EducationWorld November 08

In societies around the world and particularly in developing countries which are experiencing severe faculty shortages, how should academic salaries be determined? Does the sum paid monthly to a professor constitute his/her full remuneration? Our research on international comparisons of academic salaries found major variations between countries. Differences also exist within countries — by rank, discipline, and other factors. In some countries (such as India), salaries are determined by an individual’s age, length of employment, rank, and often by civil service rules — without much cognizance of productivity or academic accomplishment. Indeed, in much of the world, academics are paid solely on the basis of their length of service and rank. In other countries, particularly in their newer private universities, salary structures are far from transparent. Among most full-time academic staff in North America, Western Europe, much of Asia, and Australia, salaries paid by universities constitute the bulk of their total income.  Relatively modest additional income is earned through consulting, part-time teach-ing, or other such activity. Academic remuneration, particularly if there are two income earners in a family, provides an adequate if not lavish middle-class lifestyle commensurate with national standards. Our research indicates that while academic salaries vary considerably, in the regions mentioned above, full-time academics can survive on their incomes from employer varsities. This is not the case in Latin America, most of Africa, or the countries of central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In these countries, full-time academic salaries generally do not constitute sufficient income, and academics must earn top-up money from other sources. Therefore some professors hold more than one academic position. Indeed the growing private higher education sector in many countries is staffed largely by ‘moonlighting’ professors from inadequately funded public universities. Others take to offering consultancy services, own businesses, and a significant number undertake private tutoring or activities bordering on corrupt academic practice. For a relatively small minority of academics, the standard remuneration offered by most universities is insufficient to retain them in academe or, in some cases, even within their native countries. These academics are research-active faculty members found in all fields but more so in the sciences than humanities, mostly located in top universities, and in ‘hot’ faculties such as management, information technology, or biotechnology, where salaries outside universities are very high. Such academic stars form a modest proportion of faculties in any country, ranging from 2-10 percent of the professoriate. Indeed, without this group little research would be conducted and universities would have no chance in international rankings. How are academic high-flyers paid in the bureaucratic and rather flat salary environment of academe? For a start, in a few countries and frequently in private higher education, remuneration structures are relatively flexible, and it is possible to pay star professors significantly higher direct salaries than the rank and file. Research-active professors tend to teach less. By providing them more time to focus on research they are often compensated with time instead of money. It’s also common for professors to be…

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In June 2008 I took on a new challenge, to head not just a new school, but one in a new and unfamiliar country. After spending most of my working life in North America, the prospect of re-locating to the north Indian Himalayas greatly appealed to me. People have varied responses to change; for me, change is something I have embraced many times in my life, both in position and geography. The relocation from New York City to Mussoorie has yet again plunged me into a new life. Four months on, I now appreciate the draw this mountainside has for the Woodstock alumni who make regular pilgrimages to their alma mater. Looking down on the twinkling lights of Dehradun from on high and observing clouds roll into my living room, are unique experiences that will forever remain etched in my memory.For most education professionals who accept new challenging assignments, the knowns are greater than the unknowns and there is a calculated process of becoming familiar with new surroundings and expectations. Compared to what I have done in the past, what I do at Woodstock is not as great as the change students and staff face when they opt to come to Wood-stock. Prior to accepting the offer to serve as principal of Indias ancient (estb.1852) and most respected interna-tional school (as per EWs Survey of Schools 2008), I worked in two well- established vintage schools, The University of Toronto schools in Canada and Hunter College Campus schools in New York City, both arguably the best schools in their countries. The loyalty of people connected to schools and the importance of traditions are two factors I have encountered in three excellent institutions. Someone once coined the phrase Constant change is here to stay. This is particularly true of educational institutions. Boarding schools, particularly those which in the global context are sited in exotic places, are institutions in transition. A day school provides education to its students and a place of employment for its staff, but moving in and moving on for both groups does not usually engender sweeping lifestyle changes. A boarding school on the other hand imposes all-encompassing, radical lifestyle changes on teachers and students. The decision to work or study here, for most people, involves a major upheaval — separation from family, decisions about what possessions to retain and what to store or dispose of; and a process of change which has to be repeated again after two, three or ten years, when its time to move back or move on. Change — endemic to society and life — radically impacts residential schools in three main areas: leadership, faculty and students. School leadership has become increasingly professionalised over the past few decades. When I began my career in the 1960s, school principals were experienced teachers who had risen through the ranks, and who had the practical knowhow to keep things moving along. Demands from parents and society were less insistent; education was viewed as the province of teachers, and…

