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Dr Vidya Yeravdekar Executive Director, Symbiosis International University

Ajit Rangnekar Dean, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad

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Sudhir Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, on his quest for truth P50

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FOREWORD Can a Non Academic Lead?

“I have come to believe that the leadership of academic institutions is no different from that of other enterprises. You need a good leader to lead. Period.”

hen I was appointed the founding dean of the Indian School of Business, there was strong endorsement from students and administrators, and mixed reactions from the academics. They were sceptical about how a “non-academic” would lead the institution. They were somewhat relieved to learn that I had a PhD from a reputed university, had more than a dozen refereed publications to my credit, and had worked as a tenure-track teacher and researcher on the faculty of a top university. Despite the fact that I had been an academic for only two years of my 10-year professional career at that point, it was still the redeeming feature that contributed to my being accepted as the leader of an institution by the business academic community. My own instinct, too, was that it took an academic to attract other academics — and without an academic in the top role, ISB would flounder. I have since changed my view. I have come to believe that the leadership of academic institutions is no different from that of other enterprises. You need a good leader to lead. Period. If he happens to be an academic, great! If not, he will still succeed if he has leadership skills. And God knows, scores of both academics and non-academics have miserably failed as heads of institutions. Our cover story this month focuses on this debate: can only academics lead higher education institutions? No doubt the majority of our institutions are led by academics and we expect that to continue. But we profile some prominent non-academics who successfully buck the trend and are setting a precedent. As the higher education sector expands, educational administrators are in drastic short supply and not all academics make great institutional leaders. Will non-academics plug the gap? Read on.

Dr Pramath Raj Sinha pramath@edu-leaders.com

June 2011 EDUTECH

CONTENTS EDU JUNE 2011

UPDATE 04 05 06 07

EVENT INVESTMENT BAN TIE-UP HIKE COLLABORATION INITIATIVE

VIEWPOINTS 08 RAHUL CHOUDAHA Higher education at the crossroads

12 DHEERAJ SANGHI Engineering degrees: affordable, accessible 14 RISHIKESHA T. KRISHNAN Advantage India: no PhD factories here

CAMPUS 30 KEEPING COOL THE GREEN WAY Campuses are using traditional Indian methods to stay cool By Teja Lele Desai

ADMINISTRATION 36 STATE UNIVERSITIES OF GUJARAT NEED A FACELIFT By K.M. Joshi

TECHNOLOGY

“Seeing my ideas take shape gives me immense energy. I feel fresh every morning...” —Dr Professor Sudhir Jain Director, IIT Gandhinagar

44 MOVING TO THE CLOUD A cost-effective option

EDUTECH June 2011

March-April 2011: Volume 2, Issue 3 In Saving the Sciences: IISc to the Rescue, the line, “...ties with students fresh out of high school...,” should have been, “...ties with undergraduate degrees...” The minimum qualification to IISc’s BE, Integrated ME and PhD programmes is a bachelor’s degree. It did not admit high school students until now. In Technology for Quality and Collaboration (EDU Event) a quote by Madan Padaki has been mistakenly repeated and attributed to K.S. Subramanian, Director, SCMHRD .

52 ACROSS CLASSES, VIDEOS MAKE THE GRADE Jeffrey R. Young 54 PLAGIARISM SLEUTHS UNDO GERMAN MINISTER’S THESIS Aisha Labi

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Find out what’s happening in varsities around the world through The Chronicle of Higher Education

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TIMEOUT 50

58 BOOKS 59 GIZMOS & GADGETS

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COVER STORY

16 The New Captains of Academia

Higher education in India is booming, and contemporary systems are throwing up new leaders — savvy, conscious of the new rules of the game and not necessarily from an academic background. EDU takes a look at this emerging breed and how it is re-defining the sector By Padmaja Shastri

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Dr Vidya Yeravdekar Executive Director, Symbiosis International University

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A doctor and a consultant share what it takes to establish new trends in the leadership of academic institutions Pg 16 PROFILE

Sudhir Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, on his quest for truth P50

CAMPUS

Campuses are treading the traditional path to stay cool P30

DIALOGUE

T.S. Robertson, Dean, Wharton School of Business P40

COVER ART: DESIGN: ANIL T PHOTOS : A PRABHAKAR RAO & JITEN GANDHI

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June 2011 EDUTECH

FROM THE WORLD OF HIGHER EDUCATION

05 INVESTMENT 05 BAN 06 TIE-UP 06 HIKE 07 COLLABORATION 07 INITIATIVE 07 VOICES & MORE

IIT PATNA TO GET NEW CAMPUS Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal laid the foundation stone of the new IIT campus in Patna recently. The institute’s 500acre campus will be established near Bihta, 30km from Patna. At the event, Sibal said, the construction would be completed in three years. IIT Patna’s temporary campus has been functioning out of Patna polytechnic premises since August 2008.

