EducationWorld May 2019 Archives

India’s top 100 private Arts, Science & Commerce Colleges 2019-20

To compile the second EW India Top 100 Private College Rankings 2019-20, C fore constituted a sample respondents database of 1,770 knowledgeable individuals comprising 932 college faculty and 838 final year students to rate and rank the country’s most well-known arts, science and commerce colleges on six parameters of undergrad education excellence – Summiya Yasmeen In 2016, your editors pioneered the first comprehensive field survey-based national ranking of the country’s best private higher education institutions including private universities, private engineering institutions and privately promoted B-schools. This (and subsequent) private higher ed institutions field surveys were conducted by the well-respected Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting and Research (C fore) which also conducts the annual EW India School Rankings (estb.2007) and EW India Preschool Rankings (2010). The rationale for excluding government-promoted institutions such as the IITs, NITs, IIMs, etc was that since they are monotonously top-ranked in league tables of mainstream and business publications, a more useful social purpose would be served by spotlighting and ranking the rising number of private higher education institutions in their discrete categories. Moreover, over 67 percent of students in Indian higher education are enrolled in private institutions. Last year, responding to feedback received from readers and given that the overwhelming majority of the country’s estimated 39 million school-leavers are admitted into multi-disciplinary arts, science and commerce colleges annually, we commissioned C fore to conduct an additional survey to also rate and rank the country’s Top 100 private arts, science and commerce colleges in six metro cities. Ditto this year. To compile the second EW India Top 100 Private College Rankings 2019-20, C fore constituted a sample respondents database of 1,770 knowledgeable individuals comprising 932 college faculty and 838 final year students to rate the country’s most well-known arts, science and commerce colleges (shortlisted by EducationWorld) on six parameters of undergrad education excellence viz, competence of faculty, faculty welfare and development, curriculum and pedagogy, industry placements, infrastructure and leadership and governance — on a 100 point scale, with the vital parameter of faculty competence accorded double weightage. The scores awarded by respondents under each parameter were totalled and formed the basis for ranking the country’s Top 100 multi-disciplinary arts, science and commerce (ASC) colleges inter se. Right at the top there’s no change in the 2019-20 league table of India’s best ASC colleges. The national capital’s star undergrad colleges and crown jewels of Delhi University — St. Stephen’s College (#1), Shri Ram College of Commerce (2) and Lady Shri Ram College for Women (3) — continue to dominate the Top 10 table. Mumbai’s showpiece St. Xavier’s College too has retained its #4 rank although this year it shares it with Bangalore’s Christ University, ranked #6 in 2018-19. The all-women Miranda House, Delhi, ranked #1 in the Union HRD ministry’s NIRF league table, has not made as great an impact on the 1,770 EW sample respondents as it has on the babus of the HRD ministry, and is ranked #5. Prof. John Varghese,…

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India’s top 100 private B-Schools 2019-20

Despite being relative late starters and obliged to compete on an unequal playing field, private B-schools have been able to carve out their spaces in the public imagination. C fore representatives interviewed 1,216 B-school faculty and industry representatives to rate and rank India’s India’s top 100 private B-Schools 2019-20 – Dilip Thakore Over half a century ago the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta (IIM-C) was established in 1961 by the government of India in collaboration with the Sloane School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ford Foundation and government of West Bengal, and was soon followed by IIM-Ahmedabad (1961) and IIM-Bangalore (1973). Since then India’s 2,842 private B-schools, which heavily outnumber the country’s 20 IIMs and 168 other government business management institutes, have had their genius clouded by government B-schools, especially the top half dozen vintage IIMs. This situation wouldn’t surprise any serious student of post-independence India’s socio-economic history. The government-sponsored IIMs were given huge 100 acre-plus tracts of land gratis and massive grants to set up shop. Moreover, the tuition fees of graduate students who topped CAT (Common Admission Test), the joint entrance exam of the IIMs, were heavily subsidised and until recently were less than 5 percent of the actual cost of education provision. Besides, these wholly residential government-sponsored B-schools attracted the best faculty from across the country and often from abroad. On the other hand, privately promoted B-schools, which naturally mushroomed to provide business management education to the hundreds of thousands who weren’t accepted by the IIMs, were reluctantly licensed and almost universally condemned (in the absence of subsidies from the public exchequer) for charging extortionate fees and indulging in — horror of horrors — “commercialisation of education”. To their great credit, despite being relative late starters and obliged to compete on an unequal playing field, several privately promoted B-schools have been able to carve out their spaces in the public imagination, and have established excellent reputation for providing high-quality business management education. Given the bafflingly modest annual students intake of the IIMs promoted with heavy investment from the public purse, the great majority of the 250,000-plus graduates who write CAT annually have no option but to settle for admission into indigenous private B-schools, given that the tuition fees demanded by business management schools abroad are invariably many multiples higher. Commendably, India’s 2,917 private institutes of management education have proved equal to the task of supplying well-trained and prepared managers for India Inc, particularly medium and small-scale companies which cannot afford the high starting salaries that IIM grads expect and get. Proof of the education provision capabilities of India’s private B-schools is inherent in the fast growth and development of India’s SMEs (small and medium enterprises) in the post-liberalisation era. Against this backdrop and given the paucity of information about private B-schools in the media which, unmindful of the unequal playing field skewed in favour of the IIMs, sing their praises, five years ago, your editors resolved to beam a searchlight on the country’s media-neglected private…

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India’s Top 100 private engineering institutions 2019-20

Against the backdrop of plummeting standards of engineering education, EducationWorld presents India’s Top 100 private engineering education institutions league table based on the assessments of 2,876 knowledgeable sample respondents countrywide – Summiya Yasmeen Engineering education in India is facing an unprecedented quality crisis. Surveys conducted by national and international organisations have laid bare the poor quality education dispensed by a majority of India’s 3,415 engineering colleges. According to a 2018 study conducted by the World Bank and Stanford University, the higher order thinking skills of first and third year undergraduate engineering students in India are “substantially lower” than of their Chinese and Russian counterparts. Moreover, according to a damning employability survey conducted earlier this year by Aspiring Minds, a Delhi-based job seekers evaluation and certification company, 80 percent of the country’s engineering graduates are unemployable in the knowledge economy. A major cause of the steady decline in engineering education standards is reckless licensing of private engineering colleges over past two decades by the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex regulatory body for technical education. The number of private engineering colleges countrywide has almost doubled from 1,511 in 2006-07 to 3,415 in 2017-18. This over-supply has resulted in several colleges reporting a rising number of vacant seats year on year which has forced hundreds of them to compromise on quality of faculty and enabling infrastructure. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha last April, Satya Pal S, Union minister of state for human resource development, revealed that vacancies in AICTE approved engineering colleges during the past four years averaged 45 percent. This is why EducationWorld brings to you India’s Top 100 private engineering education institutions. Against this backdrop of plummeting standards — especially among private engineering colleges which have mushroomed across the country — in 2016 EducationWorld took the initiative to publish pan-India rankings of the country’s most respected private engineering institutes, excluding the relatively well-funded and heavily subsidised Central government-promoted Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs), which offer study programmes approved by AICTE’s National Board of Accreditation (NBA), attract high-quality faculty and provide enabling infrastructure. Routinely ranked among the Top 10 engineering colleges in all media league tables, the IITs and NITs admit a mere top 1 percent of higher secondary school-leavers who clear their rigorous common entrance exam. Therefore with the IITs and NITs leagues ahead of the rest, it made good sense for EducationWorld to assess, evaluate and rank the India’s Top 100 private engineering education institutions to enable parents and students to choose the most suitable among them. To compile the EW India Private Engineering Institutes Rankings (EWIPEIR) 2019-20, 150 representatives of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), one of the country’s premier market research companies (which also conducts the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (estb.2007) and EW India Preschool Rankings (2010), interviewed 1,134 faculty and 1,255 final year engineering students and 487 industry representatives across the country. These sample respondents were…

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India’s top 100 private universities

Against the backdrop of the rising popularity of private universities which are beginning to establish themselves as formidable competitors not only to public universities in India but also to foreign varsities, for the past five years EducationWorld has been publishing league tables rating and ranking private universities on several parameters of higher education excellence – Dilip Thakore India’s 334 private universities, which for decades have been playing second fiddle to their public, i.e, government owned and funded counterparts, are beginning to establish themselves as formidable competitors not only to public universities in India, but to foreign higher education institutions which were hitherto the preferred destination of school-leavers and college graduates who couldn’t squeeze themselves into the handful of government universities of near-global standard. Now, especially since the historic winds of liberalisation and deregulation swept through the dirigisme (control-and-command) Indian economy in 1991, dozens of private universities modelled after premier private Ivy League universities of America have established good and growing reputations for delivering high quality tertiary education. And although Left intellectuals who still dominate the academy and the media are fighting a rear-guard battle opposing the promotion of private institutions of higher education on the grounds that they levy high tuition fees and are thus ‘elitist’, the plain truth is that the tuition fees of post-liberalisation India’s new crop of private universities and institutes of professional education are a small fraction of the differential higher fees imposed upon foreign students by the US, UK and other countries of the English speaking Commonwealth. Little wonder India’s new genre private universities have benchmarked themselves with the world’s top-ranked higher ed institutions rather than domestically top-ranked public varsities, none of whom are ranked in the global Top 200 World University Rankings (WUR) league tables of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education. It’s an open secret that because of constant interference by the ubiquitous control-and-command neta-babu brotherhood, over-subsidisation of tuition fees and runaway affirmative action — seat reservation and quotas for numerous castes and socio-economic classes — India’s 907 public universities (some of which are of almost 200 years vintage) are mere ciphers by established international standards of higher education excellence. In the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that the best of India’s new genre private universities have modelled themselves on top-ranked private varsities abroad. And since they offer — or aspire to offer — Ivy League-benchmarked high quality undergraduate and postgrad education at a fraction of the tuition fees demanded by foreign universities, it’s unsurprising that the progeny of post-liberalisation India’s fast-expanding middle class are flocking to them. Against this backdrop of the rising popularity of private universities, for the past five years EducationWorld has been publishing league tables rating and ranking private universities on several parameters of higher education excellence including competence of faculty, faculty welfare and development, research and innovation capability, infrastructure, industry interface, placements, internationalism and leadership and governance. Unlike the Union HRD ministry’s National Institutional Rankings Framework (NIRF) published in early April, which ‘invites’ higher education institutions, including…

