schools attended by children of the poor and socially disadvantaged are defined by crumbling classrooms, dysfunctional, if any toilets, mass teacher truancy and abysmal learning outcomes. Yet the ˜educated™ Indian middle class which ensures its children attend superior private schools is totally insensitive to heinous acts of commission and omission in public education. Repeated pleas of your editors to education ministers for reforms and indignant television anchors to debate public education issues, receive no response. Over half a century ago in his famous eight-volume treatise A Study of History, Nobel laureate historian Dr. Arnold Toynbee made the argument that civilisations prosper when elites are creative minorities who advance the public interest. When they morph into a greedy, selfish, oppressive minority, the proletariat revolts and societies descend into chaos and rebellion. Maoist insurrections, rising youth unemployment, a spate of farmer suicides and breakdown of the law, order and justice systems countrywide, are mounting evidence of the secession of the proletariat from the society fashioned by post-independence India™s increasingly self-centred and indifferent middle class. white-is-beautiful manufactured myth Under the new dispensation at the Centre, elected on the promise of economic development for all, old hat issues ” the Ram temple at Ayodhya, ban on cow slaughter, uniform civil code, women™s dress and deportment ” are dominating the public discourse and media headlines countrywide. To this lengthening list of yesteryear issues, add one more: colour prejudice. On April 1 BJP Union minister Giriraj Singh hit news headlines with…

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The fact that not a single one of the 693 universities recognised by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission is listed in the Top 200 World University Rankings (WURs) published annually by the London-based rating and ranking agencies Quacquarelli Symonds and Times Higher Education, or even in the listing of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is a national wound. It™s an indication of how low the academy of superpower-aspirant India has fallen since Nalanda University was established in the 5th century BC, in latter day Bihar. In its time Nalanda was the greatest global institution of higher education with 10,000 students from around the world. India™s top-ranked university in the QS league table 2014-15 is IIT-Bombay (#222) and the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, ranked 276-300 in the THE league table. Against this ten Chinese, ten Korean and four Turkish universities are ranked in the Top 200 WURs of QS and THE. It™s against this depressing backdrop that your editors commissioned the inaugural EducationWorld India University Rankings 2015 survey, which rates and ranks the country™s Top 200 universities inter se. In a massive undertaking of over four-months duration, 124 field representatives of the highly-reputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore), which has been conducting our annual EducationWorld India School and Preschool ranking surveys for the past several years, interviewed 5,689 sample respondents comprising 2,567 university faculty, 1,835 final year students and 1,287 industry leaders. They were asked to rate over 690 universities on seven parameters of academic excellence. In consonance with international trends, heavy weightage (300 out of an aggregate 1,000 points) was accorded to research and innovation, and given the sorry condition of India™s funds and academics starved varsities, to the parameters of infrastructure (150) and competence of faculty (150). Moreover, unlike our school and pre-primary league tables which are wholly perceptual ” albeit perceptions of well-informed respondents ” in this survey, considerable weightage has been given to research papers published and cited in internationally-respected refereed journals. The outcome of this mammoth exercise is India™s most comprehensive master table, rating and ranking the country™s Top 200 varsities, plus other tables ranking public and private universities separately. Moreover league tables of multidisciplinary, science and technology, law and medical universities and the Top 10 under each of the seven parameters are published separately for the convenience of readers. Yet the prime objective of this elaborate and painstaking exercise is to generate sentiments of institutional pride and ownership within stakeholders ” the first and most important step towards organisational reform.

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To read India’s most preferred law universities visit: https://www.educationworld.in/rank-law/2015.html

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To read India’s premier multi-disciplinary universities visit: https://www.educationworld.in/rank-multi_disciplinary/2015.html

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To read India’s best medical universities visit: https://www.educationworld.in/rank-medical/2015.html

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To read India’s most admired science/technology universities visit: https://www.educationworld.in/rank-science_technology/2015.html

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To read India’s Best Public Universities league table visit: https://www.educationworld.in/rank-public_university/2015.html

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