AMU VC TO FACE CBI ON GRAFT CHARGES

Event: Dr Vivek Shenoy, DGM, Biocon, lights the inaugural lamp at the recently held ISB Hyderabad conference on innovation

India ready for Innovation: Sam Innovation Educators’ Conference stresses faculty role in meeting the challenge EVENT: “India is ready for an age of innovation,” said Sam Pitroda, Chairman, National Innovation Council, at the Innovation Educators’ Conference, held recently at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. The Centre for Innovation, Leadership and Change and the Biocon Cell for Innovation Management, had jointly organised the event on behalf of ISB. The conference brought together over 250 academicians, policy-makers, consultants, students and executives from different parts of the country. The outcome, it was hoped, would be a white paper — based on the breakouts and action items developed by the participants. The paper is expected to be ready in a month’s time, along with a book, eventually. Professor Rishikesha T. Krishnan of IIM Bangalore, who co-chaired the conference, noted that the impetus for innovation cannot be achieved unless educators learn how to create that environment at schools, colleges, universities and corporations. The event ended on a hopeful note with speakers noting that India’s higher and primary education sectors would “rise up to the challenge”.

EDUTECH June 2011

Aligarh Muslim University’s Vice Chancellor, P. K. Abdul Azis, will face a CBI inquiry after the HRD ministry sought the bureau’s intervention. Azis has been charged with graft and financial irregularities. It is alleged that he made AMU pay income tax for himself as well as the Registrar, violated regulations regarding executive council meetings, and indulged in financial bungling. He also stands accused of plagiarism in his DSc thesis.

5000 PROGRAMMES ACCEPT GMAT IN 2011 According to Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), the number of programmes accepting GMAT for assessment of business and management modules around the world has increased to 31% (from 3,800 to 5,000) in 2011. Membership of GMAC allows access to its extensive, customised market research and professional development programmes. GMAC recently added institutions such as Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, London Business School, Wharton School, Indian School of Business, INSEAD and Hong Kong University of Information Technology to its list, bringing the total membership to 200 institutes. More than 75% of its newest members are based outside the US, including five in Europe, and six in Asia and Australia.

UPDATE

Educomp Invests in Great Lakes The 1.5 bn investment will be used by the institute to open new campuses INVESTMENT: Educomp, through its a f fi l i a t e c o m p a n y, B e a c o n , h a s announced a strategic partnership with the Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai. The partnership will help Great Lakes significantly expand its presence across India, with an investment of 1.5bn over the next five years in the management school. As a part of this expansion, Great Lakes will be establishing campuses in Gurgaon in collaboration with the Institute of Energy Management and Research. Educomp, directly and through its affiliates, will provide management expertise, technology and infrastructure support to help Great Lakes in its expansion.

Shantanu Prakash, CEO, Educomp, said, “The partnership with Great Lakes is a natural corollary of Educomp’s growth trajectory towards specialised higher education. It found a good fit with our plans. Our breadth of experience in the education sector and our expertise in various verticals will help in enlarging the reach and Future Perfect: The Great Lakes Institute of scope of Great Lakes.” Management, Chennai, to expand its base Bala Balachandran, Found(Great Lakes) and the other in communier and Dean of Great Lakes and JL Kelcating and delivering value through techlogg Distinguished Professor at the Kelnology and e-learning, gives an immense logg Business School, US, said, “This opportunity to provide eternal and persynergistic partnership of two giants, one petual value to the world at large.” a thought-leader and content provider

Malaysia Bans Setting Up of Med Schools BAN: According to a report by Malaysian National News Agency, the Malaysian government has banned construction of new medical schools for the next five years after concerns were raised regarding the quality of medical graduates. The stay is for a five-year period starting from May 1, 2011, to April 30, 2016. In the report, the Malaysian higher education minister, Datuk Seri Mohammed Khaled Nordin, was quoted as saying that the ban was imposed to improve the quality of education at the 33 existing medical schools for them to produce highly-trained medical officers. The schools in question have been struggling to obtain quality teachers. Malaysia currently has 33 tertiary institutions that offer medical programmes. Ten of these are public universities, while others are private. By 2020, it is expected that the number of graduates or medical officers passing out of these institutes will be at a ratio of one to 400 of the general population. The freeze is not expected to affect current student recruitment or affect those seeking to study abroad. In related news, the government is also looking into foreign institutions accused of not training Malaysian graduates properly.

global update

2020

By that year, Malaysia will have one medical officer to 400 people

Tertiary institutions will face government scrutiny and will be asked to revamp themselves

June 2011 EDUTECH

UPDATE

TISS, Premji Foundation Join Hands To establish school of education on the Hyderabad campus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences TIE-UP: The Azim Premji School of Education at the Hyderabad campus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences will offer degrees in education, related programmes and also conduct research. It is expected to become fully operational in two years. “We will start the session from this academic year (2011) at a state government educational institution in Hyderabad and later it will be shifted to TISS campus,” said TISS Director S. Parasuraman. The Azim Premji Foundation will provide financial support to the new school to develop infrastructure and conduct research. The institute will leverage work being carried out at the 75-year-old Tata Institute, and at the Azim Premji University being set up by the foundation in Bengaluru. “Improving the qual-

ity of education must be one of the key goals of any developing country. On our part, we believe Advantage: Azim Premji Foundation seeks to boost that the task (of teachers’ education through new school on TISS campus improvement) needs organisain the country,” said Parasuraman. tion. Both TISS and Wipro share this Both institutions believe that the inivision, and therefore, we decided to coltiative will require a cadre of capable laborate. We are honoured by this opporand committed professionals and tunity. TISS is a pioneering institution experts from the sector, as well as the when it comes to social issues,” said the pursuit of high-quality research relefoundation’s chief executive, Dileep Ranvant to India. The Azim Premji Univerjekar. “The Azim Premji University is sity will commence its academic year uniquely focused on education and from July 2011 with three postgraduate development. Our collaboration will programmes — MA in education, strengthen both the institutions development and teachers’ education. towards the goal of boosting education