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EducationWorld India Private Higher Education Rankings 2019-20

To compile the EWIPHER league tables this year, C fore field representatives interviewed 9,914 academic faculty, industry representatives and final year students to rank the country’s Top 100 private universities, engineering institutions, arts, science and commerce colleges and Top 100 private B-schools – Dilip Thakore As usual, publication of the annual EducationWorld India Private Higher Education Rankings 2019-20 survey to rank the country’s Top 100 private universities, engineering institutes and arts, science and commerce colleges as also the Top 100 private business management schools has coincided with release of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2019 of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry. NIRF also ranks the country’s top universities, engineering institutes, colleges and B-schools plus professional education institutions (law, pharmacy, architecture, medicine) inter se in separate league tables. This year’s NIRF Report 2019 was released to the public by President Ram Nath Kovind on April 8. But although the annual EW India Private Higher Education Rankings (EWIPHER) are pre-empted by the HRD ministry’s ‘official’ ranking every year, it’s pertinent to bear in mind that there are significant differences of purpose and institution assessment methodologies between the government-published NIRF and the annual institutional ratings survey conducted by EducationWorld. Essentially, EWIPHER is a nationwide field survey, while NIRF is a desk job. Moreover while the NIRF Rankings are open to all higher education institutions, ‘participation’ is voluntary. Higher education institutions desirous of being included in the NIRF Rankings are obliged to download a prescribed information form from the HRD ministry’s website and fill in all requested particulars. On the other hand, institutional ‘participation’ in the annual EWIPHER is not optional. Indeed it’s compulsory, inasmuch as all sufficiently well-known (i.e, rated by more than 25 sample respondents) institutions are evaluated by carefully selected sample respondents including academy faculty, industry representatives and often final year students, whether they (institutions) like it or not. This is because we are not dependent upon institutions submitting data or evidence in support of their achievements under any parameters of education excellence. Rather than rely upon data submitted by assessee institutions which may be inflated, we prefer to rely upon perception scores awarded under 10-12 parameters of higher education excellence (faculty competence, research, leadership, intake/ selection process, diversity of study programmes offered etc) by faculty, industry reps and students with experience and knowledge of assessee institutions. And as some readers may be aware, EducationWorld (estb.1999) pioneered the concept of experts evaluating and ranking education institutions from preschools to primary-secondaries, and since 2013 institutions of higher education, although for reasons enumerated later, in our annual higher education survey our remit is to evaluate private institutions of education. Moreover since the NIRF Rankings are commissioned by the Union HRD ministry and the data submitted by participating higher education institutions is assessed and evaluated by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council), also a Central government-sponsored council established to assess and grade ‘participating’ universities, colleges and professional education institutions, there is an ex facie bias within council officials to award high rankings…

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Too clever by half

The collapse of Jet Airways Ltd (estb. 1994) is a latter day morality tale of the rise and fall of Naresh Goyal, founder-chairman of this crashed airline. Right from the start there was considerable speculation about how Goyal, given his modest background as travel agent, was able to pay for his 60 percent equity stake in Tailwinds, the promoter company registered in the Isle of Man, a tax haven off Ireland. The consensus of opinion was that Goyal was the frontman of Gulf Air and Kuwait Airways which owned 20 percent each of the airline. In 1997, Goyal, a master of manipulating official civilian aviation policy, persuaded the pliable Janata Dal coalition government at the Centre to ban all foreign investment in civil aviation and cheaply bought out the Middle East airlines. Thus far, every attempt by government and the media to discover the original owners of Jet has been defeated by the secrecy laws of the Isle of Man. In 2004, Jet Airways launched a public IPO which was heavily over-subscribed transforming Goyal into a billionaire. But in 2007, Goyal made a foolish decision to acquire the failing Air Sahara airline for a massive $200 million (Rs.1,393 crore). In 2013, Goyal once again influenced a policy change in Delhi which permitted the Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways to invest $379 million (Rs.2,641 crore) in Jet Airways. At that time, the understanding was that Goyal would step down as CEO and let the professional management of Etihad take over Jet’s operations. Once again, Goyal betrayed his partner airline and stuck on as CEO, crash-landing the company into bankruptcy. The moral of the decline and fall story of Naresh Goyal is that a reputation for trustworthiness is critical for business success. There are too many too-clever-by-half businessmen in India Inc who break promises and manipulate corrupt politicians without compunction and don’t honour their unwritten IOUs. Inevitably, nemesis catches up with them, as it did with Naresh Goyal.

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Positive development

Not surprisingly, an event of landmark significance in Indian politics has escaped adequate interpretation by academics and media pundits. On April 18, Mukesh Ambani, chairman and CEO of Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s largest private company (revenue: Rs.6.23 lakh crore in 2018-19; payroll: 255,000) publicly endorsed Milind Deora, Congress party candidate from the prestigious Bombay South constituency as best qualified to represent its residents in the Lok Sabha, Delhi. “Having represented South Bombay for ten years, I believe that Milind has in-depth knowledge of the social, economic and cultural ecosystem of the South Bombay constituency,” said Ambani in a social media broadcast. Although ex facie this seems an innocuous statement of support, it is of great significance in the context of the business-politics equation. In post-independence India, particularly after the unfortunate demise in the 1960s of the Swatantra Party which unapologetically advocated the revival of ancient India’s private enterprise and free markets ideology and traditions, business tycoons have steered clear of publicly taking sides in elections. Openly backing opposition parties could make life impossible for businessmen given the numerous discretionary industry regulatory powers retained by the Central and state governments, even after liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991. And given the poor law and order maintenance record of all governments of soft state India, it’s been easy for opposition parties such as the Shiv Sena to vandalise the factories and properties of inconvenient businessmen. At a deeper level, the public endorsement of Deora, who is running against incumbent Arvind Sawant, official candidate of the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena coalition, by Ambani (who resides in the South Bombay constituency) is a signal to political parties that India Inc has evolved into a strong and confident force within the establishment, and is no longer afraid to speak its mind publicly. Even if belated, a positive development.

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Mean accidental billionaires

On April 12, TCS and Infosys Ltd (estb.1981), the latter promoted by N.R. Narayana Murthy and several others including Nandan Nilekani, architect of the Big Brother Aadhar ID card, declared their annual 2018-19 results. TCS with a sales revenue of Rs.146,463 crore and net profit of Rs.31,472 crore beat Infosys with Rs.82,675 crore and Rs.15,410 crore hands down. The huge gap between TCS, a mere division of Tata Sons Ltd until 2004 and Infosys, which when it listed on the NASDAQ in 1999 had a higher valuation than TCS, is attributable to the quality of leadership and culture of the two companies. Whereas TCS inherited the liberal (JRD) Tata culture, Infosys’ founder-CEO N.R. Narayana Murthy is an individual who prides himself on his thrift and simplicity. In 2014 when Vishal Sikka, a Silicon Valley professional, was belatedly appointed CEO of the company, he was subjected to sniper attacks by the penny-pinching Murthy for his allegedly lavish expenditure, forcing Sikka’s resignation in 2017. Your editor has had unpleasant experiences with mean-spirited IT industry billionaires. Since IT companies are the largest employers of well-educated youth, we naturally expected them to support EducationWorld. But Murthy abruptly torpedoed the anuual EducationWorld-Infosys Young Achievers Awards in 2008 (annual budget: Rs.4 lakh) and N. Chandrasekhar, CEO of TCS, immediately withdrew support from the annual TCS-EW Teachers Awards (Rs.8 lakh) instituted by Faqir Chand Kohli, the founder-CEO who built TCS from ground up over 40 years, on the ground of corporate austerity even as his remuneration zoomed to Rs.17 crore per year. The obfuscated reality is that the high and mighty of the IT industry are accidental billionaires who struck it lucky. The blunt truth is that but for your editor’s relentless advocacy of liberalisation of the Indian economy which fructified in 1991, the sawdust caesars of the IT industry would be floundering in shallows and misery. Go figure!

