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FOREWORD Waiting for next September
I
“We hope that you will walk with us through the ups and downs towards that common goal that this community shares”
t was a long, bumpy and dusty ride to Westin Sohna for around 50 top decisionmakers from Indian higher education, who attended EDU’s Second Annual VCs’ Retreat. Most of them who had not attended the first one were a little apprehensive about whether the ride was worth the effort. However, by the end of the first day, I overheard many participants talk about how the ride was worth every bump thanks to what was waiting for them. Their words were validated by the fact that some of them made changes to their plans and stayed on longer than scheduled. People stayed awake till late in the night talking about the day’s sessions and deliberations, forming new friendships and discussing possible collaborations. Some participants woke up early to take a walk around the idyllic venue and talked about the invigorating ambience over the breakfast table. There were many who wanted to know when we would do something like this again. Some of the attendees demanded that we also have smaller retreats as a build-up to the three day retreat. And then when we were saying our goodbyes, EDU got a precious gift, a complete surprise, from the participants—a notebook with messages from the participants on what the retreat meant for them. The dusty road was forgotten. All that people talked about was the charged and invigorating space that our team had created on those three days in September. In early 2011, EDU thought of organising a Vice Chancellor’s Retreat with a vision to get the top leaders in Indian higher education on a common platform to initiate discussions that would transform the sector. The first retreat at ISB Hyderabad in September 2011 was well received and we were encouraged. With the second retreat, we took another step in identifying effective strategies to walk the path of change. The path of change is quite like that long, bumpy and dusty road we took to this year’s retreat. But when we finally arrive every bump would be worth the ride. EDU will continue to take steps towards that change and we hope that you will walk with us through the ups and downs towards that common goal that this community shares. We will be eagerly waiting for next September when we get the VCs, Deans and Directors together for our third VCs’ Retreat.
Dr Pramath Raj Sinha pramath@edu-leaders.com
October 2012 EduTech
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Contents EDU october 2012
update 04 tie-up 05 SCORECARD TOPPLED 06 TABLED LOSS 07 COURSE PROGRAMME
Viewpoint 08 mj xAVIER Industry-Academia Government Collaboration
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Viewpoint 12 Pushkar Next Gen of India Experts not in India
Technology 40 Get going with byod Find out why the policy of Bring Your Own Device: BYOD makes sense for your institution By Tushar Kanwar 44 tech tute Use Google Hangouts effectively in education By Tushar Kanwar 46 tech Interview Milind Kamat, VP and Country Head, India, Ellucian, on how technology can improve efficiency in all areas— including learning
59
In terms of technology sensitivity, India is very price conscious —Milind Kamat
Country Head, India, Ellucian
53 More European Universities Tracking Graduates’ Progress By Aisha Labi
Global perspective Find out what’s currently happening in institutions around the world. The Chronicle of Higher Education shares its
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perspectives with EDU 50 African Students see china as a path to a prosperous future By Ryan Brown
55 A Push grows Abroad for Open Access to Publicly Financed Research By Jennifer Howard
Timeout 46
58 books
FOR LEADERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Managing Director: Pramath Raj Sinha PUBLISHING DIRECTOR: Anuradha Das Mathur managing editor: Smita Polite
cover Story
18 The second Annual VCs’ Retreat With the Second Annual VCs’ Retreat EDU took a step further in identifying effective strategies to make a change. This year over 50 leaders in higher education from across India got together at an idyllic venue near Gurgaon to deliberate on the theme of “Delivering Excellence-Against the odds”. Read this report to find out about what some of the top decision makers in this sector had to say on this theme. Report compiled by Mrudula NS
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from the world of higher education
05 scoreboard 05 toppled 06 tabled 06 Loss 07 course 07 programme & more
First Chancellor of Central Gujarat University Noted academician and economist Yoginder K Alagh has been appointed the first Chancellor of Central University of Gujarat. Alagh is currently the Chancellor of Nagaland University and Chairman of the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA). He also holds the post of Vice Chairman at the Sardar Patel Institute of Economics & Social Research. Prof Alagh has taught Economics at University of Rajasthan, Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata and University of Pennsylvania. He was the 7th Vice Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Indranil Manna is IITKanpur Director Alchemy of success as Cambridge University ties up with Indian institutions to boost science and research
India-Cambridge Collaborate Projects to develop focus on research and innovation Tie-Up Bangalore-Cambridge Innovation Network was officially launched at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore recently, marking the beginning of a fruitful collaboration that will boost academic and research standards. The project would foster links between academics, businesses, researchers and entrepreneurs from both cities. Cambridge University will partner with India’s premier institutes like the Indian Institute of Management, IISc, National Centre for Biological Sciences and International Institute of Information Technology. The UK government has allocated around 90 million pounds for research collaborations. “We already have 250 active projects with India. We can work together on issues like food, water and security,” said Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice Chancellor, Cambridge University. The University is also collaborating with scientists from the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (INSTEM), the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) who will work with Prof Ashok Venkitaraman at University in a joint £11-million medical research project funded by Department of Biotechnology, India.
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EduTech October 2012
Prof Indranil Manna has been appointed as the new Director of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT-K). Currently, he is Director, Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute. Prof Manna obtained his BE degree from Calcutta University (BE College) in 1983 and MTech degree in 1984 from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He has worked as guest scientist in several institutions abroad and published about 225 peerreviewed papers, supervised 14 PhD, 35 MTech and 50 BTech theses and carried out 32 sponsored projects.
New VC for IGNOU Gopinath Pradhan has been appointed as the Vice Chancellor of the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU). Pradhan joined IGNOU in 1993 as a reader in economics and became a professor in 1998. He has been serving as the Director of the School of Social Sciences (SOSS) of the university since 2010. He has handled various research projects and contributed to capacity-building training module and certificate programme.
update
Goa second in access to HE Tops in female enrolment ratio, as UGC report finds only 14 states with better than national average of 12.14 in access to higher education scorecard A recent report of the University Grants Commission (UGC) compiled by its Vice Chairperson Ved Prakash ranks Goa second in the country in terms of access to higher education. The report analyses higher education trends and challenges in India. There are 24.59 institutes of higher education available per lakh of youth in the age group of 18 to 23 in Goa and it also provides this group the best access to engineering and technical colleges after Andhra Pradesh. The report ranks Andhra Pradesh with a relatively higher score of 2.59 at the top of the ladder in accessibility criterion followed by Goa (2.34), Karnataka (1.86), Kerala (1.81), Chandigarh (1.59), Maharashtra (1.56), Sikkim (1.41) and Tamil
Nadu (1.27). Goa also has a relatively good availability of medical seats along with these states compared to other regions in India, says the report. There are only 14 states including Goa that provide better access to higher education than the national average of 12.14. Goa also ranks second in the Cheers! Goa gives equal access to its women in country after Chandigarh higher education with highest female enrolment (30%) in terms of gross Goa has the highest female enrolment enrolment ratio with over 13 per cent of of 61.2 per cent, says the latest annual its young population enrolled in collegreport of the UGC for 2010-11. It has not es. In 14 states, the gross enrolment only retained the top spot since 2006-07 ratio was less than 10 per cent and less but has bettered its past record. Kerala is than 7 per cent in Jammu & Kashmir in the second spot with 56.8 per cent. and most of the north eastern states.
Massachusetts Institute overtakes Cambridge toppled MIT bags the top position in the prestigious ranking of universities Cambridge University takes a tumble in the prestigious QS World University Rankings slipping to the second spot beaten by America’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT is now the king of world’s best universities as Cambridge bows out. Harvard University, which held the top spot for six years between 2004 and 2009, is ranked third in the list. MIT, a first time topper, secured the highest rank in 11 out of 28 subject tables. What helped MIT clinch the seat was a sharp increase in the proportion of foreign academics on its staff. It had consistently scored poorly on this measure in the past. Oxford maintained its position at No. 5 and University College London climbed from No. 7 in 2011 to No. 4 in the new rankings this year, above Oxford University. Imperial College London is ranked sixth. And with this, for the first time Britain swept four of the top six positions. The highest ranked institution outside Europe and the US is University of Hong Kong, at No 23.
global update
11
The number of subjects out of total 28 that MIT topped in the rankings
23
The highest ranking to any institution outside Europe & the US—University of Hong Kong
October 2012 EduTech
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update
Karnataka’s Vision 2020 for HE The Karnataka State Higher Education Council submits Vision 2020 Report, provides the roadmap to improve infrastructure, quality and access tabled The report submitted to Higher Education Minister CT Ravi recently has recommended several steps to strengthen higher education in the state. Proposed by the council earlier with the assistance of Karnataka Knowledge Commission and the Department of Higher Education, it was prepared in consultation with various stakeholders including educationists, representatives of teachers’ associations, student councils and members from reputed industries in the state. It recommends broad-based recruitment for the state’s 24 state-sponsored, 16 deemed-to-be and two private universities and more than 3,360 undergraduate colleges. It found that the higher education system does not function true to
its mandate and often recruitments are made from within the university. Visionary document that outlines the challenges and the way forward for the state higher education system The report notes that the munication Technologies (ICT) in classstate would witness an influx of both prirooms recommending the institution of vate and foreign players in the next few a special task force for it. Other recomyears and speaks of the need to build mendations include a state policy for disstronger assessment mechanisms. It tance education, enhancing the autonoadvocates making both internal and my of universities, setting up an external accreditation mandatory and exclusive legal body for higher education setting up a state-level body on the lines and monitoring committees for colleges of Association of Indian Universities similar to school monitoring commitand moots a state undergraduate studies tees, starting community colleges for board to regulate the curriculum and continuous learning for school dropouts academic quality. The council emphaand early career professionals, etc. sises the role of Information and Com-
Update
Students Outflow Draining Country loss A study by The Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) reports that the outflow of over six lakh students going abroad for higher education costs the country foreign exchange (forex) equivalent of Rs 95,000 crore annually. More pertinently, the study points out that this huge outflow of students is mainly due to the fact that many of them do get admission in quality institutions in the country. It points to the huge capacity constraint in quality higher education sector. Unrealistically high cut-offs and stiff competition for a few available seats in universities forces many students to seek admission abroad. This has led to an increase in the demand for education loan which has been increasing
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EduTech October 2012
by over 20 per cent annually. ASSOCHAM suggests the adoption of public-private partnership (PPP) mode for establishment of high standard quality institutions to widen capacity of within the country. “Higher education in India is subsidised in the government sector while elsewhere it’s not,” says DS Rawat, ASSOCHAM Secretary General. The study suggests encouraging establishment of quality foreign universities in India, especially in Tier II cities to overcome the shortage of seats. It says that opening of higher education sector will result in 30-40 million additional jobs in the field of education alone.
update
IAF-Amity MoU for officials’ education Courses in distance, online mode via single window platform designed for air force personnel course Indian Air Force personnel and leadership, and communication can now avail higher education faciliskills capsules for the IAF officials. ties at all Amity University campuses. The courses would be corresponThe Indian Air Force and Amity Unidence, distance learning with PCP and versity signed a Memorandum of online learning. The courses to be proUnderstanding (MoU) to this effect vided under the programme include recently which would allow officials various short term and MBA/MCA access to nominated courses on all courses with specialisation in human Amity campuses. resource management, information The MoU was signed by Rear Admiral technology, marketing, international RC Kochar, Deputy Pro Vice Chancelbusiness, finance, operations lor, Amity University and Air Vice Marand insurance among others. shall S Kumar, Indian Air Dr Balvinder Shukla, force. Amity University will acting Vice Chancellor, reserve specific seats in Amity University said that nominated courses for the Amity institute of EducaIAF personnel and will protion and Training has discount will vide 50 per cent discount introduced topical courses be provided on all these courses. The and the university is keen by the university will facilitate a to design and introduce university on single window for access need-based training to higher education to the programmes for serving all these IAF and conduct DGR Air Force and Defence courses sponsored programmes, officials.
50%
Shiv Nadar Varsity ties up with Carnegie Mellon The Carnegie Mellon Shiv Nadar Programme for tech students programme Shiv Nadar University entered into partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to offer Carnegie Mellon Shiv Nadar Programme in electrical, computer and mechanical engineering. The four-year undergraduate engineering degree programmes will award students dual degrees—Bachelor’s of Technology from Shiv Nadar University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. According to the agreement, students will spend the first and third years of the programme at the SNU campus in Greater Noida and the second and fourth years at CMU’s Pittsburgh Pennsylvania campus. Vice Chancellor of SNU, Nikhil Sinha, said, “This programme will provide students an opportunity to acquire world-class education while also gaining unprecedented global experience.”
voices “No country can ever make a leap forward to modernity without a critical mass of diverse and welleducated people at the higher education level” —Dr Shukuru Kawambwa, Education and Vocational Training Minister, Tanzania
“We have no magic solutions for India’s problems. But we’re coming to India because we know there’s excellence here. The sheer scale of education that India needs in primary and secondary levels is huge. To get into the world’s top educational institutions, researchenhanced education is important”
— Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice Chancellor, Cambridge University
“Never stop learning. Have confidence in yourself. Excellence is not an art but a habit. Never compromise on values”
— Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro Ltd
October 2012 EduTech
7
Viewpoint
MJ Xavier
Industry-AcademiaGovernment Collaboration
I
ndustry and academia are the two bullocks yoked to the cart of collaboration driven forward under the skilled stewardship of the government for the mutual benefit of all the stakeholders. The benefit of this partnership is visible in developed economies. Time India harnessed its bullocks for a smooth ride. We can think of a bullock-cart analogy for Industry-Academia-Government (IAG) collaboration in developed countries like the USA, Japan and the UK. The two bulls are the industry and academia, with the economy (the cart) driven in the right direction by the government. Whether it is getting the right supply of manpower for the industry, promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, carrying out fundamental research or promoting regional development, there is greater collaboration between the industry, academia and the government. They operate on a win-win-win model that enables all the partners to work as an ecosystem and contribute to the economic and social well-being of society. Educational institutions are supposed to engage in knowledge creation and its dissemination. These could be research on science and technology, as popularly perceived. Further, it could be fundamental research as the search for God’s particle, or applied research, as in development of fuel efficient
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EduTech  October 2012
vehicles or development of alternate sources of energy. Health research to find new molecules/ drugs for curing diseases such as cancer and AIDS are also carried out jointly by the industry and the academia. Universities also engage in research on social issues as well as moral and ethical questions. The policy direction should also be set by the respective governments. Apart from funding the educational institutions, governments also set up research institutions for specialised research areas. The then US President, John F Kennedy announced that America would send men to the moon and bring them back safely in the next 10 years. This was in reaction to the launch of Sputnik for space travel by the Russians. Then the government allotted funds to NASA and also selected universities. This set in motion a series of scientific advancements that led to the space voyage to the moon in 1969. Similarly, the government and the industry work together to forecast the manpower needs and allot funds to create the right kind of graduates. For example, the IT policy of the government also works out the number of IT graduates need-
MJ Xavier
ed in the country. The industry then works closely with universities to develop the right kind of curriculum needed by the industry. The government grants permission for expansion of capacity in the areas where additional manpower needs to be created. The industry also provides internship to students to develop the right kind of skills needed by the industry. This way graduates are able to contribute to their organisation from the first day of their taking up jobs. Similarly, promoting entrepreneurship is also the joint responsibility of the government and the educational institutions. The entire US economy thrives on entrepreneurship. Every university genuinely promotes entrepreneurship in the US. In the bay area, Stanford University has played a key role in promoting the IT cluster. Every graduate management class I have taught in the US had at least two or three students with patents for something and they were there to learn management concepts from the University to set up a new business to operationalise the patents. Regional development is done through skill development and promoting micro and small enterprises. Apart from the government agencies, universities too play an active role in skill development and the development of the region in which they operate. Industry too supports the educational institutions through their CSR budgets. Once again, it is a collaborative effort of the industryacademia and the government.