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Its astonishing and simultaneously demoralising: the sense of entitlement of the great new Indian middle class. Pampered through life with indiscriminate government subsidies on cooking gas, food, water supply, electricity and higher education among other goodies, and now following liberalisation and globalisation of the Indian economy, enjoying an unprecedented consumer goods boom, the chic and trendy within Indias insensitive new middle class believe they have a fundamental right to high-flying and well-paid employment. And they dont worry about means and ends issues to secure their entitlements.How else would one interpret the kerfuffle in early October when the countrys largest private sector airline Jet Airways, hit by a fall in passenger traffic following the global economic meltdown which has devastated stock markets worldwide, announced the lay off of 1,900 probationary cabin crew? This costs-cutting measure was greeted with blazing newspaper and television headlines with the media awash with hard-luck stories of laid-off Jet employees. Moreover even as politicians of all shades and hues jumped into the fray to plead their case, the Mumbai-based airlines Gucci clad employees themselves had few compunctions about taking their grievance to notorious political mafioso Raj Thackeray, known for his lumpen politics and strong arm tactics. Confronted with media, political and middle class pressure, within two days of the job cuts announcement, Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal crumbled and decreed the lay offs null and void. Never mind that Jet Airways is reportedly incurring an operational loss estimated at Rs.2.3 crore per day. Moreover under pressure from Raj Thackeray, Goyal not only reinstated probationary cabin crew but pledged to maintain their remuneration, reportedly Rs.80,000 per month upwards. This in a social order in which according to the Arjun Sengupta Committee (2006), 800 million Indians subsist on Rs.20 per day. Who will pay for the jobs of Jet Airways chic employees? Standby for a massive government, i.e. taxpayers, bailout. Thats entitlement!

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Somewhat belatedly, new winds are blowing through the musty corridors of the countrys 27 public sector banks (PSBs). These days television news channels are flooded with over-the-top ad films portraying PSBs as customer-friendly. These corny ads would be funny, if only they didnt hurt so much.The plain truth, which every honest individual who has transacted business with PSBs would surely swear, is that PSBs — held hostage ab initio since they were nationalised in 1969, by militant employee unions who ensure that only risk-averse clerks from their own ranks rise to management positions — are notoriously customer unfriendly. If they have survived the great banks debacle of recent months, its only because they routinely reject all loan applications from small and medium enterprises unless they produce collateral which is several multiples of advances. All other borrowers, even if adequately collateralised, need to pay kickbacks of 10-15 percent which are de rigueur in PSBs. Inevitably the big loans are advanced on the basis of all important midnight calls from heavyweight politicians and bureaucrats. And its a well-kept secret that the NPAs (non-performing assets or bad loans) of PSBs are substantial with most of them run up by some of the biggest names in Indian industry. Its this backdrop of PSBs well-known contempt bordering on hostility for small borrowers and depositors, which makes their television ad films farcical. In a Bank of India short a bank official goes to the home of a customer to offer an education loan; a Bank of Baroda commercial shows foreigners abroad celebrating their service; an IDBI ad film depicts a baby elephant, symbolic of the small borrower, playing football with young boys. Give us a break! The truth is that right across the country for over 40 years, over-paid and under-worked PSB employees have adamantly refused to help customers write bank deposit slips and cheques with the result that over almost 80 percent of the population, too ill-educated to complete unnecessarily complex bank transactions, is excluded from the banking system. Behind the warm, feel-good ads of PSBs, thats the real face of the countrys over-rated and over-hyped PSBs.

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There are auguries of dissension and stirrings of a brewing revolt within the pan-India Delhi Public School (DPS) chain. One of the most well-known and respected brands in primary-secondary education, particularly within the countrys aspirational new middle class, for dispensing high quality education under the franchise model countrywide, the number of DPS schools has multiplied to 115 across the country — with some franchised schools operational as far afield as Dhaka, Singapore and the UAE.And its indisputable that under the leadership of empowered principals, usually selected by the Delhi Public School Society (estb. 1972) — an august body of retired army top brass, judges and former school principals — DPS schools have matured into institutions of excellence. In the EducationWorld Survey of Schools 2007, DPS, R.K. Puram and DPS, Mathura Road were ranked the countrys No.1 and No.3 most respected schools across all categories. In the more rigorous EW Survey of Schools 2008, although the ranking of the top two DPS schools in the all-India day schools league table slipped to 12 and 47, nevertheless DPS, R.K. Puram was ranked first countrywide under the all-important parameter of academic reputation. Be that as it may, with a new generation of idealistic, well-educated and more confident edupreneurs signing up as DPS franchisees, the stirrings of a revolt within the ranks is becoming discernible. A proposal to raise the annual royalty payable by franchisees to the DPS Society from Rs.5 lakh currently to Rs.25 lakh has generated considerable indignation. Moreover some franchisees are demanding a reduction in the number of DPS Society directors on their school boards, and are questioning the tradition of the society appointing the principals of newly enfranchised schools. Against this backdrop, the sudden resignation of the Oxford-educated heavyweight Congress party politician Salman Khurshid, hitherto chairman of the DPS Society, has thickened the plot.