UPDATE

India to Double its R&D Expenditure HIKE: India will double its expenditure on R&D in the next Five Year Plan, slated to begin from 2012, the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Ashwani Kumar, said. “The Centre will be pushing R&D in science and technology through its XIIth Five Year Plan. The expenditure for the department of science and technology will be doubled to 150,000 crore. That is like 0.6% of India’s GDP,” he said. The minister also said that being the third-largest growing economy in the world, India needs to enhance allocations for science and technology. “We have decided to give significance to research studies related to science and technology. We will encourage people to take up pure and applied sciences and research in them. There has been a significant decline in stu-

EDUTECH June 2011

dents’ interest in science and technology. However, we are hoping to reverse this,” he said. Kumar added that his ministry will partner with institutes of higher education, schools and science institutes to make the subject popular among students. The government is also planning to raise grants for INSPIRE — a science scholarship — from 640 crore to 3,000 crore in the next five years. “In the wake of the Japan tsunami, India will be drilling an 8km bore hole in the Koyna region of Maharashtra. It will aid our research on earthquakes. We will also be among the five countries setting up the world’s largest telescope in Hawaii”, he added.

UPDATE

Wipro, NASSCOM to Work Together Wipro Trust, Mission 10x, and NASSCOM will offer skill development programmes to engineering graduates gap for skilled, industry-oriented profesCOLLABORATION: Mission 10x, the sionals is expected to test the limits of its trust run by Wipro, has tied up with manpower. The programmes will support National Association of Software and deployment of e-learning content, such as Services Companies (NASSCOM) to “Aarambh”, for faculty capacity building. It enhance skills of engineering graduates will promote a unified learning approach in IT and related sectors. to reduce the gap between academia and “The joint initiative will offer skill industry. “The initiative will provide development sessions such as ‘IT Founequal opportunity to aspirants,” dation Skills’ to train graduates for Kumar added. employability in the burgeoning tech “Industry has already been investing industry. NASSCOM’s assessment of in employees’ skill development through competence technology will be used to in-house programmes and assess skills through diagcertification courses. To nostic and final tests,” ensure scalability, we are explained Vice President working with government (HR), Wipro, Pratik Kumar. lakh bodies, academia and the About 550,000 engineergraduates IT-BPO industry,” said ing graduates pass out every pass out every NASSCOM President Som year from approximately year from Mittal. Launched in 2007, 3,000 Indian colleges. India’s 3000 the not-for-profit MisThough India has one of sion10x teaches over 13,000 the world’s largest scientific engineering aspirants the innovative and engineering pools, the colleges learning approach. growing demand-supply

5.5

XLRI Courses Go Green Environmental and social issues now a part of XLRI’s syllabi INITIATIVE: XLRI, Jamshedpur, has revamped its syllabus to make business professionals more sensitive towards environmental and social issues. As a result, these topics have been integrated in the syllabi of management, personnel management and industrial relationship postgraduation programmes. XLRI has invited US Fulbright scholar Gerard F. Farias to work with associate professor Tata L. Raghu Ram, to teach environment and social relationship in its new course — Sustainable Development and Corporate Strategies. The course, Ram said, will help students evolve strategies to avoid environmental degeneration and, at the same time, keep an eye on profits. It will focus on designing high-performance organisations while staying green, applying complexity theory to organisational sciences and on the role of business in sustainable development of society.

voices “IITs and IIMs are excellent because of the quality of students and not because of the quality of research or faculty” — JAIRAM RAMESH, Union Minister of Environment

“As an academic, I would not want to see higher education just become an enlarged tech school. But we need to produce the graduates employers want” —MATTHEW MURRAY, Associate Director, Centre for Business and Economic Research, University of Tennessee

“Establishing levels of tuition is a primary duty of college administrators and governing boards. They inevitably will be in a better position to understand the unique needs of their institutions than legislators can”

global update

— ELSON S. FLOYD, President, Washington State University

June 2011 EDUTECH

VIEWPOINT

Rahul Choudaha

Higher Education at the Crossroads

ndia is slated to become a top ranking talent provider, globally by 2020, provided it brings about quantitative and qualitative changes in its vocational and doctoral studies curricula. As of now, they are poor cousins to the more lucrative course choices for India’s youth. The two extremes of post-secondary education, vocational and doctoral, are facing acute quantitative and qualitative challenges in attracting talent, delivering value and meeting society’s expectations. Vocational education is impaled on the quantitative front by the large gap between demand and supply. According to the Ministry of Labour & Employment, Government of India, while 12.8mn people are added to the labour force annually, vocational training is available to only a miniscule 4.3mn. On the qualitative scale lies the dismal skill development and training scenario. A report by the World Bank notes that over 60% of graduates from the vocational stream in India remain unemployed even three years after graduation. A telling assessment of the poor quality of training imparted to students. If vocational training is in a shambles, not much can be written about the postdoctoral education system either, struggling with the issues of quality and accessibility. According to the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Government of India, universities enrolled nearly 36,000