The India Story: Mismatch & Mishmash Unfortunately, the story is very different in the Indian context. The analogy I use for the IAG collaboration in India too is a cart. However, it is not drawn by two bulls but by a frog and a rat. On the driver’s seat is a snake. The frog pulls the cart to the water when the rat drags it to the burrow. The government that is supposed to facilitate greater collaboration between the industry and educational institutions is like a snake that tries to eat up both the rat and the frog. Typically, the frog pulls the economy to the water, while the rat tries to get in to the comfort of its burrow. The academia is very narrow in its focus and does not take initiatives to update its curriculum in accordance with the industry needs. Academia has been lagging behind the developments in the industry in most areas. That is why many recruiters retrain fresh recruits before assigning them to any job. Imagine the amount of money wasted in making an engineer who in any case is obsolete.
Viewpoint
“IAG collaboration in India too is a cart. However, it is not drawn by two bulls but by a frog and a rat. On the driver’s seat is a snake. The frog pulls the cart to the water when the rat drags it to the burrow...the snake tries to eat up both” The gap between industry and academia is widening day by day. Tatas have set up research centres in Harvard, Milwaukee and a host of other universities. In their assessment, none of the Indian universities deserve to receive such support. While the academia has to accept the major part of the blame for this sorry state of affairs, industry too has failed to reach out to the universities. This is a very short-sighted approach that is already hurting the Indian industry. The government too has been found to be wanting on several aspects. They have set up several regulatory bodies like AICTE, UGC and NAC to ensure quality education in the accredited institutions. However, the regulators themselves are in need of regulation. The undisciplined and immoral acts of these institutions have severely damaged the reputation of Indian universities. Since education is a state subject, the appointment of vice chancellors in state-run universities is politicised. The funding for many universities is so meagre that even payment of salaries on the first day of every month itself is a big challenge for the vice chancellors. In this sorry state of affairs, how can we expect to attract and retain best talents? Except for the IITs, IIMs and other institutes of excellence, all others have problems with funding and are also stifled by excessive bureaucratic processes. Many of these universities do not have adequate number of teachers. Also, their curriculum is so archaic that they have no relevance to the needs of the industry. October 2012 EduTech
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Viewpoint
Author’s BIO Dr MJ Xavier, Director of the IIM Ranchi, has more than 25 years of professional experience in teaching, research, and consultancy. His areas of interest include Marketing Research, Data Mining, e-Governance and he has authored three books and published more than 100 articles in journals and magazines in India and abroad
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To meet the manpower shortage, the government has allowed private universities to come up in this country. The mushrooming private institutions basically operate to make money. These are teaching shops that have no interest in carrying out research. This is true of most private institutions except a few enlightened ones. The scientists working in research laboratories set up by the government of India too are assessed based on their publications in international publications. Consequently, they work on problems of relevance for the developed world rather than contribute to the scientific might of India. Hardly any new business has come up from research carried out in central research Institutes. There is another notion that institutions are subservient to the industry. This is a wrong view. We need to create institutions that are independent thinkers who will question not only the industry but also the government. All that the industry does are not virtuous. They pollute the environment and exploit the stakeholders. We need to produce graduates who will question the unwholesome practices of the industry. Unfortunately, India is the only country where academicians are put in
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prison for criticising political leaders. Another mistake that we have committed is that we have pushed the liberal arts to the backburner. The only courses that thrive in this country are the job-oriented professional ones. There is no point in producing people with certain skills needed by the industry but lacking critical thinking ability. Studying philosophy, ethics, literatures and arts subjects will make a person learned; acquiring skills through professional education can only make a person a highly-paid and glorified worker. My sincere feeling is that liberal arts courses should be made compulsory for every university student. Then only can they become thinkers and contributors to the advancement of society. We currently operate on a lose-lose-lose model. While the frogs and the rats pull in opposite directions, the snake is busy swallowing the ones that carry its own weight. This way the country is the greatest loser. We have to go a long way in bridging the gap between the three key players in the country. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters
Viewpoint
Pushkar
Next Gen of India Experts not in India
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hile it is a matter of great concern that India does not boast of many worldclass institutions, it is a matter of shame if leading scholars in Indian politics and history are not India-based or if the most prestigious research centres are in the West. It is time we asked some disconcerting questions: Which are the leading centres of excellence for scholarship on Indian economy, anthropology and languages? What is the Indian contribution to the field of Indian politics or culture? Where will the next generation of India experts come from?
Gurcharan Das recently said that ‘an Indian who seriously wants to study the classics of Sanskrit or ancient regional languages will have to go abroad’ (Times of India, September 9, 2012). This is an understatement. The situation is much worse and applies to several other disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. To get a broader sense of the quality of Indian scholarship in the social sciences, I collected data on the scholarship in Indian politics from The Oxford
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Companion to Indian Politics (2010) and the journal India Review (2002-2011). The Oxford Companion to Indian Politics—edited by Niraja Gopal Jayal (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (Centre for Policy Research)—contains 38 original articles by 44 leading scholars—Indian and Western academics—of Indian politics. While not every leading scholar has a chapter in the book, the collection is a fairly good representation of well-known scholars who work on Indian politics. The journal India Review ‘publishes social science research on Indian politics, economics, and society’. Between 2002 and 2011, it published 139 original articles by 162 authors on a variety of issues in Indian politics, economy, society and international relations. (Note: 1) Two special issues on public anthropology and India Studies in the US were excluded from the count; and 2) several scholars published more than one article and are counted multiple times).
Why Politics? I have two reasons for focussing on Indian politics to determine the quality of scholarship in India.
Pushkar
First, since my academic training and experience is primarily in political science, I have a better sense of what is happening in the field of Indian politics than in say sociology or history. Second, and more importantly, there is no doubt that politics is both the problem and solution to India’s challenges—including higher education—in the coming decades. It is essential that we develop and nurture the discipline of Indian politics to understand why we have succeeded or failed in different areas as a nation and what we can do to fix our failings.
A Bare Cupboard of Scholars To get a sense of the Indian contribution to Indian politics, I created three categories: 1) Indian/ Western scholars; 2) India/West-based scholars; 3) Indians with PhD degrees from India/ the West. Indian/Western Scholars: Of the 44 contributors in Jayal and Mehta (2010), 32 are Indians and the rest are a mix of British, American and others. In India Review, 84 of the 162 authors are Indians. The ‘Indian’ category includes those who may have been born in or outside India and was determined on the basis of name, location and any other information that was easily available online. Many scholars who are counted as ‘Indians’ may only be nominally so. India-/West-based Scholars: Only 14 of the 44 authors in Jayal and Mehta (2010) are based in India. Of the 84 Indian scholars whose papers have been published in India Review, only 20 are based in India. Excluded from the count are current or former bureaucrats and journalists whose interaction with students is quite limited. India-based scholars with PhDs from India/ West: Of the 14 India-based scholars in Jayal and Mehta (2010) only 7 have PhDs (or highest degrees) from Indian institutions. Similarly, only 10 of the 20 India-based scholars who published in India Review earned their PhDs at Indian institutions. These numbers indicate that there is a very small pool of experts in India to train and mentor the next generation of scholars. Clearly, Indian institutions have not been fertile grounds for grooming scholars of Indian politics. The number of home-grown scholars like Sudipta Kaviraj and Ramachandra Guha is far too few. Both Jayal and Mehta, incidentally, earned their degrees from Western institutions. Similarly, the founding and current editors of India Review—Sumit Ganguly and E Sridharan—are also trained at American schools.
Viewpoint
“There is no point in taking pride in the scholarship of Indian academics based outside India. Their existence does little for our politics, history and economics departments” Sad but True Are these numbers surprising? I think not. These numbers confirm what we already know but do not wish to acknowledge or address. At the moment, we are far away from being the leaders in disciplines and fields that are our own, let alone compete globally in higher education in a broader range of disciplines and subject areas. After all, even those Indian institutions which rank among the world’s best overall, such as IIM-Ahmedabad and ISB-Hyderabad, the ranking on scholarship—measured in terms of publications—is poor. Not one Indian business school ranks in the Top 100 in terms of research contribution (See The University of Texas-Dallas Top 100 World Rankings of Business Schools Based on Research Contribution 2007-2011 -http://jindal.utdallas.edu/ the-utd-top-100-business-school-research-rankings/ worldwide-rankings/). Admittedly, only two sources have been used to make sweeping conclusions. It may be that the state of affairs is specific to the study of Indian politics. As Susan and Lloyd Rudolph note in their essay “An Intellectual History of the Study of Indian Politics” (Jayal and Mehta, 2010), the discipline developed fairly late in independent India. Even today, a premier liberal arts college like Delhi’s St Stephen’s does not offer a bachelor’s degree in political science. With the exception of some central universities, the state of teaching and research in Indian politics is poor.
Is Indian Politics an Exception? It is possible that the study of Indian politics has suffered because better-run institutions such as October 2012 EduTech
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Viewpoint
Author’s BIO Pushkar has a PhD in political science (McGill University) and previously taught at Concordia University, McGill University and the University of Ottawa. His blogs on higher education in India have appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education
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the IITs and the IIMs offer only a select number of social science disciplines and politics is not one of them. None of the IITs—with the exception of IITGuwahati—have political scientists on their faculty. A good friend in the Humanities and Social Sciences at one of the IITs quoted a colleague who once said that ‘this was to keep politics out of the institution!’ To my knowledge, IIT-Gandhinagar may have become only the second IIT to hire a faculty member with a degree in political science. Other social science disciplines such as sociology, economics or history probably fare better. They have a longer tradition of scholarship at premier Indian institutions. Furthermore, since the IITs too have PhD programmes in economics and sociology, we might expect them to produce greater number of good quality scholars. But chew on this. When Pranab Mukherjee needed an economic advisor, he invited Kaushik Basu from far away Ithaca. P Chidambaram’s man of the hour Raghuram Rajan has come all the way from Chicago. It appears that students of Indian economy are in good hands at Cornell, Chicago and scores of other institutions in the US,
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Europe and Australia. Are they in equally good hands today in places other than maybe JNU and the Delhi School of Economics?
What’s missing in the gravy? World-class institutions, research centres and departments develop around a core group of faculty members who are leading scholars in their field. These are the people who train and mentor the next generation of scholars. Unfortunately, very few of our institutions can boast of such a core group of faculty members. There is no point in taking pride in the scholarship of Indian academics based outside India. Their existence does little for our politics, history and economics departments. It is a depressing fact that the next generation of leading scholars in Indian politics and several other disciplines is currently not being trained in India but in the West.
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A Peek into FICCI Higher Education Summit 2012 Higher Education in India: Quest for Excellence By Shobha Mishra Ghosh, Senior Director, FICCI
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ndian Higher Education has undergone tremendous growth at a rate of 11% and the GER at 6% particularly in the past five years with number of universities and colleges almost doubling. This growth is the result of the Twelfth Plan focus on expansion of public sector institutions or universities to increase access and equity and private sector expansion responding to the industry needs for skilled manpower at all levels. The 160mn aspirational middle-class and 672mn population in the working age-group has also created the demand for higher education. The pending reforms were intended to fuel the growth further to achieve the ambitious GER of 30% by 2020, which were pushed back by the current political ramifications. Hence, both the government and the industry are now pooling in resources and working towards developing workable strategies that will move the higher education sector towards the right direction and take the Indian economy to a higher trajectory to meet society’s needs. Though India is doing well in terms of expansion, quality
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ence, some of which are highlighted below.