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China is becoming increasingly worried about the rising number of students taking journalism and communications courses when it is impossible for all the graduates to find work in a strictly controlled media job market. Career prospects are bleak even for those who have studied at the School of Journalism at Shanghais prestigious Fudan University, which pioneered the study of journalism in China way back in 1929 and is widely recognised as the cradle of Chinas journalists. Of its 110 undergraduate students, only 22 eventually found jobs in media companies in 2007 — a historical low. About half the students were forced to find work outside the media sector.Fudan is not an isolated case. According to surveys by the ministry of educations steering committee for journalism education (SCJE), only about 30 percent of graduates of Renmin Universitys equally well-regarded journalism and communications school in Beijing found work in the media. Why are there so many graduates when there are so few jobs for them in the media? Most people put it down to the expansion of numbers entering higher education in general and the boom of journalism and communications programmes since the end of the 1990s. In the 1980s, China had only seven programmes in journalism and communications, and at least 90 percent of graduates from Fudan and Renmin found work in the media. Between 1999 and 2006, however, Chinas universities and colleges dramatically increased the enrollment of undergraduate students — from 1.08 million to 5.05 million. Over the same period, the number of journalism and communications programmes skyrocketed from 88 to 661. In 2002 alone, 224 new courses were offered. In 1999 there were only 9,000 students majoring in journalism and communications. By 2005, there were 120,000 media students and 30,000 graduates entering the job market. In Shanghai, five new journalism and communications programmes were approved in 2004, and in 2007 there were 4,500 undergraduate students pursuing 13 programmes of study. Even though Shanghai has one of the densest concentrations of media in China, the number of journalism students churned out every year far exceeds the needs of the industry. A few years ago, the Shanghai Media Group which includes television and radio broadcasting, news gathering and internet publishing, received more than 20,000 online job applications for fewer than 200 vacancies. The deluge of responses paralysed the companys computer network. At a national level, only 180,000 reporters and editors were licenced by the Central Administration of Press and Publications of the Peoples Republic of China (CAPP) by the end of 2006. These journalists run some 2,200 newspapers, 8,000 magazines and 1,000 broadcasting stations. In the next three to five years, CAPP intends to strictly control the growth of the media industry while streamlining its structure and improving its efficiency. Consequently, there will be little if any need for a new generation of media professionals. Quite evidently in the centrally controlled Chinese economy, somebody up there forgot that within a society in which media growth is strictly controlled, the supply of…

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A pioneering move by the Australian government to allow open access to all of the nations publicly funded research could set all the dominoes falling worldwide, according to a new prediction.Kim Carr, Australias minister for innovation, industry, science and research, says he intends to implement reforms aimed at unlocking public information and content, including the results of publicly funded research, following a review of the countrys innovations. The review says that scientific knowledge produced in Australia should be placed in machine-searchable repositories developed and implemented using universities and public funding agencies. To the maximum extent practicable, information, research and content funded by Australian governments… should be made freely available over the internet as part of the global public commons, it says. This should be done while the Australian government encourages other countries to reciprocate by making their own contributions to the global digital public commons. Giving a speech on the report, Carr said that Australia — which produces 3 percent of the worlds research papers — is and will remain a net importer of knowledge. As a result, he said it was in the countrys interest to promote the freest possible flow of information domestically and globally. Open-access advocate Steven Harnad, professor of cognitive science at the University of Southampton, says this development is significant. Australia looks poised now to be the one that sets all the dominoes falling worldwide, he says. According to Harnad, the UK government had received a recommendation in 2004 from the House of Commons select committee on science and technology to mandate open access but had rejected it under pressure from the publishing lobby. Since then a growing number of universities and funders around the world have been introducing open access policies. Colin Steele, chair of Australias National Scholarly Communications Forum, told Times Higher Education that both the previous government and the current Labor government had supported the funding of university repositories, but in many instances the process has been slow because of high-level administrative indifference within universities and publisher pressure to maintain only dark archives of closed-access material. Minister Carrs statement, plus the whole government approach on public funding… and public access should provide the final impetus for change, he says. The review also recommends an increase in funding for Australias university research system to at least match the proportion of GDP that was allocated to them in the mid-1990s and calls for more money to meet the full costs of research at universities. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education Supplement)