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Eduleader Bytes: Mukhtarul Amin

Mukhtarul Amin, Chairman, Superhouse Education Foundation, Kanpur, which manages the Allenhouse Group of six schools, two colleges, eight DPS schools and three Allen Kids preschools in Uttar Pradesh Where would you place education on your national list of priorities? Education and health at the top. Everything else is secondary. How best to upgrade government schools? Three things are the most essential — merit-based teacher recruitment, adequate infrastructure, and continuous monitoring. Thinker you admire the most. Henry Ford for introducing mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Your favourite Nobel laureate. Mother Teresa. Your leadership style. My leadership style is to be a team player who leads from the front. Your favourite book on education. How Children Fail & How Children Learn by educator John Holt. For or against the RTE Act’s 25 percent reservation for underprivileged children in private schools? I totally support quality education for all underprivileged children. India Inc. must also step forward to take up education as a social responsibility. Should the education outlay be doubled by cutting defence expenditure? Security of the nation should never be compromised. How satisfied are you with the growth and development of Allenhouse Group of schools and colleges? Very pleased. Within a short span of time, Allenhouse public schools and colleges have made a mark. They are maintaining high standards of education and are regarded as benchmark institutions in their areas of operation. Pessimistic or optimistic about the future of education in India? Optimistic. With concerted efforts of all stakeholders, we will be able to develop a good education system for our country. Also read: Unsung contribution of India’s private chain schools

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Illuminating biography: Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s reflections on Kashmir

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s reflections on Kashmir – Nyla Ali Khan Palgrave Macmillan; Rs.9,000; Pages 215 Nyla Ali Khan’s Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s Reflections on Kashmir seeks to restore the centrality of Sheikh Abdullah in Kashmiri identity politics. This at a time when politics in Jammu & Kashmir has been radicalised much beyond his ideology and political values. The book seeks to portray him as a statesman much ahead of his time who had the ability to take bold decisions which were not popular, but were required at the time. The book taken as a whole is interesting because it not only presents us the ideas of Sheikh Abdullah — in the form of his letters, speeches and press conferences — but also gives us a clear insight into the author’s own understanding of the situation as it exists in Kashmir currently. She views the present situation as static in which separatist politics is moving without any ideological goal and purposive content. She finds fault with the way religion and obscurantism are pervasive in the valley; how transformative and reformist opportunities have been missed, leaving the youth high and dry without any hope for the future. The book reflects the author’s frustration with the violence, purposelessness, and senselessness that politics in J&K represents. While referring to the alienation of Kashmir because of Delhi’s nationalist response, her attention remains on the youth of Kashmir who are central to the protest politics and full of anger and resentment. Sympathetic to their despair, she notes this is a generation that has only known conflict, political turmoil and socio-economic instability. Because of their sorry situation, she invokes Sheikh Abdullah and calls for an ideological re-imagination and reinventing of meaningful and purposive politics. She recalls the capacity of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s to rise above politics and opt for flexibility and accommodation when the occasion demanded. She calls for revival of Sheikh’s politics. It’s all very well, she notes, to raise slogans of self-determination, autonomy and self-rule, but it’s time to think beyond sloganeering, about the type of social and political fabric needed for Kashmiri youth. She calls for a political movement that pays attention to the ideals of peace, political liberty, socio-economic reconstruction, egalitarian democratisation, good governance and resuscitation of democratic institutions. Abdullah believed only a friendly environment in Kashmir would be conducive to peace and development. Therefore, he informed Kashmiris that, “while struggling for our rights of self-determination, it becomes essential for Kashmir that we should strive hard to secure friendship between India and Pakistan”. Since it was impossible for Jammu & Kashmir to progress without an Indo-Pak detente, extricating itself from the Indo-Pak conflict was very important for Kashmir. This, he told Kashmiris, could be achieved “only if our efforts are directed towards creating peace and harmony between India and Pakistan. Because in their friendship alone lies our salvation”. Solution of the Kashmir question, as many of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s speeches stressed, also required taking cognizance of the internal structure of the state. He repeatedly emphasised…

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Okinawa’s secret: Ikigai — The japanese secret to a long and happy life

Ikigai — The japanese secret to a long and happy life, Hector Garcia & Francesc Miralles, Penguin Random House; Rs.1,176 Pages 185 Okinawa, the largest of a group of islands south of the main Japanese archipelago, was the theatre of the bloodiest land combat between American Allied troops and soldiers of imperial Japan in World War II. Since then despite its war-ravaged history, occupation and administration by American forces for several decades and the presence of a large American military base in Okinawa to this day, this peripheral island of Japan has become the globally famous lifestyle exemplar of the contemporary world. In 2016, two Spaniards — Hector Garcia, a Tokyo-based author and scholar of Japanese culture, and Francesc Miralles, a Barcelona-based travel writer — resolved to investigate the extraordinary longevity of the residents of Okinawa which hosts 24.55 people aged over 100 for every 100,000 inhabitants, “far more than the global average”. Ikigai, an international bestseller, is the outcome of their year-long sojourn on the island and their wide-ranging research unravelling the lifestyle and existential philosophy of the happy, contented and durable people of Okinawa. It is certain to induce all readers to reappraise their modus vivendi. This short, motivational self-help manual attributes the longevity of the inhabitants of Okinawa to a combination of mind, body and culture factors. And it’s pertinent to note that the people of this outpost don’t merely live long, they live joyful and healthy lives and fade out contented and fulfilled, i.e, they usually die naturally of old age rather than the dreadful diseases and afflictions which are becoming commonplace the world over. Garcia and Miralles believe the unusually serene and harmonious lives of Okinawans is due to their constant but leisurely search for ikigai, a philosophical construct which according to the authors, translates into the French raison d’etre (‘reason for living’). Obviously, soul-searching in the pursuit of happiness requires some guidelines. These guidelines are provided by the authors based on their study of the lifestyle, customs, diet and mutually supportive community of the world’s happiest people. Two of the most important secrets of Okinawa — which the fast ‘expanding’ Indian middle class would do well to note — are the 80 percent rule (aka hara hachi bu) and forming moai, described as “an informal group of people who look out for one another”, i.e, mutually supportive communities. “For many, serving the community becomes part of their ikigai,” write Garcia and Miralles. Hara hachi bu, which the Japanese use as the equivalent of the French bon appetit (good appetite!), prescribes that one should fill only 80 percent of the stomach’s capacity during mealtimes. This advice is particularly applicable to middle class Indians who increasingly pride themselves for their effete epicureanism and often describe themselves as ‘foodies’ without the slightest trace of embarrassment that they are gluttons in a society in which over half the population subsists on two meals, if that, per day. Moai, a sense of community brotherhood, also recommended by the authors as…

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Montenegro: Stern anti-cheating laws

A drive to legislate against research misconduct and student cheating across Europe is under way, with the Balkans in the lead. In March, tiny Montenegro (pop.629,355) became one of the first countries to pass stringent legislation outlawing not only plagiarism, but also the donation of authorship, the fabrication of research results and a variety of ways to cheat in exams. The law is in part the fruit of the Ethics, Transparency and Integrity in Education initiative of the Council of Europe, a human rights body that includes almost every country on the continent. Dennis Farrington, a visiting fellow at the Oxford Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies, who has worked as a consultant for the Council of Europe for the past 25 years, says other countries are likely to consider adopting similar rules. “There’s pressure coming from all over the place for some new legal structures (to tackle academic misconduct), and Montenegro is in the lead,” says Farrington. According to Farrington, the Balkans is the birthplace of the fresh move against academic misconduct because the wars of the 1990s cut off universities from the outside world and an “incestuous” culture of academics signing off each other’s work developed. In Montenegro, which has one public and two private universities, academic misconduct is a “well-known phenomenon” and was regarded as a relatively inconsequential offence. However, after 2000 a new generation of educated youth has emerged with a different mindset. But Montenegro hasn’t made its plagiarism law retrospective, meaning only misconduct in new publications will fall under its remit. “This was a huge can of worms that they decided they didn’t want to open,” says Farrington. Outside the Western Balkans, Farrington has also helped the Armenian government to draft a law tackling plagiarism, fake universities and “academic integrity in its widest extent”. In return for state funding, universities have had to sign a code of conduct. Kosovo has drafted a similar law, with universities having to make progress reports to the government. Also involved is the International Institute for Research and Action on Academic Fraud and Plagiarism, promoted in 2016 and affiliated with the University of Geneva, which has coached University of Montenegro staff to better understand plagiarism, says Michelle Bergadaa, the institute’s chair. Independent assessors have been flown in to speak to students, researchers and managers to check on progress, she says. But it is “foolish” to think academic misconduct can be tackled by the “autocratic formula” of new regulations, warns Prof. Bergadaa. “The law always follows changes in society”, not the other way around, she says. It’s “unclear” if Montenegro’s new law will solve integrity issues, she cautions. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)

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China: Illusory autonomy reforms