of higher education has been sacrificed both in the public as well as private sector institutions and universities. The focus of the Twelfth Plan is to strengthen the quality. The FICCI Higher Education Summit this year is also aligned to deliberate on the strategies required to improve quality across all parameters of higher education delivery. Hence, the theme of the 8th FICCI Higher Education Summit 2012
is “Higher Education in India: Quest for Excellence” which is being held on November 5 and 6, 2012, at FICCI, New Delhi. The platform will be used to share the government’s implementation strategy for Twelfth Plan for wider stakeholder dissemination and receive feedback and inputs. Some of the key issues that will impact the quality of higher education in the country will be deliberated during the Confer-
Emergence of Education Hubs The emergence of educational hubs is part of a larger evolution in the international higher education marketplace. Globally, (Dubai Knowledge Village, Singapore’s Global Schoolhouse, Kuala Lumpur Education City, etc) it has managed to gain popularity by attracting foreign investment, retaining local students, providing access to highquality education and training for both international and domestic students. India has a huge potential to become a global education hub, given the nation’s needs and aspirations provided the pending reforms are implemented in a time-bound manner. There would be deliberations on how to explore the global experiences with regard to policy approaches and implementation strategies and drawing lessons for India. The Emerging New Private Sector in Higher Education The emergence of India as a knowledge-based, service driven economy has made its human capital the major strength and
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opportunity for growth. Rapid globalisation, driven largely by technological advancements, as well as the inability of the public educational system to meet the industry demand has opened up a plethora of opportunities in education and training for the private sector. Apart from the growth of private sector institutions or universities, which have been responsible for massive enrolments to meet the employability needs of our youth, there is also emergence of a segment of industry that is investing in the niche areas of higher education where the markets do not work and are philanthropic in nature. There will be discussion on the significance of the emerging new private higher education institutions and universities in the changing scenario of the higher education in India and showcasing of few best practices. Corporate Engagement in Higher Education The corporate sector is the direct beneficiary of the higher education system. Unlike the developed world, the corporate sector in India has had limited involvement in the higher education sector despite tremendous
potential. A sustainable institutional mechanism for creating an ecosystem for industry academia engagement is needed. FICCI has been working to set up five National Knowledge Functional Hubs across north, west and south to bridge these gaps. Narayan Murthy Task Force has recommended the Centre to set up 20 such hubs across the country. Many other related initiatives are also to be implemented during the Twelfth Plan period. The deliberations aim to capture various engagement models and explore the roles, responsibilities and implementation strategies to leverage the corporate sector engagement. Mainstreaming Skills in Higher Education Given the fact that there is growing unemployment of graduates and absence of skills that can earn a livelihood, it is crucial to connect ‘skills’ and ‘higher education’ and create capacities that are different and relevant to the society’s aspirations and economic development. Ministry of HRD, Government of India is working at launching a pilot project for 200 community colleges in the Twelfth Plan period to
provide industry and community relevant courses which is in line with the US model. Realising the significance of rapid skill development, private sector entities are also taking several initiatives to contribute to the Government’s endeavors. FICCI and Wadhwani Foundation supported by MHRD, GoI and Planning Commission, are in the process of developing an implementation framework for setting up 'Community Colleges' in India which will be discussed in the conference. Creating, Future Campuses and World Class Infrastructure The next few years are bound to witness an acute growth of higher educational institutions, with 500 or more institutions being set up amid huge investments from both public and private sector. Though there is exuberance over bringing in reforms in the soft architecture in higher education, little is being discussed regarding improvement of hard infrastructure. The process of identifying, designing, developing, constructing, funding, tendering, litigation, and managing such infrastructure is complex and costly. Yet the effi-
cient and timely realisation of all these processes is vital for the healthy development of the sector, and calls for quicker implementation of process reforms. On the sidelines of the conference, there will be several other sessions on issues like "Technology Integration in Classrooms" and "Collaborative Research" etc. Focused workshops and master classes are being planned on faculty development, student mobility, addressing information asymmetry, academic reorganisation, etc. A special attraction for delegates and students is the exhibition where large number of universities and allied education industry gets the opportunity to showcase their products and programmes. For the first time, poster presentation is being introduced to provide opportunities to larger spectrum of stakeholders to share their ideas, views and good practices with the delegates participating in the Summit. Global consulting company, Ernst&Young, is the Knowledge Partner who will help develop a knowledge paper jointly with FICCI which will be released at the Conference.
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THE ANNUAL VICE CHANCELLORS’ RETREAT 2012
The Second Annual EDU VCs’ Retreat
More than 50 leaders in higher education met at Gurgaon over three days to deliberate on the theme of ‘Delivering Excellence—against the odds’. We bring to you glimpses and reports from the retreat report compiled by mrudula ns Design by raj verma
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The VCs’ Retreat
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“It is heartening to see you people doing such a wonderful job to further the cause of education. Your contribution will go a long way in furthering the nation building process.” —R S Grewal VC, Chitkara University
“Once again a great conference-even better than the first one. My compliments to the entire team for the choice of speakers, choice of beautifully woven and interlinked topics within the theme, the networking opportunities, not to mention the great venue and its tranquilizing effect. We look forward to a mid-annual conference, one day workshop with a single point agenda where there can be some collective effort and hopefully significant contribution.” —Lata Chakravarthy Director, IBS Bangalore
“The selection of topics and speakers was excellent, venue extraordinary. EDU needs to be congratulated.” —R.K. Verma Dean, Sharda Sharda School of Business
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The VCs’ Retreat
You have done something novel, unique and wonderful. I must confess that I have attended several Vice Chancellor conferences and hence the above comment. This conference was enabling as there is a positive attitude, enriching as different domains of people were called and uniting in the sense made most of us participate. —S Sivasubramanian VC, NIU
Very well organized conference. We hope you will continue your efforts in future too. —VK Agarwal VC, Jagannath University, Jaipur
The VCs retreat was a great learning experience. Your initiatives are making a significant impact at the national level (both EDU tech and the retreats). At the retreat, the lectures by Parag Shah, Dossani, Bhanu Pratap, Pawan Agarwal and Aromar Revi were par excellence. The panel discussions were enlightening. We look forward to more such meetings. —Manoj Datta Director,PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh
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The VCs’ Retreat
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Frankly I arrived with little idea of what the retreat was all about. I have rarely been so pleasantly surprised. It is a much needed initiative, wonderfully executed. The openness of discussion and discourse is worth replicating on a large scale. I wish the team every success. Congratulations and a big thank you for involving me in your endeavour and journey. —Tapti Roy VC, Indus International University
Thanks Pramath and team. It has been wonderful being here. Please keep it going —Pawan Agarwal Advisor Higher Education, Planning Commission
Many `thanks for the outstanding retreat. I truly enjoyed every moment of the high quality conference. The learnings have been tremendous. Looking forward to more such retreats and learnings. Congratulations to you and your entire team. —Rajeev Shorey President, NIIT University
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The VCs’ Retreat
The VCs’ Retreat
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individual speakers and five panel discussions were a part of the agenda
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Women leaders of Indian higher education institutions participated in the second annual retreat taking the number of women participants higher than last year
days of listening to speakers, panel discussions, talking about possible collaborations, networking and forming new relationships
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states from across India were represented at the retreat.
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leaders from Indian higher education got together at the tranquilising Westin Sohna resort near Gurgaon to participate and contribute in the discussions
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DAY 1
SESSION 1
Arun Nigavekar Former Chairman, UGC & Founder Director, NAAC
Building and Managing Great academic institutions
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rate. He went on to say that it is by “sheer accident” that good he Indian higher education system is like a bus full leaders are born in our universities, “not by design”. of passengers, each with a different destination. It is Does this mean we don’t have the right academic individuat once a vehicle for economic growth and social als? “No”, he answers emphatically, “if we transformation, as also knowlwant our teachers to acquire the qualities edge creation and political of effective leaders, then we have to empowerment. And it is the onerous task embrace the concept of Transformative of the Vice Chancellor to skilfully steer Leadership.” In the latter half of his talk, this omnibus, balancing the various priDr. Nigavekar elaborated on the model of orities within limited means in times that Transformative Leadership – a model that are a-changin’. This is no mean challenge believes in the inherent capability of every and calls for the highest quality academic individual to lead, a model that promotes and administrative leadership. creation of leaders from within the sys The opening session of the three day tem. He defined a good leader as one who conference featuring a talk by Arun possessed requisite knowledge and skills, Nigavekar - Former Chairman, UGC & could cope effectively and creatively with Founder Director, NAAC - explored the emerging national and world trends, and challenges of leading a higher education Arun Nigavekar most importantly, someone capable of institute in India, and the odds of overdisplaying a high level of emotional and coming them – incidentally, a running spiritual wisdom and maturity. Convinced that such leaders can theme that found mention in several discussions in the days only be created from within the system and over time, he urged that followed. Underscoring the chronic neglect of academic all VCs present to initiate the process of transformation in their leadership in our country, Dr. Nigavekar noted that the present institutions through focussed effort. process of identifying leaders is time-consuming, even inaccu-
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“The Indian education system is beset with enormous paradoxes... The government must be proactive and be ready to change with the system.”
Sponsor Speaker
D AY 1 S E S S I O N
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Shubham Jairath Chief Education Evangelist Adobe, was one of the opening speakers on the first day, who spoke on how the digital world is transforming education
Getting the Quality of Faculty Right Some innovative approaches
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fter a quick tour of the higher education scenario in India and its key challenges, Dileep Ranjekar shifted gears to his area of specialisation – faculty quality. It is common knowledge that the quality of faculty in most institutes leaves much to be desired. Innumerable reports, graphs and charts endorse this fact. Yet, when Dileep shares anecdotes from his twelve years of experience in this field, one is left bemused by the gravity of the situation. During his talk, Dileep recounted how 70% of the candidates they had tested as part of a teacher recruitment drive – all with post-graduate degrees – could not answer correctly “Anything multiplied by zero is _____.” The reasons they gave: “I’m an Arts student”, “Time was not sufficient”, “I didn’t understand the question”! Although this elicited much laughter, the poignancy of the situation was not lost on the audience. As CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation, an institution founded with the express mission of preparing high quality professionals in the field of education, Dileep has been grappling with the question of teacher quality for long. Pointing out some of the issues with faculty quality, he noted that formal and informal networks for teachers, and a consistent vision for education, were missing in India. He emphasised on the need to have atleast a year’s discourse on teaching-learning for all teachers, as also the need for in-service support and continuous evaluation of students as an input and reflection of faculty quality. He also highlighted that to be an effective teacher one must not only have requisite subject knowledge, but in addition should have an overall understanding of allied, scaffolding subjects and an exposure to the philosophy, sociology and psychology of education. He shared some of the innovative practices being followed by the APF in this regard such as “attempting the best of corporate and academic practices”, structured and unstructured dialogues among teachers on best practices and new theories of pedagogy, mandatory research related to the field of education etc.
“Mere subject knowledge is not adequate. We must have a constructive, specific program for all faculty members in the country to deal with diverse students. In many cases, students are smarter than teachers. The generation gap has to be addressed” Dileep Ranjekar CEO, Azim Premji Foundation
Sponsor Speaker
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Anitha Kurup Professor & Anchor, Education Programme, National Institute of Advanced Studies
Abhishek Mukherjee, Product Specialist, Adobe joined Shubham Jairath to speak on how the Digital World is transforming education. He used his own experiences as a student, a college drop out, and yet a highly successful professional to talk about the transformation Bhushan Patwardhan Vice Chancellor, Symbiosis International University
AG Bhalwankar Vice Chancellor, Calorx Teachers University, Ahmedabad
The Complex Triad Faculty, curriculum and assessment
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oderated by Bhushan Patwardhan, Vice Chancellor Symbiosis International University, the panel discussion brought together three distinguished professionals deeply engaged with the field of education—Dileep Ranjekar of Azim Premji Foundation, Dr. Anitha Kurup from the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), and A G Bhalwankar, Vice Chancellor, Calorx Teachers University. Revolving around faculty quality and education ecosystem, the discussion brought to the fore several innovative ideas for enhancing faculty capacity in India. Setting the context, Dr. Patwardhan described four levels in systematic teaching—Adhidhi (the stage of learning), Bodha (the period of analysis), Acharana (the period of practice) and Pracharana (the stage of preaching or teaching). He added that the problem lay in the fact that in the current system, our teachers leapfrog from Adhidhi to Pracharna without attention to the intermediate steps.
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Dr. Anitha Kurup, who is very well versed with research and literature in this field, opined that we are unable to attract talent to teaching because of the stunted career growth in the profession. She prodded the community to brainstorm on creative ways of boosting teachers’ career graphs to attract and retain talent. Adding to this, Dileep Ranjekar cited the relative success Finland and Sweden achieved in improving teacher status – these countries made it extremely difficult for anyone to become a teacher by raising the eligibility bar high and spent a lot of time on content-based pedagogy, which in-effect gave teachers the status and compensation enjoyed by other professionals. Speaking on the subject, Dr Bhalwankar highlighted that there does not exist in our country an end-to-end education policy that covers education from KG to PG. He stressed on the importance of specialised teacher education programmes – like the NCTE accredited four-year BA and BEd programme offered by Calorx, to create a quality workforce of teachers.
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Subodh Rustagi Director Higher Education, Oracle spoke on the first day on the topic “Adopting Technology: the inevitable paradigm shift to drive academic and operational excellence”
Building an Institution of Repute My personal journey
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n one of the most inspiring sessions of the day, Parag Shah, a real estate magnate turned academic and philanthropist, shared with the audience his journey of building FLAME—a unique institution anchored in liberal education. FLAME offers four-year undergraduate programmes in humanities and social sciences, along with postgraduate programmes in business and communication. However, what sets these programmes apart is their interdisciplinary ethos and student-centric nature. As Parag explains, students at FLAME, left to choose courses of their interest from a wide variety, take responsibility for their learning from day one. Through numerous anecdotes, he brought forth the critical role an interdisciplinary curriculum—be it intertwining theatre with anthropology and political science, or offering combined majors in mathematics and music—plays in moulding young people into critical, independent thinkers. In fact, he asserted that while, “The goal of the current educational system is to reduce ambiguity, the future of education is going to be in the ability of the youngsters to handle ambiguity.” He agreed, however, that critical thinking without adequate rooting in ethics can be a dangerous skill—a possibility that FLAME guards itself against through its numerous initiatives and mentoring activities. Sharing with us his belief in this new paradigm of education, Parag said, “The aim of Liberal Education is to produce happy, well rounded, well groomed, responsible global citizens.” Reinforcing the significance of a liberal education, he added that 19 per cent of people listed among Forbes’ richest, 24 per cent of all Nobel Prize winners and 17 per cent of all Pulitzer Prize winners were liberal arts graduates—a testimony to the varied sensibilities such a curriculum hones. As he shared with passion his vision of an education that opens the windows of the mind and unlocks hidden potential, it was evident that the philosophy of liberal education found some more patrons.
“There is a contradiction between preparing students for their first job and preparing them for a lifetime. Education must prepare them for a happy human life” Parag Shah, Founder, FLAME
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Sponsor Speaker
D AY 1 S E S S I O N
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Mohit Phogat, Business Manager, Education-Oracle, on adopting technology and the inevitable paradigm shift needed to drive academic and operational excellence
Analysis of Education Landscape An insight into the BRIC economies
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afiq Dossani, an academic from Stanford University with long-standing research interest in education, provided an analysis of the education landscape in BRIC countries in comparison to developed countries. Noting the points of divergence between the education strategies of developing and developed nations, he pointed out that across BRIC countries the focus uniformly has been on technical education keeping in mind rates of return on education, as opposed to a focus on liberal education in countries in advanced stages of development. Similarly, in the BRIC countries families bear an increasing share of the cost of education. In what he called a regressive model, he highlighted that unlike the ‘massification’ strategy of developed countries, India has adopted an ‘elitist’ strategy where it poured in a disproportionate amount of funds into building a few high quality institutes. The widening gap between elite and mass universities further compounds the inequity, he argued. In what is definitely an astonishing statistic, he highlighted that in many cases graduates from Tier-II and Tier-III US technology universities working in Silicon Valley perform on par or even better than graduates from India’s top notch IITs. He attributed this to the lack of a rigorous broad-based curriculum that hones team skills and all round development even in what are touted as the best colleges in India. An engineering student takes 36 per cent humanities courses in the US, while in IITs in India it is only 9 per cent. As a policy recommendation, Dr Dossani suggested that India should focus on massive expansion of PhD supply. This, he said, would be possible only though public money. “No amount of private money can do it,” he asserted.