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We run a business here — but instead of selling cars or candy to kids, were selling hope and leadership, says Nancy Lublin, the chief executive of Do Something, a non-profit group which promotes volunteerism by teenagers. On September 17 she launched an initial public offering (IPO) to raise $8 million needed to double Do Somethings activities by 2011, by which time it plans to be engaging with around 21 million of Americas 32 million teenagers.The IPO prospectus, put together by Do Somethings board of chief executives and technology entrepreneurs, contains the usual market data, a description of the 15-year-old organisations activities, an overview of the competitive landscape and bold claims about its qualities (Do Something is also one of the most efficient organisations in the United States), all designed to convince investors that it can achieve its ambitious goals. The only thing that stops it from being a typical IPO prospectus is the absence of any pledge to make a profit. On the contrary, the opening boilerplate explains that units offered in conjunction with this prospectus represent a perpetual interest in Do Something; this interest is strictly philanthropic, with no provision for cash returns at any time. This imitation of the for-profit IPO process may seem gimmicky, but it is part of a new trend to improve how non-profits are financed, so that they can escape the obsession with short-term fund-raising that is pervasive in the charitable world. With money in the bank to finance the next three years operations, Ms. Lublin and her team will be free to focus on reaching Do Somethings goals. Other non-profits have done something similar, including Teach for America, which puts recent college graduates into needy schools, and College Summit, which aims to increase the number of poor children going to college. Volunteer-Match a sort of eBay for volunteers is in the process of raising $10 million. George Overholser of Nonprofit Finance Fund, one of the pioneers of this trend, reckons that around $200 million of philanthropic equity has been raised by non-profits in the past few years, and another $100 million is sought. Do ‘investors get anything for their money? Do Something promises a significant social return on investment, quarterly performance updates and a conference call with management. But none of these recent philanthropic IPOs actually gives investors voting rights, unlike during the boom in joint-stock philanthropic in 18th century England. Back then, social entrepreneurs such as Thomas Coram, who started the Foundling Hospital in London, were fired when they failed to perform. Still Ms. Lublin says that if her new shareholders ever ask her to step down, she will go. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)

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The potential of revolutionary information communication technologies (ICT) in dramatically improving learning outcomes in school education is receiving insufficient attention in Indian education. Thats a lacuna which the Chennai-based EZ Vidya Pvt. Ltd (annual turnover: Rs.4 crore) is determined to fill by providing technology driven teaching-learning content and pedagogy to schools. Promoted in May 2001 with the mission to let the child blossom, EZ Vidya has itself blossomed into a multi-products and services company providing ICT-driven curriculums, teacher training, and institutional transformation solutions to schools, and implementing the education-related CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives of business enterprises.We believe that every child has high capability and our objective is to help bring out the dormant potential of children. We believe that if we make their learning experience easy and enjoyable, learning outcomes will automatically improve. Therefore we use ICT to make classroom lessons enjoyable by stimulating latent critical thinking and problem solving skills of students, says Chitra Ravi, the founder chief executive of EZ Vidya. An English postgrad of Madras University and IGNOU, Ravi worked with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) for over a year and then joined the family real estate business before she became aware that education was her true calling. Ravi started EZ Vidya as a computer training centre in 1998, but her plans changed after she signed up for a course on integrating technology with learning in the US in 1999, and was converted to the cause of employing ICT to improve learning outcomes in schools. She began developing multimedia content for computer science courses in schools and in 2001 transformed her training centre into a learning solutions company. Today EZ Vidyas learning solutions, born out of 98,000 hours of extensive research in education pedagogy, are being implemented in 200 schools countrywide benefiting an estimated 100,000 students. The companys flagship product Chrysalis, launched in 2007, is a unique computer sciences curriculum for class I-X students, designed to make them IT capable rather than just IT literate, enhance thinking skills, and enable experiential learning. Moreover to train teachers in contemporary ICT skills, EZ Vidya has developed a teacher empowerment programme (TEP) for schools and corporates involved with education and has thus far trained 3,000 teachers. Looking ahead, Ravi plans to roll out the Chrysalis brand countrywide. Chrysalis has received excellent response from schools and we now plan to develop multimedia content and curriculum for other subjects. Moreover, over the years we have developed the capability to design customised content and curriculum for educational institutions as well as corporates. We plan to intervene wherever our skills are required, says Ravi. Wind in your sails! Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