EDUTECH June 2011

students in doctoral programmes in 2005-06 — a disproportionately small number for one of the largest education systems in the world enrolling more than 8.5mn students at the undergraduate level. Despite such a small number of PhD enrolments, concerns for quality and rigour of training have been growing. The challenges faced by vocational and doctoral education systems in India are complex and dynamic, wherein choices are driven by societal and labour market rewards. Competition for scarce resources and jobs is high. As a result, there is a marked preference for career paths with low risk and high employability. The twin factors drive students to pursue courses that, apart from high salaries, also offer prospects for going abroad. A student wanting to pursue low paying career choices like social work with a not for profit outfit, or technical diploma at a polytechnic institute, would be under pressure from family and society to opt for a more lucrative option, even though he may neither have an interest nor an aptitude for it. The following five major changes proposed at societal, policy and institutional levels, will pave the way for better post-secondary education in India.

VIEWPOINT

Rahul Choudaha

Diversify Institutions The Indian post-secondary education system needs to recognise the value of institutional diversity. To quote noted higher education researcher Frans van Vught, member of the Group of Policy Advisors to the President of the European Commission, diversity among institutions is expected to “…better serve the needs of the labour market, offer more and better access to a larger student body and allow institutional specialisation by which the effectiveness of the overall higher education system increases.” He adds that institutional diversity offers various career pathways to students and stimulates upward social mobility.

Develop Infrastructure Both doctoral and vocational educations need good infrastructure to make them effective. Doctoral education needs an ecosystem of scholars and peers along with research laboratories and libraries to create an engaging and rigorous training environment. Such an enabling atmosphere provides students the opportunity to engage in collaborative learning and publishing of research papers leading to advancement in the field of research. Similarly, for vocational education to thrive, infrastructural support — providing opportunities for skill development through hands-on practice in workshops and laboratories — must be provided.

Inform and Empower Knowledge empowers, and information and selfawareness are the keys to sound career-making decisions. Prospective students must be empowered with a better understanding of their own skills, strengths and interests. They need to be informed about the potential of the variety of educational and career paths that confront them when they step out of school. In the absence of such information, they depend on their families and friends to help them make crucial career choices. At the school level itself, an efficient system of career counselling and information dissemination must be established to assist students in making well-thought out and informed career choices.

Collaborate with Stakeholders Inspiring more students to pursue academic careers and hence doctoral programmes requires early engagement. For most undergraduate students, jobs remain a priority. Early conditioning can break some stereotypes about an academic career. On the other hand, industry

EDUTECH June 2011

The two extremes of postsecondary education, vocational and doctoral, are facing acute quantitative and qualitative challenges in attracting talent, delivering value and meeting society’s expectations support and partnership for vocational programmes is imperative to make learning effective and ensure the employability of students.

Focus on Quality Higher education policy in India — obsessed with increasing access — has, in the process, compromised the quality of education. Undoubtedly, institutional growth and student access are important goals, but the lack of a reliable quality assurance mechanism has resulted in graduate under-employability and unemployability. As a result, an engineering graduate, unemployable in the sector of his specialisation, ends up working as a call centre executive. The need is to integrate the post-secondary system and ensure quality education for maximising students’ potential. For this, the government can engage reputed public and private institutions to take up mentorship roles. According to the World Economic Forum, “more than 100mn people from India — the equivalent of the combined labour forces of the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain — are projected to join the workforce by 2020. With the youngest age profile among large economies and the largest national workforce, India holds great potential to become one of the most attractive talent providers.” For this to happen, India must put its post-secondary education system in order. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters

RAHUL CHOUDAHA A higher education specialist based out of New York, Dr Choudaha specialises in strategic management of higher education, institution building, collaborations and market development. He holds a PhD in higher education from the University of Denver, an MBA from NITIE, Mumbai and BE from Jabalpur University. He can be reached at rahul.choudaha@eduleaders.com

VIEWPOINT

Dheeraj Sanghi

Engineering Degrees: Affordable, Accessible

n the last issue, I analysed the price of providing engineering education and looked at some of the areas in which expenditure was being wasted, such as in paying sub-standard faculty and bribes to avoid fee regulation. In this follow-up, I share a range of methods governments, promoters and the management of academic institutions could use to make access to quality engineering education more affordable. Help from Authorities The state can help reduce the initial cost of setting up a college by offering land at a lower cost. The promoter can return the gesture by starting the institute through a gift, used to build infrastructure and/or set up an endowment whose interest income will add to the resources of the college. In terms of recurring costs, the biggest component is faculty salary. For a teaching-only institution, a faculty-student ratio of 1 to 15 is a luxury. AICTE should immediately change it to 1 to 25. This will legalise the status quo at a vast number of existing colleges and enable honest players to enter the sector. Since this ratio is not adequate for research programmes, AICTE could look at a model where the faculty size is determined separately by undergraduate