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“In developed countries, cost of the ‘elite’ strategy was not borne by the state. It was borne partly by the state but also largely by the private sector. The Stanfords, Harvards, MITs and so on were asked to bear the cost of the ‘elite’ strategy” Rafiq Dossani Executive Director of the South Asia Initiative, Stanford University
DAY 2 SESSION 1
“We are in a rapid phase of expansion in our higher education, and one of the dilemmas of rapid expansion is that things will get worse before they get better” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President and Chief Executive, Centre for Policy Research
Decoding World-class Education What does it really mean?
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e often tend to play fast and loose with the phrase ‘world-class’. But what does it really mean? Is there a uniform benchmark that renders an institution world-class? These were the questions that Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President Centre for Policy Research, touched upon in his talk. At the outset, he affirmed that uniform benchmarks for the measurement of ‘world-class’ do not exist—and further, that the existence of such standardised benchmarks might, in fact, prove counterproductive to academics. Explaining this, he said, “The absolute death knell for higher education is when you replace communities of judgment with standardised ones.” The challenge is to aim for high standards, without driving standardisation, he argued. However, the existence of a multiplicity of benchmarks can prove challenging for heads of institutions who have to decide which ones to trust. In a low-trust society like India, Dr Mehta explains, we conveniently side-step this challenge by outsourc-
ing the job of benchmarking quality to professional associations abroad. He added that the ability to set standards does not come unless an institution has critical mass in terms of quality faculty, and that under conditions of scarcity of talent, all our universities are struggling to attain that critical mass. He contrasted the situation with China, where the ecosystem enables universities to define their own standards. Therefore, for the ongoing expansion in higher education to be productive, the supply of high quality MPhil and PhD students needs to be urgently fixed, he claimed. Underscoring the importance of internal diversity, Dr Mehta asserted that the strength of most high quality universities comes from the ability to house people with varied skills and dispositions. He stressed on the need to create an internal faculty structure that is balanced in itself, to actually cater to itself. Elucidating on the right balance of skills needed in a good curriculum, he maintained that logical reasoning, articulating and writing are among the must-haves. October 2012 EduTech
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“I believe all future classrooms will be studios. Whatever you teach, will be recorded and if you are great teacher, it will be shared with the world” Kunal Dureja, Country Manager, IBM Career Education Programme, ISA–IBM India spoke on the twin issues of curriculum and pedagogy: and how India could be ‘future-ready’.
Manoj Datta Director, PEC University of Technology
“Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru visited Banasthali University some 50 years ago, and said ‘If I had been a girl, I would have come to Banasthali.’ At that time, Banastali had zero infrastructure” Aditya Shastri, Vice Chancellor, Banasthali University
Creating World-Class Campuses What will it take?
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xploring another dimension to ‘achieving excellence’, the discussion on “What does it take to create worldclass campuses” brought together Supreeth Nagaraju, Sales Head, Education at Adobe India, Suresh Muppavarapu, Product Manager at Desktop Business of Dell India, Aditya Shastri, Vice Chancellor of Banasthali University, and Manoj Datta, Director of the PEC University of Technology as panellists. Infrastructure development means different things to different people. But usually it entails physical, complex digital and research infrastructure, among others. Setting the context for the discussion, Professor Aditya Shastri made a pertinent point, “We need to be clear about what our educational objectives are, and whether our infrastructure is conducive to attaining those.” He also emphasised that a campus must have a multi-dimen-
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sional character to cater to a diverse student body. Talking of the infrastructure for the classrooms-of-the-future, Dr Manoj Dutta said, “Experimental laboratories are shrinking and computational laboratories are occupying greater space.” He predicted that in the future physical boundaries between departments would diminish further and all faculty would sit together, that there would be common lectures, tutorials and library facilities. He anticipated that there would be a greater need for outsidethe-class infrastructure, as students will increasingly engage in student-led, extra- and co-curricular initiatives. Representing two of the leading firms with a prominent presence in the arena of education technology, Suresh Muppavarapu (Dell) and Supreeth Nagaraju (Adobe) presented products from their repertoire of education-related solutions, and fielded questions assuaging the IT-related concerns of participants at the conference.
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Sponsor Speaker
“Khan Academy has shown that teaching in modules spanning 10 minutes or less is effective” Dheeraj Sanghi, Dean (Academic Affairs), IIT Kanpur
Suresh Muppavarapu Product Manager, Desktop business—Dell India spoke on personal computing and its impact on the higher education sector on the second day of the VCs’ Retreat
“If I were the voice of an Indian university, I would say, ‘Because of the way I have been made, I have been chained and shackled, and I now have a lot of debris and rubble around me’” Indira Parikh President, FLAME
“We design our curriculum for the postconditions of a course (i.e. learning outcomes), [and use them] as a measure of the skills students learn” Pankaj Jalote Director, IIIT Delhi
Curriculum and Pedagogy How can we be ‘future-ready’?
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n this panel meet moderated by Professor Dheeraj Sanghi from IIT Kanpur, panellists Dr Gopa Sabharwal, Dr Pankaj Jalote and Dr Indira Parikh, each shared their insights on the subject of designing a curriculum that is student-centric and a pedagogy that creates lifelong learners. They addressed several questions such as the relative merits and demerits of broad-based vs narrowly focussed curriculums, the challenges of using pedagogical tools such as group projects, the opportunities in “flipped classroom” models, among others. On the subject of knowledge transmission, Dr Sabharwal remarked that while the erstwhile Nalanda was in the arena for 800 years, our universities today are barely touching the 150year mark and are already in crisis. Further, she felt that the western model of university that we often uphold as a blueprint is in fact, a system in crisis. Extending vociferous support to
broad-based holistic learning, she felt that an education must provide students with life-skills to cope with unforeseen crises. Underscoring the importance of moving from an environment of teaching to an environment of learning, Dr Parikh rightly noted that while curriculum is often tied down to a lot of other factors, pedagogy is the mostly easily revamp-able aspect in a university, well within the jurisdiction of institution heads. “The government cannot tell you how to teach; it can tell you what to teach, or when to give exams”, she said. Dr Jalote, in agreement, added that being teachers, academicians tend to lay a higher emphasis on the teaching process much to the neglect of the ‘learning processes’. He felt that while it is mandatory to give students a solid grounding in skills required for the first job, an education must also provide them with enough skills to navigate through a life-time. October 2012 EduTech
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D AY 2 S E S S I O N
Narendra Nandal Business Head, PayU India, spoke of the benefits of using PayU to smoothen the process of conducting financial transactions online, for Indian universities
Higher Education in India Future course of policies, regulations
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awan Agarwal, Advisor to the Planning Commission on Education, India, provided participants an inside view of what the latest Five Year Plan holds for the education sector. He walked everyone through the strategic framework of the Twelfth Five Year Plan, explaining its salient changes, goals and what could be its possible outcomes. Taking stock of the past five years, Agarwal said that the focus of the Eleventh Plan was on central institutions (which at that time contributed to only 2.2 per cent of all enrolled students). He noted that even now, numbers remained below 3 per cent, though some improvements were noted. He said that such strategies serve to impact only a narrow band of institutions. With a focus on the 3Es (Expansion, Equity and Excellence), he informed us that the Twelfth Plan is looking to interlink the 3Es, and programmes that serve as the locus at which more than one objective is met will be prioritised. He also provided crisp statistics on the trends in education over the last five years—he noted that enrolment in private institutions has seen a heavy rise of 11 per cent. Interestingly, the increase in percentage of students opting for engineering courses and the decrease in percentage of students opting for arts courses is more or less equal. He said the Twelfth Five Year Plan will look to doubling the enrolment in central universities, and anticipated that growth in private colleges would take a dip. He also highlighted that in the present Twelfth Plan, the expenditure outlay for research activity and state universities has been considerably increased. Stressing on the need to align policy discourse with action outcomes, he also sought feedback from the Vice Chancellors present on the proposed government initiatives.
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“When one says we are doing something new, a resistance is created against that so-called new plan. So what is new about this plan? It is that there is nothing new in it” Pawan Agarwal Advisor, Planning Commission on Education
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Vivek Agarwal, Founder and CEO, Liqvid, outlined the prominent role that education technology plays in creating learning environments that are industrylinked and future-driven
Rajeev Shorey President, NIIT University
Asheet Makhija Country Manager, SWG Service, ISA–IBM India
Ajit Rangnekar Dean, Indian School of Business
Academia and Industry Bridging the gap between the two
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he aspect of industry-academia interaction, and the complex questions surrounding it as to the extent of interaction and the modalities, were addressed in two sessions—a talk by Dr BN Jain, Vice Chancellor, BITS Pilani, followed by a panel discussion between industry and academia experts. Professor Jain brought us up to speed on some innovations made in the BITS Pilani curriculum to train students to be industry-ready. Having said that, he added that the role of institutions such as his was not to cater to specific job profiles in specific sectors but to produce engineers who will find innovate solutions to problems. Responding to common industry perceptions such as ‘graduates are ill-prepared for the jobs they are required to perform, and have only theoretical knowledge’ Prof. Jain said that such companies need to reassess their expecta-
tions of the graduates they are hiring. Echoing the same sentiment in the panel discussion that followed, Ajit Rangnekar, Dean of ISB, said that while industry-academia interaction is important, it must not be done at the cost of academic integrity. Rajeev Shorey, President NIIT University and also an industry veteran, reiterated the benefits that industry and academia could obtain by imbibing best practices. He said, “The whole academic community works in silos. If you don’t work in teams, there is only so much you can do.” Mapping out the stakeholders in the collaboration, Rangnekar said, “The industry, the institute, the faculty and the students—each group wants the interaction to happen for their benefit.” Both Rajeev Shorey and Asheet Makhija underscored the prominent role that education technology plays in creating learning environments that are industry-linked and future-driven. October 2012 EduTech
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Manish Upadhyay, Cofounder and Chief Evangelist, Liqvid, added to Agarwal’s session on the prominent role that education technology plays in creating learning environments that are industrylinked and future-driven
“We are caught up in silos. Generally, new knowledge is created at the interface of disciplinary boundaries.” Jerry Rao Former CEO MphasiS, Former Chairman NASSCOM
Education under the British Raj The past, present and future
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n what was a spur-of-the-moment Skype call arrangement, Jaitirth (Jerry) Rao addressed a congregation of Vice Chancellors, providing insights on higher education in India in a historical context. He began at the very beginning, with Lord Dalhousie’s educational reforms that laid the foundations of the university system in India. Illustrating the colonial legacy that bears down on our higher education system, Jerry noted that the ‘Woods Dispatch’—a policy note for education reforms under Dalhousie—made no mention of activities of ‘research’ or ‘creation of new knowledge’ within the universities to be formed.
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“The implicit assumption was that the Indian universities will only teach and award degrees while all study and research, even about India, would be done by Oxford, Cambridge and other universities”, he said. Another thing that we have borrowed from our colonial masters is the ‘elitist’ nature of higher education, he observed. Likening the French Écoles to the numerous Indian ‘Institutes’ (AIIMS, IIT, IIFT etc.), he said such schools dedicated to a single subject end up being specialised silos and fail to provide an integrated view. He advocated for the enhancement of single-subject schools to full-fledged universities providing holistic education and diversity in offering.
DAY 3 SESSION 1
“Material needs must be satisfied materially, and nonmaterial needs must be satisfied non-materially. You must distinguish between your needs and wants” Aromar Revi, Director, Indian Institute of Human Settlements
Contributing to ‘Green’ Building sustainable campuses
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ontinuing the theme of infrastructure-building from the previous day, Aromar Revi’s talk on ‘Building Sustainable Campuses’ provided insight on the concept of excellence against all the odds of resources and space. Underscoring the importance of thoughtful design, Dr Revi said, “Universities last longer than firms. In some cases, they last longer than nations. You need to design universities for resilience.” In an environment where there are mounting land pressures and demands, he asserted that one needed “no more than 50 acres to establish a world-class university”. He said that in India, IITs and other national-level institutes were built on vast expanses outside city perimeters with an idea that distance from habitation would allow reflection. But increasingly it is being seen that successful global universities are deeply embedded in the city, its culture enabling them to mutually benefit, for instance MIT and the LSE. He argued, “The relationship between a campus and the city is a non-trivial one,” and added that this model of inner-city campuses becomes all the more useful when you have multiple universities within a city, enabling you to share resources, infrastructure and students. Talking of world-class campuses, Dr Revi further emphasised that any university aspiring to be a truly international one, it must be situated within an hour’s distance of an international airport and a high-quality hospital. “Faculty is a critical constraint,” he noted, “And to be able to fly-in international faculty you need to be close to an airport.” Elaborating on the nuances of ‘green campuses’, he laid out
Aromar Revi Director, Indian Institute of Human Settlements
cardinal principles by which to design campuses—among them, a campus which provides for a variety of learning environments, which is not an insulated gated-community but porous, one which accommodates the needs of the surrounding community, and demonstrates to its students the feasibility of living by sustainable practices. October 2012 EduTech
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“A simple lecture is not enough to cultivate leadership. We need to demonstrate by example” Furqan Qamar, VC, Central University of Himachal Pradesh
“We do not want to produce business leaders, but business servants” MJ Xavier Director, IIM Ranchi
Tomorrow’s Leaders Grooming the next generation
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oderated by Professor Dheeraj Sanghi of IIT Kanpur, the panel discussion brought together leaders of two up-and-coming institutes, Dr MJ Xavier of IIM Ranchi and Furqan Qamar of Central University of Himachal Pradesh, to discuss the complex question of the role educational institutes play in grooming leaders of tomorrow. Not surprisingly, from the discussion emerged deeply philosophical questions such as whether we must educate our students “for life or for a living”, and to what extent should “market forces” dictate the educational and pedagogic choices our societies make. While his anecdotes and jokes had the audience in splits for the most part, Dr Xavier also managed to drive home weighty reflections on the state of management education world over, and what IIM Ranchi is doing to be a school with a difference. Citing a study conducted by the Academy of Management Learning and Education, he highlighted the rampant unethical
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behaviour among management graduates from top B-schools around the world. He then went on to elucidate on the alternative paradigm being adopted by IIM Ranchi to create grounded leaders who care for the development of community and self. “Our vision is to attain thought leadership through erudite fusion of western processes… and the wisdom the east for the holistic development of students, businesses and the society at large,” he said. On the same note, Dr Furqan Qamar regretted that education today was increasingly becoming more about a commercebased activity than altruism, and appealed to heads of institutions to devise ways to “delink degrees from jobs”. He said, “The next few years will be chaotic for India.” He emphasised on the need to lead by example. The lively question-answer session that followed served as a platform for educators to share innovative practices, for instance the ‘ignorance hour’ where a student can ask any question to test the teacher’s knowledge.