Chinese university presidents describe themselves as “dancers with chains on our legs,” warning that the influence of government-appointed party secretaries leaves them with little real autonomy. Fifteen presidents who offered rare interviews for a new study say that much-heralded reforms ostensibly designed to loosen Beijing’s grip on higher education institutions are “largely symbolic” and have had “little real impact” on the ability of institutions to self-govern. The leaders of five national top-tier universities and ten provincial universities, quoted in China Quarterly, complained about “absence of genuine autonomy” because any moves to enact “devolved powers could be viewed by superiors as disrespectful or as betrayal of the (Communist) Party and party ideology”. This has led to “institutional inertia” because university presidents are concerned “about being seen as ‘rocking the boat’”. “To be honest, we don’t want to stir things up,” explains one university president quoted in the paper, who said that any reform “tends to affect employees negatively, (meaning) I could be criticised and (the government) could cut the amount of government funding we receive”. Ten of the 15 presidents interviewed admitted they are reluctant to initiate new proposals because it could affect their careers. Many cite the influence of government-appointed party secretaries based in each university. One president said his plans to use more original English language textbooks were blocked by government officials and that he was warned “not to go against mainstream ideology”. Another’s proposals to introduce peer review in research, rather than rely on the judgement of internal university administrators, were also rejected. Party secretaries at the 15 universities also offered interviews, with one referring to the party’s “absolute leadership” over institutions. Another insisted that party control is vital because an “ideological war between us (and the US) is always on, and can be a matter of life and death for our regime”. Frank Mols, senior lecturer in political science at University of Queensland, who co-authored the paper with Hu Jian, from Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, says the interviews indicate that an “impressive series of official reforms to increase the autonomy of Chinese universities… have had remarkably little impact on everyday practices”. All is Well sensation It is no mean feat to be one of the Top-10 trending hashtags on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, for 20 consecutive days and counting. All is Well, a show on provincial television which premiered on March 1, has just done that. The serial depicts the story of a fictional Chinese family torn by internal conflict. The female protagonist, Su Mingyu, is barely on speaking terms with her widowed father and one of her two brothers. The father is a nagging crank who expects his two adult sons to bankroll his lavish tastes. This leads to constant bickering between the brothers, neither of whom wants to be called unfilial. Episodes of All is Well have been streamed more than 390 million times. That exceeds the online viewership of the next most popular television series by 278 million. From The Simpsons…

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Canada: Steady research talent influx

New bespoke immigration assistance for academics considering a move to Canada will help to continue the steady influx of research talent into the country which began after the election of Donald Trump, says the head of Universities Canada. Speaking to Times Higher Education, Paul Davidson, president of Universities Canada, which represents 96 higher education institutions, said plans to invest C$200 million (Rs.1,041 crore) in immigration services unveiled in the March federal government budget will consolidate his country’s reputation as a welcoming place for foreign academics. Under the plans, some C$78.6 million (Rs.409 crore) has been provided to improve the processing of Canadian work and study permits, as well as visitor visas, including the creation of a unit to handle applications from foreign researchers. “Having this kind of concierge service for academics and their spouses will certainly help them get through our immigration process more quickly,” says Davidson, who adds that the budget changes “are entirely symptomatic of a system that wants to show it is open for business,” to foreign researchers. The budget plan is Canada’s latest initiative to attract top research talent to its universities. In March 2017, its government announced new funding worth C$117 million (Rs.609 crore) to recruit world-class professors from around the world under its Canada 150 Research Chairs programme, with the one-time funding scheme offering professors up to C$1 million (Rs.5.2 crore) per year, depending on their research. Mike Mahon, president and vice chancellor at the University of Lethbridge, in Alberta, told THE that one US researcher recruited under the Canada 150 Research Chairs programme had left the US, citing President Trump’s election. “We recruited someone from the University of Texas who brought his entire research team with him — his computing needs actually doubled the computing capacity of the entire university,” he said, adding that he “absolutely came because of (Trump)”. President Trump has also recently sought to impose fixed time limits on student visas — a move that many believe will see more international students head for Canada, where numbers have grown four-fold to 500,000 since 2000. That number could double to 1 million over the next decade, partly because of Canada’s generous post-study work visa arrangements. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)

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World University Rankings: New SDG Rankings

The University of Auckland has topped a pioneering new ranking that assesses the social and economic impact of universities based on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings is the world’s first global attempt to document evidence of universities’ impact on society, rather than just research and teaching performance. Metrics include universities’ policies on academic freedom, their use of secure employment contracts and their share of senior female academic staff and are based on 11 of the 17 UN SDGs. The results of the first edition reveal a new hierarchy of diverse global institutions compared with research-focused rankings, with New Zealand’s Auckland and two Canadian institutions — McMaster University and the University of British Columbia — forming the overall top three, alongside the UK’s University of Manchester. The rest of the Top 10 is completed by King’s College London, Sweden’s University of Gothenburg and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Canada’s University of Montreal, Italy’s University of Bologna and the University of Hong Kong. The overall ranking includes 462 universities from 76 nations. Phil Baty, chief knowledge officer at THE, says the rankings “offer an alternative view of university excellence” and “develop an unprecedented picture of the extraordinary impact that universities have across a huge range of activities”. Auckland tops the league table thanks largely to its top scores for two of the goals: good health and well-being, and “partnerships for the goals”. It also achieves a high score for gender equality — 43 percent of its first-degree graduates in STEM and 78 percent of its first-degree graduates in medicine in 2017 were women. Auckland vice chancellor Stuart McCutcheon has also led a successful proposal for all of New Zealand’s universities to collaborate on SDGs at a national level, while the institution contributed a guide Getting started with the SDGs in Universities, which includes developing and sharing information on measuring research and teaching contributions to the SDGs (see table). (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)

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United States: Student loans: ISA option

As total student debt in the US reaches $1.5 trillion (Rs.104 lakh crore), policymakers and private lenders — as well as universities — are increasingly turning to income-based repayment as a potential solution. The model ties repayments to salaries for a fixed term and is seen as a way of preventing borrowers from owing more than they earn. But advocacy groups are warning that the private versions may offer students little relief and greatly increase their long-term costs. “It’s a little overbearing to use (the term) ‘indentured servitude’,” says Jessica Thompson, director of policy and planning at the Institute for College Access & Success, “but it’s a little bit more like that model.” That’s because the private offering — known as an income share agreement (ISA) — has no principal balance or interest. Instead, the student agrees to pay the private investor or the institution a certain percentage of his or her salary for a set period of time after graduation. Mark Takano, chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, told a recent congressional hearing that the history of private market abuses in college financing leaves him worried about ISAs. “Speaking frankly,” says Takano, “I see ISAs as another way to push the private market on to students, which has never resulted in positive outcomes.” The emerging controversy stands in contrast to the bipartisan backing for various forms of income-based repayment run by the federal government. There are now a half-dozen such federal programmes dating back as far as the George W. Bush administration, including models created by Congress and the Obama administration. Donald Trump endorsed ISAs as a presidential candidate, and all three of his administration’s annual budget proposals have included them. About 7 million US students now participate in government ISA programmes and student advocacy groups consider the biggest problem with them to be the relative lack of their use and awareness of their benefits. In addition to offering lower costs than private models, says Thompson, federal income-based repayment programmes offered full forgiveness after the borrower has been paying for a certain number of years. “Pretty much there’s widespread support for the concept of the federal income-driven repayment plan,” she says. Yet the private options are steadily growing, with providers describing their products as a useful addition that can offer better long-term outcomes. Lenders include Lumni, Upstart and Vemo. Popular targets are students in short-term courses such as computer-coding boot camps. But some higher education institutions are offering their own products, including Purdue, Clarkson and Norwich universities, and Allan Hancock and Lackawanna colleges. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)

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Letter from London: Losing sight of the golden mean

Home education is becoming a hot button topic in the UK just as it is in India, as reported in the brilliant cover story ‘India’s nascent homeschooling revolution’ of EW’s affiliate publication ParentsWorld (March 15). How I wish we had a similar pair of excellent complementary journals for education and parenting in Britain! This informative cover feature frankly discussed difficulties and disadvantages of homeschooling children in less gifted and wealthy households. However, despite the difficulty or even impossibility of many parents teaching children at home, perhaps because both parents need to work and they may not themselves be well-educated, the number of homeschooled children is rapidly increasing both in India and Britain (in the latter by over 40 percent in the last three years). Why? While it is illegal to deprive children of education in the UK, it is not illegal to homeschool them. The reasons why parents opt for this alternative vary. Sometimes there’s the problem of children’s mental or physical health, sometimes because they are bullied in school, because gifted children are stifled in mainstream schools, and sometimes it’s the perverted desire of extremist religious sects to thoroughly indoctrinate their children. But the main reason that the homeschooling movement in Britain is gathering momentum is the abysmal quality of state-provided education. In India, ParentsWorld blames the national obsession with rote-learning and uncritical regurgitation of ingested facts for examinations — the Gradgrind mentality of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times − for stifling creativity. Yet I question the assumption that “the global digital revolution has made the accessing and storing of information obsolete”. Every child needs to acquire a solid bedrock of stored knowledge on which to build, and as usual, we are losing sight of balance — of the ‘golden mean’. It’s never one or the other, both are needed. If “creativity and critical thinking” skills are not being taught in schools, there is surely a role here for extra-mural help at home from parents and numerous (often Internet-based) courses, night-schools and private tutoring groups often led by suitably qualified parents. Home-education for most children should be an adjunct of formal schooling. Children need to learn to live with other children as a preparation for their adult lives. School may not always be pleasant, but such is the reality of life, and hiding away from it is not good education. In Britain, the problem of formal schooling is the opposite. It is not the rigour of rote-learning and concentration on examinations that’s to blame but lack of it, the loss of intellectual discipline and the infiltration of left-wing and Marxist dogma that I wrote about in my letters of November and December last year. A remarkable BBC programme has recently given weight to my fears, and I shall tell you about it in my next despatch. (Dr. Peter Greenhalgh is a Cambridge classical scholar and former professor at Cape Town University)

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Great benefits of museum learning