EDUTECHâ&#x20AC;&#x192; June 2011

and postgraduate students. It could be 1 to 25 for the former and 1 to 10 for the latter. The council should also continue to upgrade its infrastructure requirements. For example, there is no need for a minimum number of PCs in an era when most students own a laptop. Library sizes can be reduced since content is increasingly available digitally over the campus LAN in oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hostel room. Many of these requirements add to cost, without adding to quality. AICTE could also look at allowing bigger institutions. Currently, most of our colleges have a student strength of just 2,000 or fewer. In a country with such a poor gross enrolment ratio that we are keen to double in the next five years, we must look at colleges with student populations of at least 5,000 to 10,000. This will allow economies of scale, particularly when it comes to infrastructure utilisation. To give an example, in a large class, half the students can have lectures in the morning and labs in the afternoon, and the other half can do the reverse, thereby doubling the usage of labs and lecture halls. AICTE has made a start by allowing an evening batch to attend colleges, but it needs to go far beyond this.

Dheeraj Sanghi

VIEWPOINT

Alternate Revenue Sources Technical universities should also take a close look at the curriculum. Teaching six to seven courses a semester is counter-productive because students cannot learn so much at one time. This set-up also increases faculty costs. If curricula have only five courses per semester, faculty costs will go down, and learning will improve. Currently, the small number of research projects that faculty undertakes is funded out of tuition income. Faculty members should be strongly encouraged to write project proposals to government funding agencies like the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Information Technology and the like, and also to industry. Another revenue source — at least for institutions providing higher-quality education — is workshops and short-term courses. Most institutions already run these for their students and faculty. If marketed properly, they can attract a lot of high-paying industry players. Management institutes already earn significant revenue this way, and there’s no reason engineering colleges cannot do the same. Sharing facilities with outsiders is one more idea. A computer training institute could use the computing labs in the evening when there is less student demand. Lecture halls can be shared outside the college’s normal lecture hours. Empty guest house rooms could be rented to outsiders. Students’ primary healthcare room could double up as a doctor’s clinic for non-students outside hours. On-campus businesses like bookstores, photocopying services and canteens need not be given space for free or low rent. Higher charges for these businesses are a politically acceptable way of getting students to pay more for the costs they incurred. One source of revenue that Indian institutions seem reluctant to tap are philanthropists, foundations and alumni. And, of course, government can help by offering tax incentives for these. Currently, those who donate to educational institutes receive an income tax rebate on 50% of the donation (except institutes of national importance like IITs, which attract a 100% rebate). The new budget proposes that companies that give money to educational institutes for research can deduct 200% of the expense from their income. This 200% rebate should be given on contributions to teaching as well.

Variable Pay Mechanism Variable payment mechanisms that give students from financially weaker sections access to engineering courses could be introduced, with higher charges for those who are better able to afford

Administrative overhead can be reduced with good campus management. Internet-based conference solutions can obviate the need to bring in visiting faculty. Instead, staff can deliver from offices them. One simple idea is to have lower fees for students from the same state and higher fees for students from outside. Typically, students from financially weak backgrounds study in their respective states, and such an arrangement would suit state governments. Also, governments might allow an increase in average tuition if colleges offer scholarships to students from weaker financial backgrounds. To borrow a trick from the healthcare industry, there could be different kinds of hostel rooms, with someone taking up a higher-cost hostel room being charged a higher fee. Technology should also be used to bring down costs. In particular, the administrative overhead can be reduced with a good campus management system. Internet-based conferencing solutions can obviate the need to bring visiting faculty all the time. Instead, staff can deliver seminars sitting in their offices. Meanwhile, cameras at strategic locations can reduce the number of security guards needed. Finally, after all the cost savings, there would still be students who could not afford engineering education. Getting a loan must be made easier. To enable and encourage students to go for MTech and PhD programmes, a portion of the loan should be waived when students delay earning by going for research programmes. If all stakeholders are serious about improving the quality of engineering education, the goal is achievable, and without restricting access. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters

DHEERAJ SANGHI Dr Sanghi is the former director of Laxmi Narayan Mittal Institute of Information Technology, Jaipur. He is a professor of computer science at IIT, Kanpur. Dr Sanghi has a BTech in computer science from IIT Kanpur and an MS and a PhD from University of Maryland, USA . He can be reached at dheeraj.sanghi@eduleaders.com

June 2011 EDUTECH

VIEWPOINT

Rishikesha T. Krishnan

Advantage India: No PhD Factories Here

he absence of a well-entrenched research culture in India may be a disadvantage when it comes to the lack of rigorous methods, attention to detail and critical funds. But, it can also foster original thinking along with the spirit of adventure, specially in humanities, social sciences and management. Ramachandra Guha who wears many hats — biographer, cricket-writer, essayist and historian — began his illustrious career as an ecologist. In 2008, Foreign Policy ranked Guha among the world’s top 100 public intellectuals. Anil Gupta, professor, IIM Ahmedabad, was the catalyst in the formation of Honey Bee Network, a collective effort to document innovations and improvements made by farmers, in the late 1980s. More than 20 years later, he is considered to be the world’s foremost proponent of grassroots innovations. Manindra Agrawal, a computer scientist, with his students at IIT Kanpur solved one of the world’s toughest mathematics problems — an algorithm that can test the primality of a number in polynomial time. Agrawal won the Clay Research award, Fulkerson prize, Godel and Infosys prize for it. Sujata Ramadorai, professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, is India’s leading mathematician. She is the recipient of the Bhatnagar award, and a member of the Science Advisory Council.