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Future of Indian Education What is a university?
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he concluding 45 minutes of the final day saw Dr Rudrangshu Mukherjee outlined the trajectory of Indian higher education since the 18th century, and his idea of where it should ideally head. Asking universities to play the onerous role of a bridge between the “Republic of India” and “Republic of letters”, Dr Mukherjee looked back to the beginnings of modern Indian universities. Established under the colonial rule, these were fashioned as institutions of higher learning and research, with an aim to contribute to the creation of knowledge and well-rounded individuals. However, as universities started to divide their subjects into core and periphery, there opened up a distinction between the pursuit of pure knowledge, and knowledge that was useful, he explained. He argued that this pronounced tilt towards ‘utility-driven’ learning led to a paradigm shift in educational goals—education was no longer about opening doors of the mind, but became a means to get a job. He made a passionate plea to all those gathered to “think of ways of retrieving the idea of education as driven by one purpose and one purpose alone—to ignite the minds of the young, not merely to equip them for a job.” In what would only seem a fitting end to a three day conference on education, Dr Mukherjee articulated his vision of a ‘university of the future’ thus, “ [It will be] A university focused on liberal education... such a university will train its students to be better human beings—individuals who are anchored in their past, individuals who are not oblivious to society, who can think with reason and without bigotry, who can doubt and dissent with respect, who are capable of expressing themselves through language, individuals who are sensitive to aesthetic and literary traditions, and are conscious of philosophical traditions. Liberal education produces individuals who are at once aware of man’s infinite potential, as also his transient nature in the river of time.”
“Europe’s universities did not consider themselves as bridges; they saw themselves as islands of scholarships. Hence the phrase ‘ivory towers’” Rudrangshu Mukherjee Historian and Editor, Edit Pages, The Telegraph
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cover story
The VCs’ Retreat
THE ANNUAL VICE CHANCELLORS’ RETREAT 2012
Thank You EDU would like to thank all the participants, speakers and sponsors for making its second retreat successful. We look forward to your continued support
The VCs’ Retreat
cover story
Discussions: Partcipants at the retreat interact over tea and lunch and enjoy an evening of ghazals and Sufi music hosted by Vikram Lall
October 2012  EduTech
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TECHNOLOGY 46 Tech INTERVIEW: Milind Kamat, VP, Ellucian 44 Tech TUTeS: Using Google Hangouts in Education
By raj verma
41-47 Tech Snippet: Tehnology News and Tips and Tricks
Get going with BYOD BYOD: Bring Your Own Device policy is here to stay albeit with safeguards in place by Tushar Kanwar 40
EduTech October 2012
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t’s a trend that is fast becoming a buzzword in education circles around the world, and it goes by the BYOD acronym. Contrary to what it sounds like, this isn’t some new-fangled online gaming system that students are experimenting with. Instead, it stands for ‘Bring Your Own Device’ and as the name suggests, this is a system by which institutions allow students and faculty to bring their own computers and mobile devices and connect to the college network and resources instead of having to work with a device issued by the college/university. In essence, students and faculty have the freedom to bring their own personal equipment to campus and use them for education.
BYOD
Tech Snippet | News for use
India wants the Fastest Supercomputer Title It seems like India isn’t happy having its home-grown supercomputer ranked at number 58 (out of 500) globally. To correct that, Sibal has put in motion plans to develop another completely indigenous supercomputer, one that would uproot IBM’s Sequoia as the world’s fastest supercomputer. The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has reportedly been tasked with overseeing the development of the new powerhorse, which is slated to be finished by 2017. . At present, India’s fastest supercomputer is housed at CSIR
But regardless of what you’ve been hearing about BYOD, it is far from being a new concept. IT administrators have for long been grappling with the challenges of students bringing their personal laptops and PCs onto campus. What’s changed dramatically of late, the real reason for the renewed interest in this subject has been the mass adoption of smarter devices like tablets and smartphones by students and faculty, and increasing ubiquity of internet access via campus networks and faster mobile networks, not to forget the dizzying array of platforms modern day PCs entail. For our in-depth look at BYOD today, we spoke to institutions that have treaded down the BYOD path to understand the important considerations that have to be made.
Benefits of BYOD Policy There are some obvious benefits of adopting a BYOD approach beyond the obvious cost savings that the institution can free up to spend on other resources. Leveraged with the right use of multimedia resources, BYOD can stand to bring about a higher education revolution as it has the potential to enhance a university’s offerings and a student’s experience inside and outside the lecture hall. Imagine the possibilities of not only using your standard textbooks but all the power of educational apps, website research and free online
TECHNOLOGy
Center for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulation in Bengaluru, delivering a top performance of 303.9 teraflops ( supercomputer’s performance is measured in FLOPS or Floating Point Operations Per Second). Telecom and IT minister, Kapil Sibal has supposedly written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, detailing a Rs. 4,700 crore investment over the next five years to develop a range of petaflop and exaflop speed supercomputers. According to reports, Sibal has proposed that the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) oversee the supercomputing development.
educational resources such as ITunes University within the classroom! Such learning is typically referred to as blended learning, and the result is a student that is typically more engaged, learns 21st century skills, and enjoys increased learning outcomes. Dr JS Sodhi, Assistant Vice President, IT, Amity Group adds an interesting perspective that at Amity Group, they do not restrict what make or model of device connects to their network—as long as they are authenticated—under the BYOD policy. According to him, this gives a user flexibility to use any device that is convenient for him or her. For students, it is a big advantage as they are able to use the familiar computing device at home and school, which means that they are able to access all of the digital resources that they were accessing in school at home as well. Reading a research note in class at the close of the session? Simply bookmark the content and review it later since the device remains the same. An intangible benefit—students are more responsible with their own hardware and its upkeep with a BYOD approach, and studies show that they are more willing to troubleshoot their own devices as a first resort, before calling for IT support.
Myths about BYOD Debunked As long as BYOD policies have been in place, there have been some common myths surrounding them. Myth 1: BYOD increases digital divide among students While it may be true that some students can bring in the latest hardware into class and others may be lacking the financial resources to afford the same, the fallout has a positive aspect as well. BYOD policies often relieve pressure on the institution’s existing IT resources allowing students who don’t have their own devices to use the computer lab infrastructure more freely. Myth 2: BYOD causes students to be distracted in the classroom However, leading educators have begun accepting the fact that including newer technologies and connected classrooms into their pedagogy leads to learners who are more engaged than traditional textbook taught students. What’s more, as students discover how to learn with their devices, they are able to extend their learning beyond the academic hours and often choose to continue participating in online discussions and collaborative activities. Of course,
Students are more responsible with their own hardware and its upkeep with a
BYOD approach
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TECHNOLOGy
BYOD
Tech Snippet | News for use
Amazon Kindle Store in India, Junglee may shut Amazon’s Kindle ebook readers are popular handheld digital reading devices, and the company itself is an unrivalled e-commerce giant. India’s market potential with a growing number of consumers, with a voracious appetite for technology and IT products meant it was only a matter of time before the Amazon established its presence in India earlier this year. Junglee.com and the Amazon Kindle Store were ushered in. But those initiatives might face the full brunt of India’s government policy shortly, even resulting in shutdown of Amazon’s operations in India.
this goes hand in hand with clear responsible use policies and having clear consequences in place for policy violations. Myth 3: BYOD will lead to students indulging in dangerous activities oncampus Let’s face facts—students are living in a world with more access to technology than we have ever experienced. Not only is trying to ban them from connecting digitally from their myriad devices futile, but also it doesn’t prepare them for the corporate world ahead, which encourages the use of any tool and resources to extract productivity. Instead, a properly-framed BYOD policy should aim at teaching students responsible use of resources at hand (including Internet infrastructure) inking necessary consequences in case of violations, just as is the case in real life. By addressing the problem rather than the tools, we take big steps towards creating responsible students.
BYOD Challenges IT administrators often informally refer to BYOD as “Bring Your Own Disaster”. Understandably, as it is they who face the challenge of providing seamless access to innumerable numbers of devices on campus. There are some downsides to BYOD, which if not addressed can throw the IT infrastructure into a tailspin. For example, issues around software licences whereby licence terms do not allow installation of software on machines
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The Indian government’s policy on FDI in retail has a section that forbids foreign retailers (like Amazon.com) to engage in any sort of online e-commerce activity. The new government regulations restrict foreign retailers to operate through a bricks and mortar store only, and not indulge in ecommerce, with no exceptions. The Indian government has also made it mandatory for foreign retail companies like Amazon who want to officially expand their business operations in the country to source 30 per cent of its goods and services locally for their first five years of operations in India.
BYOD: Bring Your Own Device In Conversation with Rohit Dhand, Additional Dean and Head, Division of Information Technology, LPU What is the BYOD policy you have implemented at LPU? At LPU, staff members can choose to bring in their smartphones, iPads, tablets, etc. for accessing the network resources apart from the laptops which are provided to access the internal University Management System (UMS) ERP system. We even have applications for accessing important UMS functions available for popular mobile platforms like iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. The same holds for students as well. Having said that, our policy clearly states the devices that can integrate and work with the network and the UMS, and what activities are not allowed on the network or banned altogether. For example, sniffers, proxy applications like UltraSurf, network monitors, etc. are not allowed, as it compromises user and institution security. Also, we have clear guidelines around acceptable
Rohit Dhand
Additional Dean and Head, Division of Information Technology, LPU Internet usage and what applications can connect to the Internet.
Since the implementation of the BYOD policy, what benefits has LPU seen from this approach? As an institution, LPU has seen many benefits accrue out of BYOD. Students and faculty can access different types of information anywhere, anytime on the campus, at the click of a button. In addition, we are able to disseminate information fast and to the
BYOD
Tech Snippet | New Devices
Intel Ultrabooks to get voice, gesture recognition So you have introduced BYOD in your institute, and are amazed with the kind of devices that your students are getting . Learning in your institute has become more interactive. Come next year and you may just get to hear that your students now have laptops that take interactive learning to the next level. “A massive amount of innovation is coming in the next generation of thin-and-light ultrabooks,” Intel executive Kirk Skaugen said at the Intel Developer Conference recently. The chip giant is preparing its fourth-generation core chips,
TECHNOLOGy
code-named Haswell, for a new rush of ultrabooks in 2013 that will feature smartphone-like voice recognition, touch, finger tracking, augmented reality, and gesturebased interfaces courtesy of clipon sensors, which will eventually be integrated into laptops. Imagine what that could mean for learning for students both inside and outside the classrooms. Intel has teamed up with some key partners to begin rolling out some of those interface capabilities. Later this year, it will release an introductory software developer package it’s calling Intel Perceptual Computing SDK Beta.
enables information anytime, anywhere concerned person/class in no time. With the extended reach of the UMS outside campus as well, parents are able to see attendance, result, and important messages relating to their wards within no time.
And any downsides? Of course, with any technology, there will be people who will try to misuse it. At LPU, we have dealt with a number of such cases, such as actions towards cracking of passwords, stealing sensitive information and virus related concerns. We actively discourage the usage of websites and bittorrent software that can potentially harm the system/network or infringe on copyrights. And finally, there is an overhead involved with the management of the users and technical support for BYOD users, connecting to the network.
You mentioned technical support; can you elaborate on that point? What about education licences to software? To gain access to the network, each user’s device has to register itself in the network, along with a further
authentication for accessing the ERP System and Internet. We do provide technical support to the users who genuinely want to use their personal devices in the network with proper authentication and as per the policy of the system. For software licenses, we have tie ups with different multinationals in which we have campus agreements, by the virtue of which, the software can not only be used and installed in the labs or servers, but it also can be used by the faculty on laptops and desktops. For e.g. Symantec Antivirus is freely distributed to the staff members under the campus arrangement.
Finally, what are the dos and donts you would like to advocate for other institutions looking at framing a BYOD policy? This is a tough question to answer, as needs may vary from institution to institution. Dos: a. The BYOD should cover and address only standard devices that can really increase productivity of the students/ staff, for e.g. iPads, tablets, laptops etc. and should not encourage
connecting iPods, music systems, etc. to the network as they are not related to meeting educational need. b. IT resources and staff must be in place and geared up to support and allow full use of BYOD devices. c. The institutions should clearly define the areas/places where these devices can be used; otherwise it will hinder the regular day to day working. Donts: a. To protect individuals and network security, institutions should not allow the use of network sniffers, network applications and torrents on these personal devices. b. Students must be made to understand the restricted usage of BYOD devices in classrooms, to allow focus on more important activities at hand.
Further Reading Resources: 1. When it’s BYOD, Bring Your Own Device at OnlineCollege.org - http:// bit.ly/PlqLLg 2. BYOD – an educational revolution? - http://bit.ly/ NlO2wl
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TECHNOLOGy
Google Hangouts
that are not college owned. That is a tradeoff a BYOD user has to accept, but one that will become less prevalent as BYOD becomes mainstream. Also, concerns around security crop up—with laptops and smartphones increasingly being used on the internet, institutions have to be very clear about updated antivirus and Windows security patch levels before a machine connects to their network. Another complaint comes around device support—a lot of BYOD users assume that like the college IT infrastructure, their machines will be supported both in terms of hardware and software by the IT staff. IT staff should be held responsible for con-
cerns around physical and software connectivity to the network, and individual users will have to assume responsibility on their hardware and software concerns. Clear policies are critical so that the IT department is not overwhelmed. As Dr J S Sodhi adds, “Technical support is a downside to BYOD, since there is such a variety of devices in use nowadays. Our support extends to supporting internet and network resource access to BYOD users, but not beyond (educational software licenses are only installed on institution owned computers).”
Key Considerations
As with any IT policy, a clear identification of goals is paramount. A good start is a survey on gadgets and devices your students own. Set up adequate security infrastructure and filters, including some mechanism to provide access only to authenticated users. Ensure that your network resources are platform agnostic—preferably web or browser-based since that caters to the maximum number of devices. Above all, frame up a Responsible or Acceptable Use Policy which defines where the devices can be used and when, browsing dos and dont’s, security (antivirus and password policies) etc.