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At a time when stock market indices around the world are exploring new depths — the Bombay Stock Exchanges Sensex index of 30 blue-chip equity shares has plunged from 21,000 on January 8, 2008 to 8,701 currently — the mantra repeatedly trotted out by spokespersons of the Union ministry of finance and the establishment to reassure nervous investors, businessmen and the public, is the fundamentals of the Indian economy are strong. In support of this oft-repeated reassurance they cite the annual GDP growth rate averaging 8 percent plus per year for the past three years and the expectation that worse come to worse, it will not fall below 7 percent in this year ending March 31, 2009. However at a time when the inflation index is stubbornly double digit, foreign institutional investors are pulling out of the Indian stock market and employment-intensive projects such as the Tata Nano are being stymied across the country, there is more than a touch of whistling-in-the-dark bravado about the fundamentals are strong mantra. With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the high annual GDP growth India has witnessed in the new millennium years is not attributable to a productivity surge within the economy, but to the pent up inflow of foreign and indigenous capital and release of entrepreneurial energy cabined, cribbed and confined for over four decades by socialist licence-permit-quota raj. Now that the pent up capital flows and entrepreneurial energy which have been driving the Indian economy for the past decade are showing signs of petering out, cursory diagnosis indicates that the fundamentals of the Indian economy are far from strong. The intractable secessionist movement in Kashmir; bomb blasts across the country; communal riots in Orissa and Karnataka; growing incidence of crimes against women, and the pathetic inability of police to make any credible headway in nabbing perpetrators of these atrocities is indication that the law, order and justice machinery — a fundamental prerequisite of orderly conduct of business and commerce — is on the point of breakdown. Crumbling law, order and justice systems apart, how can the fundamentals of an economy in which two-thirds of the population — Indias 660 million rural citizens — are perennially in debt because of iniquitous urban-rural terms of trade, said to be strong? The body of evidence indicating prolonged rural distress is overwhelming. Over the period 1995-2006 more than 150,000 deeply indebted farmers, despairing of protection of the law, have taken their own lives. The plain truth is that over 800 million citizens scratch out miserable livelihoods in substandard housing, suffering chronic shortages of food, clothing, medical care, transport, education and protection of the law within an iniquitous social order infamous for open, continuous and uninterrupted corruption. Inevitably a society plagued by such glaring inequality and injustice cannot endure. Therefore to suggest that the fundamentals of the Indian economy are strong is indicative of advanced delusional neurosis.

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In limited liability enterprises, company secretaries command high position in the value chain and facilitate the vital interface between the company, its directors and regulatory authoritiesEconomic liberalisation and the integration of the Indian economy with the rest of the world has mandated sharp upgradation of corporate administration, accounting practices and standards. Therefore today its compulsory for every registered company with a paid-up share capital of Rs.50 lakh or more to appoint a company secretary (CS). Given that currently the total population of company secretaries countrywide is barely 20,000, demand for qualified company secretaries far exceeds supply. In joint stock enterprises with limited liability, company secretaries command high position in the value chain and facilitate the vital interface between the company and its board of directors, shareholders, government and regulatory authorities. They also play the role of conscience keepers of companies and help the chairman and directors to discharge their responsibilities under various laws. The legal business of most companies is also supervised by the company secretary with the onus on him/her to ensure statutory compliance with all laws. In short, the company secretary has to assume a wide range of responsibilities including legal, secretarial, financial, personnel and administrative. Moreover she has to manage public issues, process inter-corporate loans and investments, maintain records, pay attention to tax planning, tax management, file tax returns, explore expansion opportunities, arrange collaborations, amalgamations and joint ventures. As per s.383A of the Companies Act 1956, only a qualified individual can discharge the duties of a company secretary. To qualify, an aspirant has to enroll as a member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India (ICSI) after clearing its examinations. ICSI is headquartered at 22 Institutional Area, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003 (www.icsi.edu) and has four regional offices in Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, 36 chapters and ten satellite offices under its jurisdiction. ICSI is a statutory body empowered to develop and regulate the profession of company secretaries in India. The academic curriculum, developed by ICSI, is delivered by way of postal and classroom tuition. Admission into ICSI study programmes is open throughout the year. To be accepted as an associate member of ICSI, you have to pass the foundation, intermediate and final examinations conducted by the institute. Registered students are required to write exams sequentially after completion of tuition programmes administered by the institute. Individuals with Plus Two qualifications are eligible for admission into the foundation course of eight months duration. Graduates, postgrads (excluding fine arts) and those who have cleared the final exam of ICWAI or ICAI or of any other accountancy institution in India or abroad recognised by the ICSI Council, are admitted directly into the intermediate course of nine months duration. Thereafter those who pass the intermediate exam are admitted into the final years study programme. Examinations for all three levels are usually held in June and December every year with study material provided to students at the time of admission. After clearance of the intermediate and final exams, budding CS are obliged…