EDUTECH June 2011

Samir Brahmachari heads CSIR, India’s eminent scientific research body. But, he made his reputation as an innovative scientist in molecular biophysics. The common thread binding these five eminently successful Indians is that all of them obtained their doctoral degrees from Indian institutions — Guha from IIM Calcutta, Gupta from Kurukshetra University, Agrawal from IIT Kanpur, Ramadorai from TIFR and Brahmachari from the Indian Institute of Science. Yet, India’s brightest and best academic hopefuls make a beeline for American universities. How do we explain this paradox? Are our students poorly informed, or is it just an oversight? Or, are these academics exceptional cases? Four of the five thought leaders identified above are from India’s top institutions and don’t represent the university system per se. It could also be argued that their achievements are, in spite of, rather than because of, their training in Indian doctoral programmes. Agreed, but then an Indian PhD need not be a millstone. Though we have outstanding scholars and intellectuals who did PhDs from universities abroad, the five identified here stand out. In recent years, the research-oriented postgraduate programmes under the Indian system have

Rishikesha T. Krishnan

been criticised. One government-appointed panel went so far as to say that there was a complete neglect of research by Indian universities. At the aggregate level this criticism may be welldeserved. The quality of research here on the average is poor when measured by citations or impact. Only three or four institutions from India figure in the top 500 university list of Shanghai Jiangtao University, a ranking that is based largely on research output and impact. Recent estimates suggest that the research productivity of our top engineering schools (the IITs) is about one-tenth that of the top schools in the US such as MIT or Stanford. Our annual output of PhDs in engineering and computer science is small, our research output though growing is dwarfed by the tremendous burst from China, and even in a subject like chemistry where we were traditionally strong we have a world share of about 6% against China’s 17%. The situation in the social sciences is even worse.

Mechanical Vs Creative The advantages of US research programmes are well known, particularly in science and engineering which are well endowed with funds and equipment. In the “publish or perish” culture, faculty has a self-interest in encouraging doctoral students — their work helps the faculty get more publications. Quality is high because research grants are given out by agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy on a competitive basis. Successful professors in engineering schools run their laboratories almost like factories with a continuous supply chain of bright students, and an internal division of labour where senior students and postdocs guide new students. Professors concentrate on fund-raising and external relations, much like the CEO of a corporation or a university president. This mechanical approach to research is predominantly what Thomas Kuhn (arguably the most influential contemporary philosopher of science and author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) calls normal science. Research is focused on problemsolving that extends current knowledge rather than establishing new paradigms. In the social sciences, where conceptual paradigms also represent world views, working within a particular paradigm can result in branding an individual for life. Traditionally, European universities were more open to divergent thinking. However, in the past two decades, they has been trying to catch-up with the American system. This reflects in the British rating system for universities that focuses on research output in terms of the number of publications in hier-

VIEWPOINT

Most theories have originated from the west and appear inadequate to explain the social, cultural or business phenomena of the developing world archically categorised journals. Even the French are now asking that academics publish in English in well-recognised international outlets, rather than their traditional French journals.

Promotes Original Thinking Is it possible that the absence of a well-entrenched research culture could be an advantage rather than a disadvantage? In many ways, the answer is no. Robust research involves careful research design, rigorous methods, and, in these days of large data sets and powerful computers, strong mathematical skills. If the weakness of a research culture means less attention being paid to these critical elements, one’s findings will not stand up to the intense scrutiny of peers across the world. But, under certain circumstances, the answer is yes. It could help us avoid the intellectual straightjacketing that goes with strong paradigmatic boundaries. It could help researchers pay more attention to the weak signals that reflect emergent phenomena. It can promote original thinking. These traits would be of particular value to the humanities, social sciences and management where extant theories don’t capture reality well. Most theories have originated from the west, and appear inadequate to explain the social, cultural or business phenomena of the developing world, particularly India. We would do well to preserve some elements of an iconoclastic view of the world in our higher education system. As Rabindranath Tagore said in his 1919 The Centre of Indian Culture address, one should not allow restricted thinking to kill or hamper the creation of a new thought by a new combination of truth. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters

RISHIKESHA T. KRISHNAN Dr Krishnan is a professor of corporate strategy at IIM Bangalore. He has a MSc in physics from IIT Kanpur, MS in engineering-economic systems from Standford University, and a PhD from IIM Ahmedabad. He can be reached at rishikesha.krishnan@ eduleaders.com

June 2011 EDUTECH

“I want to enable students to learn what is needed to make a difference in society and become leaders who care for the environment” “I strongly encourage team work at VIT, as I believe that success can be sustained only through hard work by teams, and not by a few individuals’ heroic deeds”