Tech TUTES
Using Google Hangouts better By Tushar Kanwar
Use Hangouts For Education
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r k u t , Go o g l e Wa v e , out is easy, not to mention it’s free! Just Google Plus—In the dizcreate a Google+ account, and click the zying world of online “Start a Hangout” button. The technical social networks, Google’s aspects of Google+ Hangouts—a onevarious social offerings time installation of supporting software haven’t quite made the impact they had and identifying your webcam and audio hoped for. However, out of Google Plus inputs—are extremely basic and intuihas come a feature which is not only tive. Once you’ve started a hangout, up to unmatched across the 10 different users or groups social world, but one that of individuals at one locapresents a host of interesttion can join the hangout READER ROI ing opportunities educators and multi-video-chat and Google+ Hangouts is a group video can explore. collaborate. Here are some conferencing It’s called Google Plus innovative use cases for service Hangouts, and at its core, Google Plus Hangouts in You can invite upto it’s simply a group video education I’ve seen—try 10 classes or conferencing service, albeit one or try them all to see people to participate in the one on steroids, with feawhich one is best for your hangout. Great tures that can match profesclass or institution! for multi-campus sional video conferencing Be in 10 Places at the varisties solutions. Starting a HangSame Time: The most obvi-
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Google Hangouts has features that almost match professional video conferencing solutions one-time installation of suppiorting software and identifying your webcam and audio inputs—are extremely basic and intuitiveer
ous use is to take a class without having to be in 10 different locations. You can invite up to nine additional classes or individuals to participate in the class— perfect for multi-campus institutes where there is perhaps only one teacher for a specialised discipline but a few students in various campuses interested in learning, or for that matter for sick or travelling students who are not able to attend the class. Or for guest lectures, for that matter—it might be cost-prohibitive for small schools to bring in experts for in-person lectures, but just about anyone can ask to connect with an expert over
Google Hangouts
Tech Snippet | Mobile Tool
Voice-based navigation service from Bharti You are going to a new venue for that conference and driving. You can locate it if you look at that navigation tool on your phone, but you will have to stop the car. Don’t you wish you had something to help you save that time? Bharti Airtel’s just launched navigation service called SmartDrive could be that tool you were looking for. The navigation service, only available for Airtel customers, features voicebased turn by turn navigation, real time information update
Hangouts, bringing a valuable resource into the classroom. Research Projects/Events: If you have the need to collaborate or brainstorm with a set of non-residential students around an event or research study after hours, why make them stay on campus when they can easily join the discussion from their own homes? Better still, this is a perfect way to invite a subject matter expert to participate in the discussions without the pain of travelling. What’s more, Google now allows users to add and create docs in Google Hangouts, making it easy to collaboratively edit documents right in the middle of a Hangout! Campus Previews: Using pre-scheduled Hangouts, admissions counselors can chat with students and discuss what it’s like to attend their college or university. Using the power of smartphones and wireless networks, what’s to prevent your admissions department from conducting a live virtual tour for prospective or confirmed students? Recruitment Chats: The bane of campus placement cells is companies from across the country unwilling to travel on campus. With Google+ Hangouts, placement departments can set up virtual college job fair, offering Q&A sessions for the admissions process and even highlighting important people on campus like department chairs, and going further, allow for interviews of shortlisted candidates by company personnel without stepping out of their offices!
TECHNOLOGy
on traffic, and also lets users see their location on the map and plan the journey accordingly. Airtel’s SmartDrive app features information about restaurants, theatres and shopping malls. Along with turn by turn voice navigation, SmartDrive also gives an approximate time of the travel, on the basis of the traffic situation on the various routes. The service is currently available for Delhi and NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore. The company will be expanding the service to Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad by December.
Upto 10 users or groups of individuals at one location can join the hangout and multi-video chat and collaborate for various projects
Documents can be created and edited collaboratively right in the middle of a Hangout
Virtual Office Hours: As an educator, it can be difficult to schedule face to face time with all your students on campus, but with Hangouts, teachers can designate a time to address individual or class questions and concerns in a once-a-week post-hours session. These can be extended to help sessions to assist students who may need a little extra support in grasping specific nuances of a subject. Review Lectures: If your educators regularly post their teaching videos on YouTube, they can integrate them into a Hangout, and allow the audience to simply re-watch your lecture within the Hangout, pausing for re-teaching or reemphasising a specific point. Career Spotlights: Do you have a close relationship with your students’ parents?
You can invite parents who are in particular industries of interest to log on onto a Hangout and host a career spotlight explaining what working in their industries entails. An industry outreach programme with the corporate sector, possibly with alumni placed successfully in these sectors, can achieve the same. Recent graduates can connect with current students through Hangouts, offering personal chats on what life is like after graduation and the specific areas of development for the current batches to be better prepared to address the needs of the industry. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters October 2012 EduTech
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TECHNOLOGy
Interview
Milind Kamat Was Chief Strategy Officer at Marlabs before joining Ellucian Has been VP and Head Strategic solutions at TCS Has Master’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Marquette University, USA
Tech INTERVIEW
Milind Kamat, Vice President and Country Head, India, Ellucian
Use IT to help drive Quality Milind Kamat, India Head, Ellucian on his company and on how higher-ed can improve efficiency in all areas with technology What led to the combination of Datatel and SunGard Higher Education and the formation of Ellucian? How has it helped you? Combining Datatel and SunGard Higher Education aligns two of the most respected, customer-centric firms in the higher education market. Each company has experienced strong financial performance and together, will be able to address the evolving needs of the education sector. The strategic combination of SGHE and Datatel is all about finding
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new opportunities to better serve customers, and in the process, benefit the business by: •Continuing to support and invest in both companies’ solutions •Providing a broader portfolio to customers and newer services opportunities that will benefit the business •Accelerating research and development to provide new capabilities through pooled investments targeting specific technologies • Leveraging the collaboration and knowledge-sharing of best practices across an expanded global community on education professionals. Ellucian is now the largest provider focused on Higher Education solutions worldwide. The separation from SunGard reaffirms the focus on Higher Edu-
Interview
Tech Snippet | Internet Tip
Now use Google Handwrite to search If you are a leader at a higher-ed institution then you are from a generation that wrote more than typed on the keyboard. You may still like writing more than typing. If you do then this is what you may be waiting for to make you more efficient in looking for information to run your institution better. Google recently added handwriting recognition to make Google search easier for its mobile users by adding handwriting recognition. Known as Google Handwrite, the feature supports over 20 different languages,
cation as opposed to being focused on more than one vertical.
What is Ellucian all about? Ellucian helps education institutions thrive in an open and dynamic world. We deliver a broad portfolio of technology solutions, developed in collaboration with a global education community, and provide strategic guidance to help education institutions of all kinds navigate change, achieve greater transparency, and drive efficiencies. More than 2,300 institutions in 40 countries around the world look to Ellucian for the ideas and insights that will move education forward, helping people everywhere discover their futures through learning. What makes Ellucian focus on higher education? This era of pervasive technology has significant implications for higher education. Ellucian has 40 years of success in delivering exceptional higher education technology solutions and services We have a strong presence in higher education, and we know this sector like no-one else. How different is the Indian higher education sector from other markets you have been in? In India, education is going through a transformation. Over the last few years, this sector has witnessed a large number of reforms and expansion and this has
TECHNOLOGy
and is now also available for Indian users. To activate Handwrite, users need to visit www.google. com/preferences on the web browser. Go to the settings, and enable the Handwrite settings. Click save to confirm the changes. To use the feature, tap the icon on the bottom right corner of the screen. It’s notable that Handwrite lets you scribble on any part of the screen along with the search box.
caused a lot of private players to enter into the market. For Indian universities in particular, the burden of responsibility is especially greater than in any other part of the world because we are the youngest country on the planet, and in another 20 years, more than half the world’s workforce will be from India. Education for everyone would be a dream come true for India and for this, institutions must have a varied mechanisms of reach for the learners. Options like e-Learning, virtual campuses etc. are becoming more popular in India. The learner population also poses an interesting challenge for the institutions. Many learners are first generation learners and come from socio-economically poor or lower middle class families who aspire to be educated. The other type of learner is a life-long learner who just wants to keep updating his or her knowledge on an ongoing basis and these people can be homemakers, NGOs or from the industry. In terms of technology sensitivity, India is very price conscious and will need a student-based model of access to solutions. There is also a slow adoption of technology because of budgetary and manpower pressures. However, the pressure to become global and wanting to reach to a wider student base will force institutions to adopt technology solutions at a more rapid pace. The past few years have witnessed a
systematic investment in the higher education sector in India, however, the country does not have world-class research facilities nor well-trained scholars, academicians or scientists to sustain technological development. Meanwhile, some of India’s major competitors especially China, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea are significantly investing in large and differentiated higher education systems. These countries are investing millions of dollars on research based universities that are able to compete with some of the world’s best institutions. Although India has a large higher education sector—in fact, the third largest in the world in student population, after China and the United States—there are very few topclass institutions that provide quality higher education to students. As per the recent international rankings, India lacks world-class universities and educational institutions and Indian academics are rather poorly paid in comparison to their international counterparts. Some of the major hindrances to providing high-quality education or cutting-edge research is the under-investment in libraries, Information Technology, poor infrastructure, laboratories and classrooms. Today, as India strives to stay ahead in a fast-growing, globalised economy, the quality of higher education has become increasingly significant. In order to compete in the 21st century knowledge-based October 2012 EduTech
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TECHNOLOGy
Interview
economy, the nation requires educational institutions that not only produce highlyskilled students but can also support sophisticated, cutting-edge research in various scientific and technological fields.
What are the major challenges in terms of technology adoption in the higher education sector? Higher Education is known for its conservative response to new technology adoption. Some challenges that contribute to this behavior are: •Economic pressures Let us face the fact that IT budgets of an educational institution are not adequate for them to take a holistic view •Manpower Higher Education has the limitation of not being able to attract and retain top talent to adopt technology and the ability to retain talent due to budgetary constraints •Status Quo In many cases, the comfort level with the processes and practices existing is so high that it becomes a resistance to technology adoption which forces introduction of new processes and practices •Problem of choice The variety of technology options available in the market and vociferous sold by vendors creates a problem of choice where the focus tends to narrow down on the technology rather than on how the technology will help meet organisational objectives •Focus on the bigger picture The technology focus currently is problem-specific or issue-specific. The organisational structure of the institutions invariably creates silos and hence the focus on the bigger picture is lost. To ensure that the technology initiatives provide transformational capability to the institutions, they need to be preceded with an organisational change management (which is unheard of ) to propel the change. What are some of the areas in a higher education set-up which you believe must use technology for greater efficiency? Information Technology is a game changer. It can deliver content instantly, bring distant individuals together,
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“To ensure that the technology initiatives provide transformational capability to the institutions, they need to be preceded with an organisation change management” —Milind Kamat
Country Head, Ellucian
and make administrative processes faster. But to really change the game, IT must be used differently. Because of IT we can collect data on individual interactions and use that information to predict who is at risk of failing, tailoring interventions to their needs. The same data can be used to create recommendation engines, reminiscent of Amazon or Netflix, that help students select the best courses for their skill level and needs or plan a more efficient pathway to their degree. IT allows people from around the world to collaborate, learning from each other and creating more than any one person could individually. Some themes that can benefit from technology are: • Guidance and Personalisation IT allows students to get the information they need to make better decisions on courses, faculty etc. •Attracting the right talent With the wide choice available for students, every institution needs to effectively target the right student with the right incentives. A CRM solution will help an institutions create and drive campaigns and attract the right talent • Quality and Anywhere learning experience The closest that we have got is to have programs which are just put on a technology platform using traditional teaching methods this needs to change. Resources are scarce in any higher education institute in India. The challenges around physical infrastructure, teaching infrastructure and to a large extent, teach-
ers epitomizes the key challenges that the institutes are facing •Driving the Quality of education An effective pedagogy which is a hybrid of conventional teaching, online learning and collaborative models especially keeping the industry requirement in mind can be developed. •Measuring Progress Key Performance Indicators could be set up and their progress could be measured. These KPIs could be indicators that are driving the institution up the curve of academic excellence. This would also help them ease the accreditation process. •Efficient Administrative Operations and Self-service This can free-up valuable time of administrative staff •Improving Management and control In the deemed University model and other similar models in India, it is currently very difficult to exercise control over all the critical parameters that drive the quality of education and administration. Technology can be a key enabler to provide the information which can facilitate decision making and control. Technology can act as an enabler across these areas which results in optimal usage of resources thereby deriving the maximum value from the same. Technology also enables increasing reach without having to replicate physical infrastructure. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters
the global perspective From
o f h i g h e r e d u c at i o n
INSIDE 53 | More European Universities Tracking Graduates’ Progress 55 | A Push Grows Abroad for Open Access to Publicly Financed Research
African Students See China as a Path to a Prosperous Future China is attractive not just because of low tuitions but also because it’s opening doors for jobs in companies back home By Ryan Brown
by photos.com
I
The Lure: China is attracting African students and also shoring up its relations with the continent in the process
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n 2011, Gontse Nosi, a South African, was working for an electricity company when he heard about an unusual opportunity—to earn a Master’s degree in China, paid for by the Chinese government. He applied and was accepted to a programme at the Beijing University of Technology to study renewable energy. There was just one problem. The programme was taught entirely in Mandarin, and Nosi didn’t speak a word of it. So for the first year of his studies, the Chinese government arranged for him to live in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where he attended intensive language classes for 10 hours a day. And although that may seem like a winding path to a degree that Nosi could have earned at home, the added investment, he says, was worth it. “There are Chinese businesses in South Africa now, and South African businesses in China,” he says. “Studying there will really open doors for me when I want to find a job.” Nosi is part of a growing cadre of African students whose pursuit of an internationally recognised university degree has taken them not to Europe or the United States but to China. The country hopes to become a major destination for international students, with some 293,000 currently enrolled in its universities—more than 20,000 of them from Africa. The figures are small but rising rapidly: As late as 2006, African students made up only 2 per cent of foreign students in China. And nearly one-third of the scholarships given by the Chinese government to foreign students now go to Africans. American colleges, by contrast, have failed to raise their
Global.Chronicle.Com In the 1960s, the Chinese government enrollments from Africa, which have hovered began to sponsor a small cadre of internationaround 36,000 since 2006, or about 5 per cent al students from new postcolonial states to of the total international-student population. foster solidarity in the so-called third world. African students are being lured to China by Flush with revolution and full of newly emerga free education or low tuition (around $4,500 ing socialist states, Africa became an obvious per year), the hope of a job with one of the ChiSign up for a free weekly target for this new educational exchange, and nese corporations scattered across Africa, or electronic newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education at in 1961 the first group of 118 African students simply an escape from overcrowded domestic Chronicle.Com/Globalnewsletter arrived to great fanfare in Beijing. universities. Whatever their motives, African The Chronicle of Higher Education is The experience did not end well. students also hold a symbolic importance for a US-based company with a weekly Blindsided by racism and isolation, 96 of the leaders both on the continent and in newspaper and a website updated original group of students returned to their China itself. daily, at Global.Chronicle.com, that cover all aspects of university life. home countries by the following year. Over the past decade, China has risen to With over 90 writers, editors, and China’s Cultural Revolution also cut short become Africa’s single-largest trading partner, correspondents stationed around those first feeble exchange programmes, but and its stake in the continent is mushrooming. the globe, The Chronicle provides when the government reinstated its scholarFrom 2003 to 2011, China’s direct investment timely news and analysis of academships for African students, in the 1970s, they in Africa rose from $100-million to $12-billion. ic ideas, developments and trends. began to return. In the decades that followed, Like Chinese-built superhighways in Kenya or African students continued to filter into Chinese corporations mining diamonds in China, drawn by the undeniable lure of a Zambia, drawing African students to China free education. offers a way for the country to shore up its diplomatic and finanThe pace quickened in the mid-2000s, when the newly-foundcial relationship with the continent. ed Forum on China-Africa Cooperation began to endorse the And Chinese educational investment—whether in the form expansion of Chinese government scholarships for African stuof drawing African students to China, the building of Chinesedents as part of its bid to improve diplomacy with the African language institutes across the continent, or Chinese aid to Africontinent. From 2000 to 2007, 12,000 African students received can universities—has a special potency on a continent scarred government scholarships to study in China. In 2009 alone, by European colonialism. It offers a new channel of internamore than 4,000 African students won Chinese funds for their tional educational opportunity for African students, one that degrees. And as they arrived in the country, paying students sidesteps the West altogether. began to follow. “Not just the universities but the country of China itself is a Many paying students come not because they are particularly learning experience for students from my country,” says Yilak drawn to China, but because they have struggled to find instituElu, an Ethiopian who completed a master’s degree in internations to meet their needs in their home countries. And they tional development at Beijing’s Tsinghua University. “We go often steer clear of Western universities because they are wary there to see how a country can develop itself quickly.” of the cost and the maze of immigration bureaucracy that awaits them there. A Complicated History “Whatever you pay, a degree is a degree,” says Rowena Ungen, Although Africans have flocked to Chinese universities in siga South African student who earned her medical degree from nificant numbers only in the past decade, the history of diploShandong University. “People see that, and that’s why they matic relations between Beijing and the continent is littered don’t want to go to England anymore.” with attempts to recruit African students. And visas for most African students are far easier to come by in China than in Europe, creating an added draw. “You can see how closed the doors to education in the West have become to many African students,” says Heidi Haugen, a PhD candidate in the department of sociology and human geography at the University of Oslo who studies Africans living in China. “They can’t get a visa to Europe, so they go to China instead.”