Across the world, there’s high awareness that chalk and talk teaching for standardised testing is obsolete. There’s a global search for new pedagogies and processes to enable school children to acquire better conceptual understanding and deeper engagement with ideas to confront complex 21st century challenges. One way to achieve this is by venturing outside classrooms and teaching in informal settings — in museums and vibrant environments such as heritage sites, art galleries, science centres, archaeological sites, bio-diversity parks and gardens (hereafter collectively referred to as museums). Learning in museums makes classroom subjects come alive. Imagine reading about animals, birds and reptiles in class and then studying their fossils, skulls and specimens to better understand their features, habitats and diets. Or examining coins, manuscripts, maps and understanding first-hand how history has been constructed using objects and texts and what they tell us about our past. In museum environments, students have the opportunity to apply words and phrases learned in classrooms — a fantastic example of authentic use of language in real settings. Learning in museums facilitates deeper conceptual understanding by enhancing students’ sensory literacy — absorption of information through the senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. That’s why a rising number of museums offer special ‘objects handling’ spaces where children can touch, hold and explore real or replicas of display objects. In recent years, it has become fairly well-established that museum learning offers gains beyond supplementing curriculum objectives. Objects-based learning stimulates and develops curiosity and capacity for children to make careful, insightful and critical observations. These skills are the basis of good research and have wide application in professions ranging from medicine to law to natural sciences. Another important outcome of the museum medium is that it develops students’ ability to make interdisciplinary connections between concepts and ideas beyond the confines of curriculum subjects. This helps to build lateral thinking and problem-solving skills. The huge proven benefits of museum learning explains why the Langley Academy, Berkshire (UK) has transformed itself into a full-fledged museum learning school. Learning here isn’t confined to day trips to museums; instead, real objects and exhibits are brought into the school for students to examine and experience. At the Langley Academy, students are also encouraged to curate their own exhibitions and advise the school on what they want and expect from museum learning through the student-led Museum Council. The philosophy of the academy, England’s first museum learning school, was inspired by the pioneer New York City Museum School founded in 1994. Today, almost every school in the UK includes museum visits and nearly all museums offer educational programmes for children. In the Federal Republic of Germany, a conservative attitude towards museum visitors is giving way to a more inclusive approach with strong focus on young learners. Under the lab.Bode programme, a four-year joint programme of the Federal Cultural Foundation and National Museums, the Bode Museum in Berlin has been transformed into a learning lab for designing innovative museum learning pedagogies that young visitors find appealing.…

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China’s successful VET revolution

As one of seven national strategies for building a prosperous China, the Central government has been strongly supporting general education. For several decades, annual expenditure on education averaged a modest 2.5 percent of GDP. But in the new millennium it has steadily increased and in 2018-19, has risen to 4.4 percent of GDP which itself has grown five-fold during the three-decades past. However, the focus on universalisation of primary education has created long-standing shortage of skills needed in the job market and industry in particular. Therefore since the dawn of the new millennium, high importance has been given to establishing a modern vocational education and training (VET) system. With the Chinese economy continuing to record high rates of annual GDP growth while experiencing rapid urbanisation, the demand for skilled workers has exploded. According to the latest 2018 ministry of education data, there are 10,000 secondary vocational/technical schools countrywide which admit 5.6 million students annually, i.e, 40 percent of middle school-leavers. These vocational/technical schools are of three categories: specialised high-academic-requirements secondary schools offering three-four year diploma programmes in subjects such as teacher training and finance; vocational high schools which train students for service industries offering three-year diplomas; and schools for training skilled workers offering one-three year programmes for carpenters, welders, electrical technicians, hairdressers and chefs. These technical schools play a big role in training manpower with practical skills of various types and most of their graduates become workers with special skills. Graduates of these schools are in high demand. For instance, 46 percent of 30,000 graduates of Shanghai’s 75 secondary vocational/technical schools were recruited immediately after graduation in 2018. Most of the remainder students pressed on to enter tertiary-level vocational colleges. At the tertiary level, there are 1,400 vocational colleges in mainland China. In 2018, 3.7 million i.e, 48 percent of all students enrolled in higher education institutions streamed into vocational colleges. VET colleges in China are divided into two categories — higher specialist colleges offering 3-5 year specialised study programmes such as medicine, public security, teacher training and finance requiring high Gaokao (national school leaving exam) scores for admission and higher vocational institutes which are practice-oriented and academically less demanding. Established with the objective of preparing skilled managers and technicians, the mandate of tertiary VET colleges and institutes is to train shopfloor workers required by the country’s 500,000 major factories and manufacturing enterprises. Separate and distinct from China’s 1,500 universities, VET colleges offer three-to-five years’ vocational training, with graduates awarded diplomas which are highly respected by corporates, especially by the estimated 300,000 small-scale manufacturing enterprises countrywide. Moreover, diversion of middle school graduates into VET colleges and institutes has reduced the competition for university admissions even as it has alleviated shortages of skilled technicians and workers in infrastructure and manufacturing industries. As in India and indeed worldover, in China as well VET diplomas don’t enjoy parity with university degrees in the public perception. Therefore in 2006, the ministries of education and finance jointly initiated a programme to construct 100 ‘model vocational…

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Tanay Bothara

Within two months of being adjudged India champion of the Asia Young Designer Award (AYDA) contest in January, Pune-based architect Tanay Bothara (23) has been crowned Young Designer 2019 (architecture) of Asia in the transnational competition organised by Osaka (Japan)-based Nippon Paint Holdings Co. In the Asia final round staged at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, Singapore on March 21, this young architect’s PowerPoint presentation titled ‘Children Uprooted’, showcasing an innovative way to transform the lives of war-torn Syria’s children, was adjudged the best of 15 presentations. The winner’s prize: an all-expenses paid trip to the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in Boston, for a six-week Design Discovery programme in June. “After viewing a 2017 UN documentary on war-ravaged Syria, the idea to build subterranean play areas in the basements of abandoned buildings for the country’s play-deprived children came to me. I must also acknowledge the aid and advice I received from my mentors Bijoy Ramachandran and former professors Vijaya Srinivasan and Niranjan Garde,” says Tanay Bothara, a 2018 alumnus of the Vivekanand Institute of Technology’s PVP College of Architecture, Pune. Launched in 2008, the AYDA contest — open to fourth and fifth year students and fresh graduates of architecture and design in 15 Asian countries — is Nippon Paint’s first-of-its-type initiative in Asia to nurture the continent’s next generation of socially-conscious architects and designers. The theme for this year’s AYDA edition was “Forward challenging design boundaries” with contestants required to improve the quality of life using architecture design innovations. Moved by the plight of children in strife-ridden Syria, Tanay donated the India championship cash award of Rs.50,000 for their education. “I hope I can inspire others to donate for this noble cause. I am now looking forward to my design discovery programme at the Harvard Design School, and hope it helps me to successfully implement my project in Syria and other war zones,” he says. Way to go, bro! Sruthy Susan Ullas (Bangalore)

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Sonia Chahal

Four times national champion, Rohtak (Haryana)-based Sonia Chahal (21) returned home to a hero’s welcome last November after winning a silver medal in her debut performance at the Women’s World Boxing Championship organised by the Amateur International Boxing Association in New Delhi. The younger of two children of Jai Bhagwan, a farmer, and homemaker mother Neelam, featherweight (57 kg) Sonia Chahal is disappointed she didn’t bag the gold. “Although it was a proud moment for me to share the stage with my idol Mary Kom who won her sixth gold medal in the light flyweight 45-48 kg category, I was disappointed with my performance. But I’m now confident that I will improve next time,” says Sonia, a third-year arts student of Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak. Inspired by the success of women pugilists from her village (Nimri) including (unrelated) Kavita Chahal, and encouraged by her physical education teacher Suresh, Sonia Chahal started sparring when she was in class IX. In 2011 her parents enroled her in the Bhiwani Boxing Club, where she learned ring craft under the tutelage of Dronacharya awardee Jagdish Singh. In quick time, Sonia started winning inter-school boxing championships followed by district, state and national-level tournaments organised by the Boxing Federation of India. In 2012, she was crowned national champion and retained her title in 2013, ’14 and ’16. Moving to Rohtak’s National Boxing Academy in 2017, she bagged a silver in the India Open tournament the same year and a bronze in Turkey last year. Thus far in her eight-year career as a boxer, Sonia Chahal has won four gold, three silver and four bronze medals in national and international tournaments. But her success has been built on a hard training regimen. She is in the National Boxing Academy at the crack of dawn to train for 150 minutes in the morning and evenings, a regimen supplemented with weights training and running sprints. “My dream is to win a medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Now I am preparing for the forthcoming Asian Championships in Bangkok and the World Championships in Russia later this year. I am training hard,” she says. Power to your punches! Gauri Kohli (Delhi)

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Time to focus on heart education