—Anil Sachdev Founder& CEO, SOIL

—Sekar Viswanathan Vice President, University Affairs, VIT

“NU is trying to build a research-driven culture by collaborating with industry and universities, inside and outside India”

New Captains of Academia The

“I run the institute from a business point of view, applying strategic thinking. Before we reached out to the student community, we did a market analysis of our prospective students” —Ajit Rangnekar Dean, Indian School of Business

To read full interview turn to page 24

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—Rajeev Shorey President, NIIT University

“I believe in total autonomy for faculty and staff, but with accountability” —Vidya Yeravdekar Executive Director, Symbiosis

To read full interview turn to page 26

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eadership in higher

education has been long considered the sole preserve of the dons — the academic variety. The traditional school of thought is that colleges are not businesses and academic deans and institutional heads are not corporate CEOs. However, upon a closer look at their work environment and profile, we can find distinct similarities. While there is plenty of opportunity for each to learn from the other, it is not uncommon now to find a former business head helming the academic ship. What’s more, they are doing a fine job. In this issue we take a look at institutions under these crossover captains. BY PADMAJA SHASTRI

June 2011 EDUTECH

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Leadership

Navigating

Unchartered Waters Successfully Academia today requires effective leaders. Professionals from diverse fields armed with practical experience and wide-ranging knowledge are infusing a breath of freshness into campuses and redefining academic leadership

t is not

just the students who flock to the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad. It’s also the school that goes in search of its students. Just as corporates analyse their customers, ISB, too, conducts a market analysis of its prospective students. Thanks to an active strategy, the institute has managed to work out the right mix of gender and diversity that meets world-class standards. After being stuck with a low gender ratio — at only 25% women students for the past three years — this year the school gave admissions to 28% women. Ajit Rangnekar, Deputy Dean, ISB, and former head of PwC, Hong Kong and Philippines, is the force behind this gender balance of the premier institution. Rangnekar, who joined ISB in 2003, is perhaps the most well-known head of an Indian institution from a diverse professional field. He is also among the prominent leaders of academia that people point to, to prove professionals from

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other fields do make successful education leaders. These new captains of academia, comprising corporate heads, army officers, doctors and lawyers, bring with them diverse experience and expertise. They have introduced new and professional ways of managing institutions, turning them into successful ventures, and at the same time redefining academic leadership.

Earnest Workers It is not a new phenomenon, though. Professionals from other fields have helmed institutions before with either officers from Indian Administrative Services or corporate leaders being appointed as vice chancellors. Ravi Matthai, the renowned founder-director of IIM Ahmedabad, came from a corporate background. Such people, however, were few. They were always considered outsiders and exceptions. Not anymore. The present crop of non-academic institute

heads bring with them the zeal to succeed and work that little bit harder to achieve goals; partly the reason for their success. It is not unusual for Dr Rajeev Shorey, Professor and President, NIIT University (NU), to finish a class at 11pm and then brainstorm with students until past midnight. Students are his priority and they can get an audience with him anytime. Not many institutions can boast of round-the-clock access to their top shot. Shorey, who earlier headed Vehicle Communications and Information Management Group at General Motors India Science Laboratory, is clear that, for a university to reach the next level, it is important to understand the youth. “You can understand this only when you meet students,” he says.

Fresh Perspective Most of them rely on professional experience outside academia to create new benchmarks of administration. Their

Leadership

industry insight is especially required to bring about turnarounds. When Swati Mujumdar took over the reins of Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning (SCDL), her staff’s lackadaisical attitude and lack of enthusiasm for anything new shocked her. “There was no concept of timelines or standards for performance,” says Mujumdar, used to vibrant and competitive work environment after her 12-year stint in the US with companies like Nortel Networks, EDS, Cisco and Compuware. Realising that it was more the system than the people that was at fault, Mujumdar decided to overhaul the system. In the first two years, she concentrated on streamlining business processes and developing a value system. From introducing proper documentation to developing manpower, everything was done with care. Roles were rejigged and new people hired. Soon the employee attitude also started changing. “My background in the IT industry helps me analyse issues and think of work in terms of flow charts,” says Mujumdar. It was only when she had taken care of the basics that she decided to turn her focus to expansion and she started introducing two to three new courses every year. Within two years, their strength grew to one lakh students from around 10,000. “I did some simple things like putting bar codes on assignments so that anybody could do data entry and introducing online tracking of assignments, exams, fees, and dues on our website, so that students did not have to call us all the time,” she says. All the institutes’ IT systems were developed in-house and they spent just 1.5 lakh on it. Mujumdar also generated MIS (Management Information Systems) reports on the assignments pending with each faculty and then had them collected from their home, if necessary. This resulted in faster evaluation. She also opened a full-fledged call centre to create a

centralised information resource. This helped save time that departments spent on answering calls. Lalit Kathpalia, Director, Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, used his long experience at Infosys to convince management to introduce enterprise resource-planning at the university. “Thanks to our young, IT-savvy director, all processes will now be automated and computerised. With a click of a button the chancellor, vice chancellor and I, can now access all information about the institutes,” says Dr Vidya Yeravdekar, Executive Director, Symbiosis International University. Yeravdekar was herself a doctor before she took the reins of Symbiosis. Sekar Viswanathan, Vice PresidentUniversity Affairs, VIT University, also