Nearly one-third of the scholarships given by the Chinese government to foreign students now go to Africans
A Lucrative Business Despite the comparative ease of getting permission to study in China, the daunting process of applying to a Chinese university is still a major hurdle to many applicants. That’s where companies like World Universities Creating Opportunities come in. Tucked into the back room of a fengOctober 2012 EduTech
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THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE shui business in a neat suburb of Johannesburg, WUCO is a new kind of player in the China-Africa education scene. Founded in 2011, the company helps South African students gain acceptance to Chinese universities, shepherding them through the process of getting admitted, applying for visas, booking plane tickets, and settling into their dormitories in China. “Until we can do something enormous to expand our universities here, there’s going to be a big demand to go abroad,” says Di Visser, assistant to the company’s director. “Many of our students can’t afford America or Europe, and they’re seeing that the education you can get in China is really top class.” WUCO sent eight students to China last year, all of them would-be doctors who didn’t win admission to one of South Africa’s own medical schools, which accept only 1,200 students each year and rely on strict racial quotas to fill their courses. Those students, says Visser, are attractive to the Chinese government. “They’re hardworking, and they abide by the rules,” she says. “In China you don’t get involved in politics or take drugs—you don’t push the boundaries. You just blend in and study and get your degree.” Educational networks, from organised companies like WUCO to informal groups of students already in China helping friends back home with their applications, have a big role to play in expanding the number of African students in China, Haugen says, because many Chinese universities still lack the resources and knowhow to aid foreign students. “It’s part of the commercialisation of emigration from Africa more generally,” she says. “It’s very hard to go abroad if you don’t have resources and contacts, so those who do can easily turn it into a business.” A large portion of the African students who come to China, however, still rely on the old standby of Chinese educational exchange: the government-sponsored scholarship. This year the Chinese government estimated that it would bring 5,500 African students to China with all expenses paid. And in July, at the most recent Forum on China-Africa Cooperation meeting, Hu Jintao, China’s president, pledged an additional 18,000 governmental scholarships for Africans in coming years. The Chinese Embassy in South Africa refused repeated requests for comment on its scholarship programme. But Ruth Roberts, deputy director of international relations at South Africa’s Department of Higher Education and Training, who helps manage the selection process for Chinese-government scholarships in her country, says that the Chinese goal is to create a layer of African society that has direct experience of China. Those people, she says, will carry forward their experiences into their careers. “China has historically always tried to have a strong relationship with Africa,” she says. “These scholarships give China a
way to have African students experience their country and then spread knowledge of the place when they return home.” Scholarships also dovetail with another international-education programme sponsored by the Chinese government, Confucius Institutes. There are now 16 of those language- and cultural-training centers in Africa, helping prepare a younger generation of students to engage with China.
Career Connections Elu, of Ethiopia, is a prime example of the type of African student the Chinese hope to attract. Before he went to China for his Master’s degree, he was working for a Chinese construction firm in the city of Addis Ababa. There, he says, his Chinese colleagues repeatedly talked up the value of a Chinese education. And Elu didn’t have to look far on the streets of Addis—to the new Chinese-built African Union headquarters, for instance, or the gleaming Tirunesh-Beijing Ethio-China Friendship Hospital—to see that experience with Chinese language and culture could be a major boon to his career. “The Ethiopian government is wanting to follow the experience of China in developing,” he says, so when he returned to Ethiopia, it was “very easy” to land his current job as an adviser to the ministries of transportation and urban development and construction. The rigor of selection processes for scholarships like Elu’s vary. But however a student ends up with the scholarship, its demands are exacting. Undergraduate students awarded government scholarships, for instance, are required to complete their degree in Mandarin. For nearly all of them, that means the first year of study is spent completing an intensive language programme to prepare them for enrollment in their degree programme. When Nosi, of South Africa, arrived in China, he learned that his Mandarin classes would stretch from 8am to 6pm each day, with hours of homework to follow. Professors, he says, demanded rote memorisation and had no patience for students who missed classes or didn’t turn in assignments. “You’re going to sleep at 1 a.m. and then getting up at 7 every day,” he says. “But that’s how it is for Chinese students as well, and they just expect the same of us.” Studying in China involved another adjustment: a constant, unrelenting inability to blend in. Outside of major cities and university towns, Nosi and others say, they frequently encountered Chinese who had never seen a black person before. “Kids especially would come up to me when I was walking and touch my hair and skin,” says Thandi Phiri, a Zambian student who studied development at Tsinghua University, in Beijing. For Phiri, learning to represent and explain her culture proved to be one of the most powerful experiences she had in China. After graduation, she moved to Gaborone, Botswana,
This year an estimated
5,500
African students will go to China with all expenses paid
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Global.Chronicle.Com where she founded a yearly expo promoting local entrepreneurship and cultural pride. “Being in China and answering so many questions about your culture really makes you introspective about it,” she says. “When I came home I wanted to continue developing that sense of cultural pride I felt in China.” For other students, the benefits of studying in China are even more obvious. When Isac John, a Tanzanian student who completed his pharmacology degree at Shandong University in 2010, returned home, he took a job as a pharmacist at one of the country’s many Chinese hospitals. The doctors he worked with
were all Chinese, he says, and he was using his fluent Mandarin daily. “When I first started studying about medicines and science in Chinese, I thought I would give up because it was so difficult,” he says. “But now in Tanzania, when I’m speaking to Chinese people, if you close your eyes you won’t know which one is me.” Subscribe to a free weekly electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter
More European Universities Tracking Graduates’ Progress A study in 31 European countries on what universities know about how their students fare found interesting results By Aisha Labi
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growing number of European universities are tracking the progress of their students and graduates for a multitude of purposes. Their efforts remain largely uncoordinated, however, and the potential of the vast amounts of data they are gathering is not being fully exploited. These are among the findings of a twoyear study that analysed the approaches higher-education institutions and governments in 31 European countries have used to follow people’s progress during their time in university and beyond. Michael Gaebel, head of the highereducation-policy unit at the European University Association, which represents universities and rectors’ conferences in 47 countries, has led the Trackit project, which he says arose from the deceptively simple desire to find out
University and Beyond: Tracking progress helps to reform study programmes, student counseling, career advice, and quality assurance
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THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE what universities know about how their students and graduates are faring. “This was the starting point,” he says, but even this apparently straightforward line of inquiry proved more complicated than it first appeared. Profound transformations in higher education in recent years have included huge increases in student numbers, greater focus on graduate employability, and Europe-wide shifts in the ways in which students pursue degree programmemes through the Bologna Process, the vast effort begun in 1999 whereby 47 countries are harmonising their degree systems. These changes have meant that the progress of individual students is no longer as closely monitored as was once the case in many systems where students were under the direct supervision of a sole academic. To the surprise of the project’s organisers, there had been no Europe-wide effort to track how students progress through the educational cycle, despite increasing cooperation in many other areas as a result the Bologna Process. “There was no real European concept about this,” says Gaebel, noting that although many of the Bologna discussions emphasised learning outcomes and quality assurance, they did not get to the level of tracking students’ progress. At the same time, the changes that have resulted from the Bologna reforms, which in many countries overhauled the content and duration of traditional degrees, have added to the urgency of assessing the student experience and the success of graduates in obtaining jobs. “People are craving to have a better discussion about this,” says Gaebel. Despite the absence of a coordinated European effort and the lack of even a commonly agreed notion of what specifically tracking entails, the two-year study has shown that most countries appear to be developing tracking programmes. “You have pockets of good practices and initiatives,” says Gaebel, and several countries already have relatively sophisticated tracking mechanisms in place. At least some higher-education institutions in all but one of the 31 countries surveyed are doing some tracking, using the
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The progress of individual students is no longer as closely monitored as was once the case in many systems results for a range of purposes, including the reform of study programmes, student counseling, career advice, and quality assurance. In 23 of the countries surveyed, tracking is done on a regular basis at the national level, with the resulting data used for national statistics and analysis and policy planning, as well as in budget-allocation decisions by government agencies.
Reducing Dropout Rates In Ireland, a national project on the firstyear experience of university students has helped reduce dropout rates by tracking students at specific crisis points, such as when major assignments are due, and following up with students who appear to be at risk. In Britain, recent higher-education reforms that include an emphasis on making information about institutions more open have resulted in a wealth of information, much of it based on data culled from tracking, being made available to students, parents, and employers for comparison. Denmark has robust national tracking provisions as well as some well-developed institutional programmes. Marianne Huang, vice dean for education at Aarhus University’s faculty of arts, says that Aarhus has the most comprehensive student-satisfaction survey in Denmark, which it conducts every three years to get feedback at each stage of the three-year undergraduate degree cycle. The university compiles and analyses information on students as well as on graduates one and five years after they leave the university. The results provide an overall sense of how satisfied stu-
dents are with faculty contact, interactions with other students, and facilities, but the challenge is how to act on such comprehensive data to boost the university’s performance, she says. The Trackit project is adding a new dimension to tracking, she says, with its focus on analysis, follow-up, and feedback. “That’s something new,” she says. She points to the results of a recent national survey that showed that humanities graduates had the highest rates of entrepreneurship among Danish graduates as one way in which tracking data can help an institution tailor its offerings. “What this points to is that humanities students are willing to take risks,” she says, and that finding could, for example, help shape the kinds of internships students are encouraged to pursue. By adopting that kind of analysis, Trackit could help universities use existing data “to forecast flexible educations,” she says, and help prepare students for future workplaces for which specific training is not yet established. The results of the Trackit study are being verified by the national rectors’ conferences of the participating countries, and a report due to be published next month will recommend how to follow up on the findings. Although common problems and questions are spurring the increase in tracking, and the value of such data is unchallenged, no single approach is likely to work for all European institutions, Gaebel cautions. At the same time, increased coordination and data-sharing among institutions and national systems could yield valuable dividends and help make uni-
Global.Chronicle.Com versities more responsive to societal demands, helping foster results such as better employability for graduates. The most workable solution is likely to involve tracking systems that rely on data collection by universities within a national framework that allows for international comparisons. The report is also likely to highlight
areas, like international enrollments, in which data remain patchy even in the best-developed tracking systems. In the past, notes Gaebel, most efforts to monitor the progression of students through university and beyond would have excluded international students, as well as other “nontraditional” groups such as online learners and older students. Now,
with their numbers much higher, these groups can no longer be overlooked or tracked separately from “traditional” students.
Subscribe to a free weekly electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter
A Push Grows Abroad for Open Access to Publicly Financed Research Besides open access advocates some publishers also have a stake in coming up with workable open-access model By Jennifer Howard
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esearchers, publishers, and librarians have spent a lot of this year firing up the longstanding debate over access to published research. You’ve probably heard the big questions: Who gets to see the results of work the public helps pay for, when should they get to see it, and who’s going pay for it? This summer, the fervor has gone global, with policy makers in Britain, elsewhere in Europe, and in Australia signaling that they’re ready to come up with some answers. Details vary from country to country and proposal to proposal, but the overall warming trend looks very clear. Last month, David Willetts, the British minister in charge of universities and science, announced that the government had accepted almost all the recommendations in a June report from the Finch Group, a committee set up to explore how to broaden access to published research. Janet Finch, a sociologist and university administrator, led the group, which included several publishers’ representatives as well as open-access advocates and other interested parties. In its response, the government endorsed the idea that publication in open-access journals (or in hybrid OA journals, in which only some of the content is open) should be the goal. It said that public-sector agencies that support research, like Research Councils UK, should find effective, flexible ways to help cover publishing costs while maintaining as much open access to research results as possible.