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Today, almost all indians agree that positioning the State (i.e. government) at commanding heights of the economy was a colossal mistake. Yet, these very same people believe that its alright if the State occupies the commanding heights of education. It is because every mainstream newspaper editor subscribes to such views that Indians are now saddled with an education cess.One argument repeatedly advanced in favour of a role for the State in education is that of maintaining standards. Even today there are people who believe that without a commanding role for the State, nonsense will be taught in the nations classrooms. This will result in academic anarchy with each teacher and professor teaching what he deems fit. Therefore, the State must have a role. The ministry of education must play the role of ministry of truth. The champions of State domination of education should note that Indias vibrant press — the ‘fourth estate — works perfectly fine without a ‘ministry of truth. Each newspaper/magazine publi-shes its own version of political, economic and social news and events and its own opinions — some of which may be ‘wrong. However, because of intense compet-ition within the fourth estate, errors are quickly found out. Further, every newspaper acquires its own reputation — one is deemed free market, another socialist, and another pro-BJP and so on. Why shouldnt a free educational system be established along the same lines, with professors, departments, colleges and universities acquiring and maintaining their own reputations, including their ideological and other biases? Some years ago, Barun Mitra of the Liberty Institute and I visited the National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie to deliver lectures on population (as an asset) and urbanisation (as a goal). This is the academy where our elite corps of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) receive their training. We were taken to meet the academys professor of economics. All the shelves of his office were filled with communist literature. And Karl Marxs Das Kapital lay open on his desk. And at that time India had been ‘liberalising its economy for more than a decade! Its pertinent to note that IAS recruits come from a variety of backgrounds. Engineers, botanists, zoologists and even veterinary doctors are inducted into the IAS. They need to be familiar with basic theories about man, society, the economy and State before they are entrusted with the task of administering the country. Therefore, its important they are taught liberal politics and economics as well. This would give IAS recruits an idea of how markets work and why they should be left free. A liberal administrator would have a view of man, society, economy and State, that would envision a small role for the State in a largely free society. However, what is actually taught is Marxist propaganda. The State is guilty of peddling propaganda to its own elite personnel! What will they peddle if they are allowed to teach the whole of society? Obviously, more of the same. Therefore its in the public interest that…

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If most people of the great Indian middle class yearn to send their sons and daughters to Harvard Business School, its hardly surprising, given the Indian obsession for job-oriented training rather than liberal arts education. When your children get into elite business schools, you feel youve fulfilled your dharma. After that, they get lucrative jobs in Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and the like. There they work with men and women from around the world whose Arjuna-like focus is to make piles of money and purchase an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a spectacular beach house in the Hamptons, take skiing holidays in the Alps, summer in the south of France or a villa in Tuscany, an apartment in Paris or a great London hotel.Well, just as American assumptions about making easy money in finance have been upturned by the dismal reality of economics, your idea of dharma is about to take a beating. The chickens have come home to roost. Twenty-eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unlamented demise of Soviet communism, we are witnessing a massive assault on runaway capitalism unleashed by global finance. When a bunch of ambitious yuppies is given run of the markets, you should expect immature behaviour. Accustomed to manipulating markets a thousand points up, a few thousand points down at will, masters of the universe who thought they were invincible, have got their comeuppance. Weve also seen this happen in India in the first four decades of independence. Young people with means and connections attended elite universities such as Oxford and Cambridge and returned to high positions from where they pushed the intellectual ideas of the day. The result was Fabian socialism which created a pampered elite. The leftist intellectuals who ran the country advanced distorted notions about egalitarian growth from positions of privilege. They pushed weird ideas: commanding heights of the economy for the public sector; restrictions on private enterprise; outright nationalisation of ‘core sector industries deemed vital to the country; development banking and subsidies populism. This entire edifice came crashing down in 1991 when the government went bankrupt. Slowly and painfully, a new structure arose in its place: a tentative reforms regime frequently held hostage to mindless moffusil politics practiced by con men and goons, bigots and activists who fill party offices. One thing is obvious; the old elite has had to make way for ambitious interlopers, in politics and business. The old elites next generation largely opted out of public service and made their homes in the global financial community: in New York, London, Hong Kong and Singapore. This is where the story becomes intriguing: at the intersection of the next generation of the Indian elite and the world of global finance. Once a secure and lucrative sinecure, it is now the centre of the meltdown. If recovery is long in coming, these young men and women are likely to head home. As they pour in looking for elite perches, they will…

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To celebrate the platinum jubilee (75 years) celebrations of the Medical Council of India (MCI), Dr. D.Y. Patil University (Maharashtra) organised a two-day seminar on ‘New Frontiers in Medical Education at the D.Y. Patil Medical College and Hospital, Nerul, Navi Mumbai, on October 11-12. This seminar followed the first regional workshop (western region) on ‘Role, Relevance and Effective Utilisation of Medical Education Unit for Faculty Development at the Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences University, Nagpur. Since February this year, regional workshops are being held every month, and will culminate in a national workshop in New Delhi in February, 2009 which will mark the end of MCIs platinum jubilee celebrations.The guiding spirit and inspiration behind these workshops/seminars is Padmashree Dr. D.Y. Patil whose eponymous institutions of professional education span medical sciences, ayurveda, architecture, business and hotel management, engineering, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, sports, computing and biomedical sciences, in Navi Mumbai, Pune and Kolhapur. Born in a small village of Ambap in Kolhapur district, Dr. Patil has focused his energies on the cause of education, with emphasis on professional education to train students to confront national challenges.