Lijian Zhao is a dynamic young Chinese diplomat posted in Islamabad. China’s close friendship with Pakistan is well known. Also widely known are India’s not-so-close ties with China, and our hostile relations with Pakistan. Therefore, whenever I try to explain to people that the objective of my Forum for a New South Asia is to promote a ‘peace triangle’ connecting India, Pakistan and China, the usual reaction is — “it’s a pipe dream”. Lijian, whom I met in Islamabad last year, is an exception who supports the forum. When people dismiss a good idea as unworkable, one is naturally stimulated to translate it into reality. The objective of the India-Pakistan-China ‘peace triangle’ is to ultimately expand it into a greater ‘peace circle’ that will eventually cover the entire world and secure a future without wars and violence for humanity. As a Hindu, from my childhood I have heard the chanting of the shanti mantra which urges us to create shanti (peace) on pruthvi (earth), in aap (water), vanaspati (flora and fauna), and antariksh (space)… indeed everywhere. Similar lofty peace hymns can be found in every religion and culture around the world. Then why such deeply entrenched skepticism about the most fundamental canons of all religions and humanistic philosophies? One of the main reasons behind widespread skepticism about attaining global peace and harmony can be traced back to the formal and non-formal education we receive in childhood. Our education begins with education of the heart imparted by our mothers. However, as we grow, efforts to develop the heart recede into the background and the focus shifts almost entirely to development of the brain. The heart is where we experience love and peace. Balanced and harmonious development of heart and brain prompts us to find practical ways to expand the circle of love and peace — from our own family to the community, to the neighbourhood, the nation and, ultimately, to the entire human family. However, when only the brain develops and the heart shrinks, human beings forget about love and harmony, allowing the baser instincts of human nature to dominate their personalities. Indeed, that is what’s happening today in local and global contexts. People have begun to believe that selfishness, hatred, hostility, conflict and violence are ineradicable and intrinsic to human existence. Barely is one conflict or conflagration resolved, when new conflicts arise proving that the genus homo sapiens hasn’t developed the power to ensure sustainable peace. Human history is strewn with numerous tragic examples of this failing. This is because the only power that can make peace sustainable is the power of the heart, the power of love. Mahatma Gandhi perceptively described love as the active form of non-violence. In his education philosophy he attached far greater importance to the nurturing power of the heart than to training the faculties of the head. Sadly, it’s just the opposite in our formal education system. Therefore, if we want a better future for our neighbourhood, for India and humanity, we must rediscover…

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British Council summer programme

Bangalore, April 12. British Council is set to introduce its annual Summer Programme for children in nine cities countrywide between April 30 and May 25. Programme fees are Rs.4,000 for library members and Rs.5,500 for non-members. The programme offers children opportunity to learn contemporary life skills such as creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving and improve their confidence and communication skills through interactive lessons. “This is a unique fun-filled, theme-based programme designed to equip children with 21st century skills through English language training. This year, the programme will focus on enhancing world knowledge, develop life skills and improve fluency in English to give children in the 7-14 years age group confidence to become future ready,” says a council spokesperson. India-Sweden research agreement Delhi, April 11. India and Sweden announced an India-Sweden Collaborative Industrial Research & Development Programme on the occasion of the Sweden-India Innovation Partnership AI for All Summit. The programme will address a range of global challenges through technology and innovation. The joint programme is co-funded by India’s Department of Science & Technology (DST) and Sweden’s Innovation Agency Vinnova. The new programme brings together the world-class excellence of Sweden and India to address challenges in the areas of smart cities and clean technologies and digitalisation/Internet of Things (IoT). Full-scale R&D projects focused on co-development of new products, processes, technologies and product adaptation projects will be funded under this new programme. Vinnova will provide funding to Swedish participants of up to 2,500,000 Sw Krona (Rs.1.8 crore) as grants. On the Indian side, conditional grants of up to 50 percent with a limit of Rs.1.5 crore per project will be provided to Indian project partners. “I am delighted about Vinnova’s enhanced collaboration with India,” said Joakim Appelquist, deputy director-general of Vinnova, speaking on the occasion. ITARI’s new graduates Bangalore, April 19. The Indus Training And Research Institute (ITARI), Bangalore, which offers the postgraduate diploma programme in international education (PGDIE) and Cambridge international diploma programme in teaching and learning (CIDTL), hosted its graduation ceremony on April 16, This year ITARI graduated 100 teachers who were felicitated at a solemn ceremony presided by Lt. General (Retd) Arjun Ray, PVSM, VSM, chief executive of the Indus Trust, and Dr. Simon Spencer, deputy head, School of Education, Birmingham City University, UK. The latest batch of graduating teachers have been campus recruited by Indus International schools in Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad and other international schools of repute countrywide. Launched in 2009, ITARI has trained and certified over 900 teachers who have been placed in premier international schools. ITARI’s teacher development academic programmes are offered in association with reputed British universities and the Cambridge International, UK. Unisys Cloud 20/20 contest Bangalore/blue bell (pennsylvania), April 5. Global IT major Unisys Corporation announced winners of the 10th annual Unisys Cloud 20/20 contest, one of India’s largest and most popular student innovation programmes. This year’s contest attracted entries from more than 270 colleges and over 300 projects for adjudication. A project titled Vesa-Blockchain-Based Supply Chain Management by a team representing the…

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Punjab Sanitary napkin row

Chandigarh, April 29. Two women hostel wardens and two security guards of the privately-run co-educational Akal University in Punjab’s Bathinda district have been suspended on charges of ‘dereliction of duty’ for strip searching several women students after a soiled sanitary napkin blocked the hostel toilet. Suspension orders were issued in response to a public protest staged by over 500 women students of the university. They alleged that proper disposal bins had not been provided by the university management. A similar incident was reported last November, when 15 schoolgirls in Punjab’s Fazilka village were allegedly strip searched by women teachers after a soiled sanitary napkin was discovered in the school toilet. Bihar Improved matric results Patna, April 6. Of the 1.6 million students who wrote the Bihar Matriculation (class X) examination conducted during February 21-28 this year, 80.73 percent passed, announced R.K. Mahajan, additional chief secretary of the state’s education ministry to the media. “The pass percentage this year is significantly higher than 68.89 percent of the previous year (2018),” said Anand Kishore, chairman of the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB). Of the 1.3 million class X students who passed the matriculation examination, 683,990 were boys and 636,046 girls. Sawan Raj Bharti of Simultala Awasiya Vidyalaya, Jamui topped the examination with an aggregate score of 486 out of a maximum 500 marks, he added. Although state government officials have discerned improved learning outcomes in Bihar’s primary-secondary schools, the Pratham Education Foundation’s ASER 2018 indicates that 65 percent of class V students in rural government schools cannot read class II textbooks. Moreover 76 percent of class V children are unable to solve simple division sums. Assam Election code violation notices Hailakandi, April 11. District Election Officer of Hailakandi, Keerthi Jalli, issued showcause notices to five government primary-secondary schools for violating the Election Commission’s model code of conduct (MCC) by sending students to attend a political rally addressed by Congress president Rahul Gandhi. Taking exception to the presence of a large number of students in uniform at the Congress rally in Panchgram, Jalli’s notice to the schools said: “You have insulted your position as an educator, the noblest of professions.” She also questioned the headmasters as to why immediate action including cancellation of certification and licences of the schools should not be initiated for violation of MCC and Representation of People’s Act, 1951. The headmasters of Adarsha Vidyalaya, Panchgram Quomi Madrassa, Moulana Abdul Ali Memorial Jaliliya Madrassa, Oxford High School and Cambridge High School — all sited in Panchgram — were issued notices, a government official confirmed. Delhi Jamia Millia’s new VC New Delhi, April 11. Prof. Najma Akhtar is the newly appointed first woman vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia University (JMI, estb.1988), Delhi. An alumna of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), Warwick and Nottingham (UK) universities, Akhtar has four decades of rich experience including service as controller of examinations and director of AMU. “In exercise of powers conferred under statutes of Jamia Millia Islamia Act, 1988, the President of India, in his…

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They said it in April

“Students educated in government schools evolve into better citizens compared to their counterparts from elite schools.” Uday Holla, advocate general of Karnataka, defending the state’s RTE Rules amendment that allows RTE quota admissions in private schools only if no government schools are sited in their neighbourhood (April 3) “Private investment in education makes government uncomfortable because it pits a private good against a social one. Governments, like parents, want children to learn, but they also want to maximise social mobility and minimise inequality, whereas parents simply want to ensure that their children do better than anyone else’s.” Emma Duncan, social policy editor, on the boom in private education (The Economist, April 13-19) “Several Southeast Asian countries have a similar lack of forthrightness like in India. This is a problem because I feel our children (in India) are so beaten down by the problem of having to regurgitate what you learn that it’s difficult for them to think independently. Even in school projects, we’re very good at gaming the system. You can buy your school projects now… that defeats the purpose.” Gagandeep Kang, first Indian woman scientist to be awarded Fellowship of Royal Society, UK, in an interview with The Hindu (April 27) “School is so much fun. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening to me. Carrying a school bag has always been my dream.” Hwang Wol-geum (70), a class I student of Daegu Elementary, South Korea, which admitted illiterate adults as its enrolment dwindled following plummeting birthrate in the country (The New York Times, April 28) “One of India’s biggest failures is education… TS Eliot once asked, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” The Indian school system focuses on information rather than knowledge, and certainly not wisdom.” Swaminathan Aiyer, well-known columnist (Times of India, April 28)

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Tamil Nadu: Patience erosion