Open Access Movement Gains Ground: Policy makers in Europe and Australia are ready to come up with answers
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US National Institutes of Health uses a green open-access model that requires researchers to deposit the results of federally-supported work within 12 months of publication And in a statement that ought to gladden the hearts of fair-use advocates, the government said: “Support for open-access publication should be accompanied by policies to minimise restrictions on the rights of use and re-use, especially for non-commercial purposes.” Soon after the British government endorsed the Finch Report, Research Councils UK issued its own updated policy on open access. It spelled out the expectation that researchers whose work is supported by the councils will “maximise the opportunities to make their results available for free.” Then the European Commission weighed in, announcing on July 17 that it would make open access “a general principle of Horizon 2020,” the European Union’s framework for supporting research from 2014-20. In Denmark, meanwhile, a group of government research councils had already come out strongly in favor of open access in late June, in a move that got very little attention elsewhere but adds to the collective momentum for policy changes that we’re seeing on that side of the Atlantic. “The funding agencies in Europe are coming down pretty strongly on the idea that the research they fund should be freely available,” said Michael B. Eisen, an associate professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley and one of the founders of the Public Library of Science, or PLoS, a heavily used open-access publisher. That position “sets a lot of things in motion,” he said. The warming of the open-access climate stretches beyond the trans-Atlantic sphere. There’s word out of Australia that Aidan Byrne, who took over this summer as head of the Australian Research Council, has his eye on the issue. He told The Australian newspaper in late July that he has “a particular interest” in open access and has been keeping tabs on developments around the world. (According to newspaper accounts, Byrne’s predecessor, Margaret Sheil, dismissed repeated calls to embrace open access.) In an e-mail, Byrne confirmed that he’s taking a close look at the issue, talking to “a range of stakeholders and considering factors such as the need to align changes with policies across Australia’s major higher-education funding agencies.” He called the response from the higher-education sector “positive”
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and added that he “will be making a determination on this issue quickly to ensure clarity for the sector.”
Doubts and Debate All this sounds like news that the open-access movement should be happy about. But I’ve seen and heard some dismay among open-access advocates about the news out of Britain. Some suspect that publishers had a strong—maybe too strong—hand in some of the decision making, and that the Finch Group’s recommendations protect publishers’ interests while only seeming to promote open access. Some publishers, though, point out that they too have a stake in coming up with workable open-access models. Springer, a large commercial publisher with a big stable of science journals, had a representative on the Finch Group. Eric MerkelSobotta is Springer’s executive vice president for corporate communications. In an e-mail, he noted that Springer is “the largest openaccess publisher in the world,” with more than 330 journals of fully open access in its SpringerOpen and BioMed Central portfolios. The company offers a hybrid access option, called Springer Open Choice, for more than 1,300 of its subscriptionsupported journals. The company “fully supports—and significantly invests in—open access as a business model,” MerkelSobotta told me. Probably the biggest specific worry I’ve heard about the policy direction in Britain, aside from questions about how to foot the bill, centers on enthusiasm for a model referred to as gold open access. Under that system, journal publishers, not researchers, provide online access to published versions of articles. That gives publishers more control over how the work is shared, and it’s common to impose article-processing charges on authors. Springer likes the gold version, according to Merkel-Sobotta, because it “provides a business model to properly address the question of funding the system of ordered, layered, and certified scientific knowledge” captured in scholarly journals. An alternative to gold is the so-called green model of open access. Authors who take that approach make their research available through repositories, either in final published form or
Global.Chronicle.Com after a manuscript has been peer-reviewed. The U.S. National Institutes of Health uses a green open-access model that requires researchers to deposit the results of federally supported work within 12 months of publication. Open-access advocates contend that the policy has broadened access without hurting publishers’ bottom lines. Publishers sometimes impose an embargo—usually 6 to 12 months after publication—on research made available under the green model. Springer does not support “systematic green open access” that requires less than a 12-month embargo, Merkel-Sobotta told me. “It does not cover the costs associated with formal publication,” he said. Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project, thinks the British government made a mistake when it went for gold over green. Suber is a central figure in the movement toward open access. His book Open Access is due out soon from MIT Press, which is publishing it in its Essential Knowledge series. Gold access will cost more in the long run, Suber argues. He complains that the report by the Finch Group “not only perpetuates some misunderstandings about green b u t p e r p e t u a t e s s o m e n e w o n e s” — f o r i n s t a n c e , that green open access doesn’t entail peer review of articles and doesn’t make work available right away. (Green OA calls for depositing articles after peer review, and much of green OA work is not embargoed.) Still, Suber said, “The UK controversy has brought green and gold into the mainstream conversation,” which represents progress.
Process of Evolution
ment on the issue of public access to research and data. Maybe the administration will decide not to tackle the issue in an election year, but the requests for comments and the petition signal that the question of access has made it onto the agenda. “We’re all expecting a well-informed policy response,” Suber told me. I asked him whether the White House decision might be influenced by the news from across the Atlantic. “It’s not clear what force those European announcements will have,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a nationalist argument. It can be an argument that a lot of smart people have looked at the issues and made this decision.” He points out that when Willetts, of the British government, talks about the issue, the minister often leads with the economic argument for open access—that it encourages innovation. That argument might appeal to policy makers here. Whatever the White House does or doesn’t do, those who support research here and in Britain have already thrown their considerable weight behind open access. Britain’s Wellcome Trust has endorsed “unrestricted access to the published output of research.” The trust “believes that maximising the distribution of these papers—by providing free, online access—is the most effective way of ensuring that the research we fund can be accessed, read, and built upon,” it said. “In turn, this will foster a richer research culture.” The trust, the American-based Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Max Planck Society endorsed wider access last fall when they announced the creation of a new online, open-access, scientist-run journal, eLife. We’re seeing heightened awareness at every level of the scholarly communication ecosystem, from governments on down to researchers and private entrepreneurs. A highly publicised boycott of the science-publishing giant Elsevier, set off by the mathematician Timothy Gowers back in January, might not have had much practical effect, but it packs a symbolic charge. In June, some of the people behind the open-access megajournal PLoS One and the scholarly social network and reference manager Mendeley went public with an alternative approach to open-access publishing. Called PeerJ, their journal works on a membership basis, with potential authors handing over fairly modest fees to be eligible to submit articles. And the biggest commercial players, notably Springer but also Elsevier, have their own experiments with open access up and running. The process of sorting out all these experiments will continue to be messy, and we’ll see a lot more fights over the details. At this point, though, it looks to me like the betting money’s not on whether open access becomes the norm, but when.
European Commission announced that it would make open access a general principle of Horizon
2020
Eisen, another champion of open access, sees more to like than dislike in the news out of Britain. “If you want to dig into the details you can easily find fault,” he said. The heart of the matter, as he sees it, is the British government and the country’s major agencies that support research have endorsed the idea that “’Look, when we pay for research, that research will be publicly available.’” Eisen thinks it’s too easy to bog down in details. “As the systems evolve, they’re going to figure out what works and what doesn’t work.” he said. “It’s really the guiding principles that are important.” One question on my mind is what effect the news from abroad will have on developments in the United States, where government action on the issue is expected soon. In March, a group called Access2Research got more than 25,000 signatures on a petition asking the Obama administration to extend the NIH model and require public access to all publicly financed research. The administration hasn’t responded yet, but the pressure’s on. A spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told me to look for a response “soon.” The petition certainly didn’t catch officials unprepared. In November, the White House policy office sent out calls for com-
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“Indian mind has been shaped by remarkably diverse forces”
VIEWS, REVIEWS & MORE
India’s Tryst with Destiny A fascinating look at India’s foreign policy, replete with insightful anecdotes in a racy narrative style Sangita Thakur Varma From the opening lines recreating Nehru’s historic proclamation of “India’s tryst with destiny”, Shashi Tharoor cleverly weaves his vision of India’s “multi-alignment” by capturing dramatically that unforgettable midnight of August 14, 1947. His pen creates magic as we can almost hear the thunderous pronouncements of our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the Indian Constituent Assembly: “Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and people are too closely knit together today for any of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been indivisible, so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.” This is the premise that Shashi Tharoor goes on to explore, elucidate and hammer forth in Pax Indica. Tharoor’s book is not about a superpower India or a non-aligned India, rather he talks of an India that is “multi-aligned”. The India of the 21st century that Tharoor writes about has a much wider role to
Shashi Tharoor
play in the world. This Pax Indica is not about India, but its “sense of responsibility to the world of which it is such a crucial part—and whose destiny it has earned the right to help shape.” The book is an insightful and informative critique of India’s foreign policy, written with an insider’s understanding of diplomatic affairs. The racy narrative, with a liberal sprinkling of Tharoor’s witticisms and real-life anecdotes, makes this almost 500-page tome a pleasurable read. Though Tharoor never meant Pax Indica to be a scholarly read, the book has turned out to be a mine of information for all—young minds to make “intelligent living room conversations” on foreign policy to mandarins in the South Block working out diplomatic strategies for near and far. In the process, Tharoor holds up India’s foreign relations under his unrelenting gaze as he marches the diplomatic elephant down post-colonial India covering a vast geographical territory and time span to the present reality of the 21st century world. Tharoor does not offer a model policy extrapolated from past trends, rather he does a situation analysis which is country and context specific and then arrives at a set of suggestions that he says India must take into cognisance when formulating its diplomatic ‘derring-do’. All this while, Tharoor is cleverly leading us, step by step, to his grand vision of India of the 21st century. For now, Pax Indica is an insightful look into the world of diplomacy for every Indian. Author: Dr Shashi Tharoor Publisher: Penguin Price: `799
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members to undertake a new direction in college teaching. It focusses on promoting significant student learning through intentional course design and developing learning strategies. A must read. Author: L Dee Fink Publisher: Jossey-Bass Price: $29.10
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EduTech October 2012
In his book, Brookfield offers down-to-
timeout
gADGETS Tech Insider | Tushar
State of the 3D TV Market So you’ve been planning on upgrading from your trusty point-and-shoot camera to something with a bit more creative muscle? Walk into a store and not only will you notice a dizzying array of options on the digital SLR counters, but a new category of cameras is demanding equal billing and pride of place with camera sellers across the country. They’re called mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras, or mirrorless cameras for short, and they’re characterised by, as the name suggests, the lack of a mirror-based optical viewfinder commonly found in digitial SLRs. Eliminating the mirror assembly means you can make these cameras smaller and lighter. Yet by no means are they pushovers or compromises in any sense. What these cameras do is pack in a much bigger image sensor than in pocket cameras, which means image quality can tend to rival that of the traditionally superior digital SLR offering. Couple that with the versatility of interchangeable lenses for different shooting conditions, and you have a camera that is less than half the size of the average digital SLR without the image quality compromise. Sounds too good to be true? There are some trade-offs you should keep in mind. Mirrorless cameras offer a smaller selection of lenses than what you’d normally find for the average digital SLR, and these lenses end up burning a bigger hole in your pocket than the equivalent SLR lenses. So mirrorless or traditional digital SLR? It boils down to the priority you place on portability and performance. DSLRs are still considered the photographic workhorse, and newer models are going a long way in becoming more user-friendly.
A self-confessed gizmo-holic, Tushar Kanwar is a technology columnist with the Telegraph and Business World, and contributes to a variety of technology and lifestyle publications. Tushar’s interests lie at the intersection of consumer technology, internet trends and products that change the world.
Samsung Galaxy Note 800 One look at the device and it really does look good. It has the 10.1-inch display, which is nice, crisp and looks rich. It has fantastic viewing angles and the resolution is 1280x800. It is very light, weighing 597 grams. Samsung has brought the cool multiscreen feature to this tablet, something first seen on the Galaxy S III smartphone. Price: ` 32,961
Dell XPS 14 The Dell XPS 14 is the latest arrival in the Dell XPS ultrabook family, and its desirability factor is more powerful than ever. The updates (over the XPS 13) include a bigger display and the latest Ivy Bridge power package. The build and the materials used are still as brilliant as before— aluminum lid, magnesium palm rest with soft touch and a heat absorbing silicon base. It feels slightly heavier than what you would expect though, and is definitely on the pricier side. Price: ` 85,229
October 2012 EduTech
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legacy “For what is it, after all, that pious men worship in a stone which they place in a temple, but an idea...”–Birbal Sahni
Birbal Sahni Nourish the Institute...
B
irbal Sahni, the renowned paleobotanist told his wife, Savitri Suri, before he died. For, such was his love for his work. The third child of Ishwar Devi and Lala Ruchi Ram Sahni, Sahni was born on November 14, 1891, in Behra located in the Saharanpur district West Punjab (now in Pakistan). His early childhood was spent surrounded by nationalist leaders like Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malviya, Sarojini Naidu and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who were frequent visitors to his house. Sahni’s interest in science was piqued in adoloscence itself influenced by his father, a scientist, innovator, educationist, patriot, social worker and a man of progressive ideas who popularised science in Punjab. Ruchi Ram, a self-made man, who retired from the Government College in Lahore as the senior professor of chemistry in 1918, imbued in Sahni his independence of thought and action. Sahni too educated himself on scholarships and was a self-made man. As a child, Sahni’s love of plants was legendary that he collected and replanted in his herbarium or in bottles to study later. Sahni received his early education from Government College University, Lahore and graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1914. After returning to India, he served as a Professor of Botany at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Punjab University for about a year. In 1917, Sahni joined Professor Seward to work on a ‘Revision of Indian Gondwana Plants’. In 1919, he also worked under the German plant morphologist Goebel in Munich for some time. He was the first to be appointed as the professor and head of botany department in Lucknow University in 1921 that established a reputation under him and soon became the first Centre for Botanical and Paleobotanical investigations in India. His fabulous research work was celebrated and honoured by the University of Cambridge and he was awarded the degree of DSc in 1929. Sahni maintained close relations with researchers around the globe and earned himself a group of devoted students from all parts of the country. He was appointed the Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1936, the highest British scientific honour, first time since its inception, presented to an Indian botanist. He was elected vice president, Paleobotany section, of the 5th and 6th International Botanical Congresses of 1930 and 1935, respectively; general president of the Indian Science Congress for 1940; president, National Academy of Sciences, India, 1937–1939 and 1943-1944. In 1948, he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1950 he became an honorary president of the International Botanical Congress, Stockholm. But he died before he could serve. He founded the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleobotany in Lucknow, India.
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(1891-1949) 1921 Becomes first Head of Botany Department, Lucknow University 1929 Awarded DSc by University of Cambridge 1936 Appointed Fellow of Royal Society London 1946 Established Institute of Paleobotany 1950 Elected honorary President of International Botanical Congress
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