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Vacations Exotica in association with the sports Gurukul, Mumbai, staged an Ecube Sports Olympiad from September 18-October 3. The olympiad was the first major multi-sports (cricket, football, basketball, table tennis, tennis, roller skating and online quizzing) competition for international schools in Mumbai. Fourteen international schools in the city including four Billabong High Internationals, NES International, Rustomji Cambridge International, Pinnacle High, B.D. Somani International, Poddar International, SGKM International and Witty International among others, participated in the olympaid spaced over a fortnight.One of the unique events of the Olympiad was our online sports quiz. Billabong High International, Thane was adjudged the international school with the highest sports acumen, says Jay Shah, director of The Sports Gurukul. Billabong High International, Juhu with 395 points across seven events was adjudged winner of the inaugural Ecube Sports Olympiad followed by Billabong International, Thane (378), Prime Academy (160) and SKGM International (145).

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Six schools of the Mumbai-based Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI), will work as a single cluster with four schools in the United Kingdom on learning-based projects over the next three years under the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), a programme supported by the British Council.UKIERI aims to substantially improve education links between India and the UK so the two countries become partners of choice in education. The initiative was announced by British prime minister Tony Blair during his visit to India in September 2005 and launched in April 2006. The three main thrust areas of the initiative are higher education and research, school education collaboration and professional and technical skills development partnerships. In the new globalising world it is important for teachers and students around the world to work together to break down barriers and boundaries in education. I am sure that our six schools will set a path for other institutions in India to follow, says Mme Grace Pinto managing director of RIGI.

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Everonn Systems India Ltd. (ESIL), the well-known Chennai-based education and training company, has launched a pilot programme to provide computer-aided learning to students of the Gandhiniketan Ashram School at T. Kallupatti in Madurai district, Tamil Nadu. Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former president of India, inaugurated this corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme of ESIL on October 1.Under this initiative, ESIL will provide superior quality digitalised content with visuals, animation and other interactive tools to the schools students. Moreover teachers will be trained to use advanced ICT (information communication technologies). We believe the corporate sector can play a great role in improving learning outcomes in the schools of rural India. Under this initiative we will integrate 1,000 schools in rural areas through our in-house technologies and also rope in other corporate sponsors to provide rural children IT infrastructure, quality content and enabling interactive media for learning enhancement, said R. Kannan director of ESIL speaking on the occasion. Currently ESIL has 232 schools, 239 colleges and 29 retail centres on its virtual platform and provides ICT-enabled education services to 4,200 schools countrywide under the private-public partnership model.

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“This country, since 1991 and more so in recent times, has been a victim of ubiquitous consumerism, widespread corruption, extravagant imitationism, rabid communalism, creamy layer class-bias, and a five-star lifestyle.” Former Supreme Court justice V.R. Krishna Iyer calling for immediate law reforms in The Hindu (October 11) “I couldnt see the tears in their eyes. My conscience does not allow me to look at economics alone.” Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal on reinstating 1,900 sacked employees, in The Times of India (October 17) “We as a community have failed to appreciate the need for education for all sections. Our illiteracy levels continue to remain above the national level. Our failure to participate in Indias growth story will lead us to marginalisation.” Vice-president Hamid Ansari on the failure of Indias Muslim community to embrace education opportunities in an address to alumni of Aligarh Muslim University (October 18) “Deposits in Indian banks are entirely safe. Our banks, both in the public and private sector, are finan-cially sound, well capitalised and well regulated. There should be no fear of a failure of any bank.” Prime minister Manmohan Singh assuring the country in the Lok Sabha (October 20) “Too many men and women are invisible in todays India — written out of our novels and films. They demand to be included in the literary scene.” Man Booker Prize 2008 winner Aravind Adiga in India Today (October 27) “The lack of even basic education for our children flies in the face of India becoming one of the poles of a multi-polar world. All the talk of every major political party on inclusive growth is quite frankly just a farce. Obama needs to have no worry; we are not ready to take any American jobs. We are primarily an ignorant and uneducated nation, with a small elite, that is content to celebrate small victories and ignore big defeats.” Janmejaya Sinha, managing director, The Boston Consulting Group India, in The Economic Times (October 29)