A long-standing proposal of the incumbent E.K. Palaniswamy-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government to introduce the Aadhar-enabled biometric attendance system (AEBAS) for over 390,000 teachers and administrative staff of Tamil Nadu’s 57,000 government and aided schools has been stymied for nearly two years because of stiff opposition from teachers. This despite an official government order (GO) issued on October 28, 2018 making AEBAS mandatory for teachers and staff of 7,726 government and government-aided high and higher secondary schools in the first phase. But on April 15, the Madras high court dismissed a writ petition filed by government high school teacher R. Annal, challenging its implementation. The petition challenged the GO of October 28, 2018 on the ground that it is unconstitutional, violative of the Aadhar Act, 2016 and contrary to the Supreme Court’s verdict in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy vs Union of India (2018) which limited government insistence on usage of the Aadhar card for government-citizen transactions. Petitioner Annal argued that since she did not have an Aadhar card, forcing her to use the biometric attendance system would be violative of her right to privacy. Rejecting her plea, Justice S.M. Subramaniam said the petitioner could either abide by service rules or quit public service, and directed the AIADMK government to implement AEBAS in all schools. Coming down heavily on government school teachers for indiscipline, laxity and inefficiency, he further directed the state government to verify movable and immovable assets owned by teachers and staff of government and aided schools against income tax declarations made by them, and ensure that rules are amended to make merit-cum-seniority the norm for promotion of teachers. Education ministry officials say the decision to introduce phased AEBAS in all government and aided schools was prompted by frequent complaints of teacher absenteeism and attendance by proxy, especially in rural government schools. A spate of teachers’ strikes last year and a massive nine-day strike on January 22 called by the Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers Organisation and Government Employees Organisation (JACTO-GEO), could also be an underlying reason for the AIADMK government to enforce introduction of AEBAS. Although primary school teachers unions have been resisting introduction of AEBAS in government primaries, teachers in high and higher secondary schools have welcomed AEBAS on the ground that truant teachers have given the teaching profession a bad name. “Nowadays, due to strict monitoring by education officials, teacher absenteeism has been sharply reduced. Poor public transport and frequent imposition of non-academic administrative tasks upon primary teachers eats into teaching hours and diverts their focus from teaching. The education ministry’s insistence on teachers attending repetitive and ineffective teacher training workshops is also a contributory cause of teacher disinterest and absenteeism,” says a government high school headmistress who requested anonymity. Curiously, two study reports on teacher absenteeism present contradictory findings. The Economic Survey (2016-17), an annual pre-budget document tabled by the Union ministry of finance, cited teacher absenteeism and shortage of professionally qualified teachers as the main reasons for low-quality primary…

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West Bengal: Education initiatives boost

At the time of writing, the electorates of 18 of West Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha constituencies — the largest representation in Parliament at the Centre after Uttar Pradesh’s 80 and Maharashtra’s 48 seats — have already voted in the ongoing General Election 2019. The principal players in the state’s political arena are chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — which has recently emerged as the main challenger to the electoral might of the ruling Trinamool Congress and has set a target of bagging 22 Lok Sabha seats of the state — the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and Congress. West Bengal looms large in General Election 2019 not only because it will send 42 MPs to the Lok Sabha in Delhi, but also because it has the largest number of first-time voters — 2 million — of any state. Even as the hustings are yet to be completed, publication of the Union HRD ministry’s National Institutional Ranking Framework 2019 (NIRF), which ranks India’s Top 100 universities, engineering institutes, undergrad colleges, B-schools, law colleges etc, is being interpreted as a boost to TMC. In NIRF 2019, Calcutta University (CU, estb.1857) which was ranked #14 last year has made a great leap forward to #5 while Jadavpur University (estb.1955) has retained its #6 ranking. Both CU and JU are state government-funded and supervised. Against this, the Central government-funded Visva Bharati University, established by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in 1921, is ranked #37. Moreover, several other West Bengal state universities are ranked among India’s Top 100 in NIRF 2019. In the league tables of Top 100 undergrad arts, science and commerce colleges, two from the state are in the Top 10 — Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College, Rahara (#8, promoted from #29 in 2018) and St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata #10 (17). Other West Bengal colleges ranked among the Top 100 countrywide are RKM, Narendrapur at #15, Bethune College #50 and Loreto College #76. Typically, having endured 34 years of uninterrupted rule (1977-2011) of the CPM (Communist Party-Marxist)-led Left Front government until TMC routed the CPM and allied parties in the assembly elections of 2011 and again in 2016, the state’s academy, still infested with CPM sympathisers and leftists, accords great importance to the ‘official’ NIRF league tables. Much greater than to independent media (including EducationWorld) surveys and rankings, despite the voluntary NIRF institutional assessment and evaluation methodology being deeply flawed (see cover story). “It is a great day for Bengal and for Calcutta and Jadavpur universities which are ranked among India’s Top 10. Both are state government funded universities,” says Suranjan Das, vice chancellor of JU. Adds Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee, vice chancellor of Calcutta University: “Our Top 5 NIRF ranking is due to teamwork with faculty, officers and non-teaching staff working closely together. We have improved our scores under all parameters — teaching-and-learning resources, graduation outcome, outreach and inclusivity as well as perception.” While it’s inevitable that the managements of West Bengal’s higher education institutions will attribute…

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Karnataka: Pay parity shock

A department of public instruction (DPI) circular of March 30 mandating all 20,581 private unaided schools in Karnataka (pop. 60 million) to pay government prescribed salaries to teachers and administrative staff, has caused much hand-wringing and despair within their managements. According to the circular, all private schools — including the state’s estimated 14,000 private budget schools (PBS) which levy arguably lower tuition fees than private schools worldwide — are obliged to pay a minimum Rs.25,800 per month to primary school teachers, Rs.33,450 to high school teachers Rs.27,650 and Rs.21,400 to first and second division clerks respectively, and Rs.17,000 for cleaning and maintenance employees. This is not the first time the state government has prescribed minimum salaries for private school teachers and staff. In 2006, DPI ordered private schools to accord their teachers pay parity with teachers in government schools. However, the directive was ignored by the state’s education ministry officials and private schools. Almost a decade later, DPI directed private schools to disclose remuneration details of their teachers to the department which supervises and regulates primary-secondary education statewide. This directive was also ignored by private schools, many of which have attracted sharp criticism for under-paying teachers, often taking back part of their cheque salaries by way of cash. Top-ranked CBSE, CISCE and high-end international schools affiliated with offshore examination boards such as Cambridge International (UK) and IB (Geneva) tend to pay their teachers higher than the prescribed salaries because they demand — and get — high tuition fees. In international schools, tuition fees are as high as Rs.8 lakh per year for day scholars. Conversely, the state’s 14,000 private budget schools provide professed English-medium education to children of low-income households at rock-bottom tuition fees of Rs.250-1,000 per month. For the latter adhering to the DPI’s minimum salaries directive is out of the question. Therefore, private school associations — including the Karnataka Associated Managements of Primary and Secondary Schools (KAMS), which has a membership of 4,000 mainly PBS schools, and the more upscale Managements of Independent CBSE Schools Association — have given notice of sharp tuition fee increases if the government directive is enforced. However, the situation is complicated further by an amendment made in 2018 to the Karnataka Education Institutions Act, 1983 which proscribes private school managements from raising tuition fees by more than 15 percent per year. According to D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary of KAMS, tuition fees of PBS will need to be increased by 100-200 percent if the DPI circular of March 30 is enforced. “We are caught between the devil and the deep sea. We have informed DPI of our inability to comply with this directive. If it’s not withdrawn immediately before start of the new academic year in June, we will have to petition the high court for a stay order. We are confident we will get a stay order and the DPI directive will be struck down because in the landmark T.M.A. Pai Foundation Case (2002), the Supreme Court permitted education institutions to administer…

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Maharashtra: Sexual abuse scandal

Reportedly continuous sexual abuse of minor girls at a private tribal students’ hostel run by a former Congress MLA has rocked Maharashtra. Even as citizens geared up to vote for 48 members of Parliament who will represent the state in the Lok Sabha, Delhi, widespread rallies have been staged by women’s groups and tribal organisations in the Vidharbha region protesting the failure of the police to promptly register a first information report (FIR) and demanding the arrest of former MLA Subhash Dhote, promoter of the residential Infant Jesus English Public High School, Rajura, in Chandrapur district. Admitting a petition filed by the survivors’ mothers on April 22, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court constituted a committee to investigate the parents’ allegations and ordered the state government to deposit Rs.50,000 in the petitioners’ bank accounts on behalf of the victims. The Infant Jesus English Public High School, Rajura (estb.1977) is a class I-XII English-medium residential school with 130 tribal girls and 135 boys on its muster rolls. According to the FIR, 13 minor girls of the school fell unconscious and had to be admitted to local hospitals where they were diagnosed as being heavily sedated and sexually molested. Subsequently, police investigations revealed that the school administration had blatantly violated government norms by housing boys and girls in one hostel building, and appointing a male superintendent for the girls hostel who had freely permitted men to visit the hostel at night. The police also recovered “incriminating and objectionable items” (sedatives etc) from the office of the superintendent. Ironically, the Infant Jesus School is one of 174 private English-medium primary-secondary schools licensed by the state government since 2010 in response to demand of the state’s tribal population for English-medium school education. With the 556 Marathi-medium tribal ashramshalas (ashram schools) having acquired a notorious reputation for lack of basic facilities and experiencing continuous exodus of children, in 2010-11, the Congress-NCP state government licenced private aided schools to provide residential board, lodging and English-medium education to tribal children. The managements of these private aided schools receive Rs.55,000 per student per annum as subsidy from the state government’s ministry of tribal development. Unsurprisingly, a large number of licences to run these private ashramshalas were cornered by Congress party politicians and cronies. Reports of sexual abuse of tribal children in government and private ashramshalas are not a new phenomenon. Information obtained by social activists under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 indicates that during the period 2010-15, there were 684 unnatural deaths of tribal children reported in Maharashtra, a statistic that suggests that hundreds of children who protested sexual abuse have been eliminated by the state’s incorrigibly corrupt neta-babu-police nexus. Nevertheless, responding — or seeming to respond — to the demands and aspirations of Maharashtra’s tribal community is politically necessary, as they constitute almost 10 percent of the state’s population of 115 million. Typically, government response to the recurrent reports of gross mismanagement of tribal schools has been to constitute committees to investigate specific…