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In a major exercise to assess the education status of the estimated 15 million child population of Tamil Nadu, 200 child welfare NGOs (non-government organisations) working in the state have jointly published a consolidated report titled Tamil Nadu NGO Report on Realisation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (2003-2007) — A Situational Analysis, together with a supplementary Voices of Children report based on interviews with children. Coordinated, edited and compiled by Chennai-based Indian Council for Child Welfare (ICCW), the report covers 11 child-related subjects, including education, health, child protection, child labour, discrimination and disability.Ratified by India in 1992, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) makes it obligatory on the part of member signatory countries to report periodically on the progress made in the implementation of the convention. A progress report required to be submitted every quinquennium by all member signatory nations, is due later this year from India and is being compiled with inputs from state governments. Meanwhile the alternate Tamil Nadu NGO Report on implementation of UNCRC provisions will also be presented to the UNCRC. It will ensure that the convention doesnt accept the anticipated whitewash report of the government of India as the final word. Which is just as well because shocking tales of abuse of childrens rights are reported in Voices of Children, compiled after a two-day seminar held in Chennai last year and attended by 80 children enrolled in government, aided, panchayat, municipality and private urban and rural schools in 30 districts of Tamil Nadu. Among them are disturbing revelations by an aided school child that use of toilets in her school is restricted to teachers; that the school library is used by teachers to sleep in, and that teachers often ask village children to teach English to whole classes. Another child relates that the school bus driver took her to a deserted site, raped her and then took her to a nearby temple to ‘marry her. The traumatised girl student filed an FIR (first information report) in her local police station but to no avail. The Tamil Nadu NGO Report, which acknowledges that secondary school completion percentages in the state are significantly higher than the national average, doesnt pull its punches and highlights the failure of the state government to ensure welfare of child labour, trafficked, street and orphaned children, especially disabled and adolescent girls who tend to suffer gross violation of their rights. According to the 124-page report, of 52,303 government-run schools in the state, 1,663 dont provide drinking water, 12,907 are without electricity, 13,808 are without toilets and 17,035 lack separate toilets for girl students. Though the GERs (gross enrollment ratios) of government primaries is 99 percent, the report reveals that primary education completion is low with 13.45 percent (8.3 lakh) of enrolled children dropping out before reaching class V, and 4.1 lakh (11.43 percent) before completing class VII. The most disquieting factor according to the report, is the poor learning outcomes of government…

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The latest state of Elementary Education in India Report 2006-07 of the Delhi-based National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), released on October 10, once again confirms the southern coastal state of Kerala (pop. 31.83 million) as Indias most educationally advanced state.As per usual practice EEI 2006-07 ranks all of Indias 28 states and seven Union territories on its Education Development Index (EDI) which assesses primary and upper primary education in each state on the basis of 23 indicators grouped under four heads, viz. access, infrastructure, teachers and outcome indicators. The top five states in NUEPAs EDI (maximum score 1) are Kerala (0.772), Delhi (0.757), Tamil Nadu (0.741), Himachal Pradesh (0.707) and Karnataka (0.680), with Bihar and Jharkhand at the bottom with aggregate ratings of 0.321 and 0.381 respectively. Stating that even the top ranking states are not perfect in case of all the four sets of indicators, EEI 2006-07 warns under-performing states to raise teaching-learning standards without delay, noting that the bottom ranked states routinely cram 100 students into a class with teacher-pupil ratios averaging 1:67, which prompts teacher and student dropouts. The dismal conclusions of EEI 2006-07 — particularly in relation to educationally backward states — has prompted a national outcry. Vice-president Mohammed Hamid Ansari gave a call for establishing a national quality monitoring authority for elementary education. Quality education needs to be demystified. We still have not been able to bring equitable education to people and vulnerable sections of society. Minorities, SCs and STs continue to remain out of the purview of good education, said Ansari, a former vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, on October 13 while releasing a pilot study titled ‘Excellence in Schools conducted by Education Quality Foundation of India (EQFI), a not-for-profit organisation sponsored by the Delhi-based Educomp Solutions Ltd. Also speaking on the occasion, NCERT director Dr. Krishna Kumar expressed apprehension about the spreading CCTV culture in school education. It is the freedom to learn in a teachers presence and punctuality and good behaviour of students in classrooms that is a quality dimension fostering human values. Teaching is a relational activity and lets not forget quality is also a measure of the basic character of education, said Kumar. EQFIs study of 90 private and government schools indicates teacher indifference, if not resistance, to training inputs. While 90 percent of the schools sent teachers to training workshops, only 35 percent have a planned teacher training policy. Also, though most schools request teacher training material, they fail to convert it into useful information, says Anuradha Sen, director (academics), EQFI. While poor teacher quality and abysmal learning outcomes issues continue to raise their heads, the India office of Unicef, the international childrens agency, has scripted several high-potential initiatives being implemented in Tamil Nadu, UP, Jharkhand and Bihar. Among them: low writing tables for children to improve writing skills and changing the traditional way of sitting and writing in oblique postures. Were doing terrible things to children and never see the world through their eyes. This…

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