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Delhi: Ritual obeisance

Despite damning start-of-the-year Annual Status of Education Report 2018, QS and Times Higher Education World University Rankings highlighting the pathetic condition of India’s education system from pre-primary to Ph D — and continuous whistle-blowing by EducationWorld for almost two decades — education reform is a peripheral issue in General Election 2019. Although as usual, all political parties make tall promises about greater provision for public education and sundry reforms, in the run-up to the world’s largest and most expensive democratic general election, there’s hardly been any debate on education in the media or political hustings about 21st century India’s broken public education system defined by chronic teacher shortages compounded by teacher truancy, crumbling infrastructure, abysmal learning outcomes and continuous exodus of students from public into private education institutions. “Almost everyone in politics, industry and civil society agrees that mending India’s broken education system is the most critical challenge that will determine whether we have demographic dividend or demographic disaster. But there’s been hardly any debate about reforming the education system from Kg-Ph D. Perhaps political parties feel that since everyone agrees that education is super critical, there is no point in discussing it,” comments Dr. Parth Shah, president of Delhi-based think tank Centre for Civil Society and member of the governing council of the Indian School of Public Policy, Delhi. Instead, under the agenda set by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and prime minister Narendra Modi, national security, i.e, developing capability to stymie external (Pakistan-China) and internal (Muslim) terrorism has emerged as a major issue in General Election 2019. But according to Dr. Geeta Menon, professor at the Centre for Early Childhood Development & Research, Jamia Milia Islamia University, Delhi, national security also requires high priority for education. “Good quality public primary-secondary education is a precondition of social cohesion, civic peace, respect for constitutional values and most important, to develop mental safety in the minds of citizens. This is important given that 90 districts are suffering left wing extremism, strife, and other violence. Traumatised youth in these districts need to be brought into mainstream life through education and development of their problem-solving skills,” says Menon. The sole political party that has made education reform an electoral issue and has invested political capital in education development, is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). But with its writ restricted to Delhi where it has been running the state government for the past four years, its message hasn’t reached the masses. “There is a deliberate strategy to ensure that children and citizens remain under-educated. Or else how will be the BJP be able to find support for its divisive politics?” muses Manish Sisodia, AAP leader and Delhi’s education minister. Promises relating to reform and rejuvenation of the country’s moribund education system made in the manifestos of major political parties have a familiar ring. Front-runner BJP’s sankalp patra (solemn vow) manifesto is silent on the issues of 6 percent of GDP for public education promised in its General Election 2014 manifesto and on extending…

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Creeping destruction of private schools

The sinister conspiracy of the neta-babu brotherhood to destroy private education — and primary-secondary private schools in particular — is becoming painfully obvious. On March 30, the education ministry of the Karnataka state government issued a notification directing all 20,581 private schools statewide to pay government prescribed minimum wages to their teachers and administrative staff. According to the notification, private unaided primary-secondary schools in the state (the salaries and wages of private aided schools are paid by government) should pay a minimum salary of Rs.25,800 per month to primary school teachers, Rs.33,450 to high school teachers, and Rs.21,400 and Rs.17,000 to first and second division clerks. Unsurprisingly, this out-of-the-blue diktat, which is certain to upset the budgets of Karnataka’s private unaided schools, has aroused the indignation of their promoters and managements, particularly of the state’s estimated 14,000 private budget schools (PBS) established to educate children of low-income households in which there is rising aversion to state government schools defined by crumbling buildings, vernacular medium education, and chronic teacher absenteeism. Reacting to this latest violation of the fundamental right conferred by Article 30 (1) of the Constitution upon minorities — expanded to all citizens by the Supreme Court in its landmark judgement in T.M.A Foundation vs. Union of India (2002) — PBS managements grouped under the banners of the Associated Managements of English Medium Schools in Karnataka and the Karnataka Association of CBSE Schools, have warned that they will be obliged to raise tuition fees. This warning has raised the hackles of parents and their representative organisations. In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that under the pressure of middle class parents who for the reasons stated above shun free-of-charge government schools like the plague, almost all state governments, including Karnataka, have imposed ceilings on tuition fees chargeable by private schools. With the state government’s latest minimum wages firman to schools certain to inflate their wage bills and expenditure even as their managements are restrained from increasing tuition fees, private schools are trapped between a rock and hard place. Another round of exhausting battles in the courts is in the offing. Instead of expending their energy on improving rock-bottom learning outcomes in the country’s 1.20 million free-of-charge government schools, the major preoccupation of the educracy across the country seems to be regulation of private independent schools. This mind-set, which if not revised could prove to be highly injurious for the estimated 160 million children enrolled in PBS and independent schools, needs urgent investigation and correction.

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Jallianwala: Trivial Pecuniary fears

The refusal of the uk government, even 100 years after the event, to unconditionally apologise for the official mass murder of an estimated 400-1,000 Indians, mainly Sikhs, who had peacefully assembled at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar (Punjab) on April 13, 1919, requires thorough reappraisal of almost two centuries of British rule over India. The back story of the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh is that in April 1918, a committee under the chairmanship of Justice Sidney Rowlatt, recommended abolition of jury trial, in-camera hearings and a press ban on reporting sedition cases. On April 6, Mahatma Gandhi called a national hartal (general strike) to protest the Rowlatt Act after eight youth protesting the Act were fired upon and killed by the Delhi police on March 30. Two days later on April 8, the Mahatma was arrested and briefly detained while on his way to Punjab. This provoked rioting in Amritsar and three British banks were set on fire and a woman missionary was severely beaten. On April 11, martial law was declared in Amritsar and administrative charge of the holy city was given to Brig. Reginald Dyer. Nevertheless, the protestors were undeterred and called a public meeting at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13 which fell on Baisakhi, the Sikh new year. When the ban was defied, Dyer proceeded to the meeting with 50 Gorkha and Pathan soldiers and two armoured cars. The outcome was the most infamous massacre in recent Indian history. The history of almost two centuries of British rule over India and the greed, plunder, exploitation, and murder that was a defining feature of the Raj has been cleverly obfuscated by the British establishment, including the academy. For instance, history textbooks prescribed for British school children and youth proclaim the benefits of British rule — democracy, the English language, rule of law etc — derived by independent India and make almost no reference to the atrocities of Jallianwala and the Bengal famine (1943), the imperial divide and rule policy, the haphazard partition of India which resulted in massive bloodshed, and overt racial discrimination practised by the viceroy’s administration in India. In this connection it’s worthy of note that in the 1960s, Germany’s chancellor Willy Brandt unconditionally apologised and knelt before the Warsaw ghetto for Germany’s attempted genocide of the Jewish people. More recently, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau unconditionally apologised to the global Sikh community for his country’s racial discrimination against the community in 1914. In the circumstances, the reluctance of prime minister Theresa May to apologise and restrict herself to describing the Jallianwala massacre as a “shameful scar”, reflects the mean, petty-minded reclusiveness into which Britain has retreated after the collapse of her colonial empire. This avoidance of an unequivocal apology is reportedly influenced by fear within the notoriously parsimonious British that descendants of the martyrs of Jallianwala may claim monetary compensation. Such trivial pecuniary apprehensions of a once great imperial power, cannot but arouse the pity, derision and contempt of all right-thinking people in India and beyond.

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Letter from the Editor

Although the demand for education — especially good quality education — at all levels from pre-primary to Ph D is almost limitless, there’s been a long-standing, overt official prejudice against private initiatives in education. Right from the dawn of independence, public education has been priced so low that all privately provided education seems outrageously expensive. However the plain truth is that private education in India is — and always has been — cheaper than anywhere else in the world and available at all price points. Yet this fact has been suppressed by post-independence India’s neta-babu brotherhood, which under the cover of socialism has barged into every sector of the economy spreading corruption, confusion and chaos, and though I hate to admit it, suppressed by the media as well. Even the higher judiciary which in the 1970s was packed with ‘committed’ left-wing judges has continuously deplored the “commercialisation of education”. I have never subscribed to mumbo-jumbo inorganic communist/socialist ideology and economics which has devastated high-potential independent India and transformed it into the most illiterate and poorest country worldwide. After World War II under successful business and industry leaders such as G.D. Birla, JRD Tata, Walchand Hirachand, Lala Shri Ram, Kasturbhai Lalbhai among others, India Inc was poised to dominate Asia until massive white elephant public sector enterprises and licence-permit-control raj devastated the Indian economy. This is true of the education sector as well. Fortunately, private K-12 schools while not actively encouraged, have been permitted to educate the middle class. Ditto private colleges and higher education institutions. Therefore since 2007, when we introduced the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings dominated by private schools, we have not only been rating and ranking India’s best primaries, but pre-primaries and higher education institutions as well. In this issue, we present the EW India Private Higher Education Rankings (EWIPHER) 2019-20 in which private universities, engineering institutes, B-schools and multi-disciplinary ASC (arts, science and commerce) colleges are ranked in discrete categories and ranked inter se. EWIPHER 2019-20 is not a desk-job institutional assessment and evaluation exercise. Over 9,000 educationists, faculty, industry leaders, and final year students were interviewed and asked to rate and rank India’s Top 100 private universities, engineering institutes, ASC colleges and B-schools on 10-12 parameters of higher education excellence. Therefore, please note that in this issue our cover story is not the outcome of a run-of-the-mill exercise of a clutch of educationists sitting around a table and awarding arbitrary scores and ranks to favoured institutions. It required serious field work by over 100 representatives of the Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) spread over a period of four months — an expensive labour of love.

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