“I am a quick learner and was lucky to have eminent people like Dr Vijay Bhatkar to guide me” —Aruna Katara President and Dean, Administration, International Institute of Information Technology, Pune

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comes with corporate experience. He learnt how to get things done with few resources when he worked with NetClerk, a start-up in the US. Based on his experience there, he created small teams of 10 people to head research specialisations in each school of VIT. “Small teams are cohesive, work with speed, share responsibilities and have easier access to the leader. There was a spurt in research publications and we also improved at faculty welfare while ensuring work satisfaction,” he says. Viswanathan’s stint at IT behemoth IBM taught him the power of teamwork in meeting deadlines and achieving targets through an appropriate distribution of work. He has put this theory to work at VIT as well. At the start of a new session, each faculty member is assigned courses to suit their background. New and familiar courses are combined to achieve common goals. “Success can be sustained only through teamwork and not by few individual heroic deeds,” asserts Viswanathan. At VIT, meetings have a definite focus and start and end on time. Only relevant people are invited and decisions and action items noted and e-mailed within 24 hours. “I learnt this efficient way of conducting meetings at Walmart,” shares Viswanathan. His industry stint also helped him introduce administrative reforms that have made it easy for students to get refunds and certificates through a single window and for staff to get promotions. At NU and VIT, each employee has a set of targets. Just like the corporate sector, employees here get increments and promotions based on their performance. Measurement criteria for faculty includes the number of research papers published, conferences conducted and collaborations forged with industry in opening a research lab or another relevant task. At VIT, faculty can get up to one month salary as bonus for good feedback. Evaluation is based on a 100June 2011 EDUTECH

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Leadership

point scale, which includes a 360 degree evaluation by students, self and superiors. At NU, as reward for good research, faculty is sponsored for conferences abroad. They are also allowed to offer consultancy services to industry. When the research paper of a faculty member is published in a reputed journal, a certain extra amount is automatically credited into his or her salary account. Shorey’s industry experience also helped him handle the challenge of quality faculty. Many of his highly qualified friends in the industry, joined him as adjunct faculty. It was again industry experience that helped Anil Sachdev, founder and CEO of the School of Inspired Leadership (SOIL) in attracting talented faculty. Sachdev persuaded his friends, who were leading faculty members across the world, to teach as guest faculty at SOIL. In fact, it was his client and friend of many years, B. Muthuraman, Managing Director, Tata Steel, who was the first

“Instead of relying on the traditional CAT or GMAT tests, we decided to use this assessment tool that measured not just IQ, but also EQ,” says Sachdev. SOIL had three workshops over four months involving industry leaders, academics, consultants and independent thinkers to design its curriculum. Social innovation projects are an important part of the curriculum. Under this, students work one day a week with NGOs working for disadvantaged sections. “The idea is to enable students to learn what is needed to make a difference in society, develop compassion and become leaders who care for the planet,” says Sachdev. He sold his HR consulting firm, Grow Talent that he had founded to fund SOIL, a B-school with a vision to develop leaders who truly care for the globe. SOIL was co-created by a consortium of 33 likeminded companies. Like Sachdev, Rangnekar, too, is continuously on the lookout for ways to keep ISB socially relevant. He has formed a consortium of people

process of creating an intellectual property (IP) database and signing up with a patent firm to enable its faculty and students to file patents. “If you innovate, you must be rewarded,” says Shorey, who has 10 patents to his credit. “NU is also trying to build a research-driven culture by collaborating with industry and universities, inside and outside India,” he adds. It is trying to get its students to work with PhD students of IIT.

Reaching Out Globally The new-age professional academic leaders have brought a breath of fresh air to the system, predominantly indifferent to global reforms. “There are two reasons why this is a welcome trend. One, there is no talent pipeline within the higher education sector making it imperative to seek it outside. Two, people from different milieus bring fresh thinking to institutions, most of which are insulated and static,” says Amitabh Jhingan, Partner, Education Practice, Ernst&Young. The changing dynam-

“These days, besides an understanding of academics, running an educational institute also involves understanding aspirations of all its stakeholders – students, faculty, parents, staff and employers” —Shashi Gulhati Former CEO, EdCIL

person to confirm his company’s participation in SOIL’s “Industry Consortium”.

Innovating to Lead According to Kolaskar, besides improving systems, an institution head has to work with a vision and objective that bring about changes and innovations to meet desired goals. Innovation starts right from the entrance tests at SOIL, which uses CALiPER reports to shortlist candidates.

EDUTECH June 2011

from social service, public policy and industry to assist in keeping the institution tuned to social needs. Based on their feedback, he intends to initiate research and other programmes on topical issues. At NU, BTech student interviews are recorded on video and later used to track their progress. Students can themselves see their progress over the years in their domain knowledge, soft skills and even body language. NU is currently in the

ics of higher education in India have made it necessary to reach out to industry and integrate education with the needs of students and employers. Students’ expectations of institutions have changed dramatically in the past two decades. They now need more than just adequate knowledge of their core subject to get the right breaks in an increasingly competitive world. “These days, besides an understanding of academics, running an educational insti-

Leadership

tute also involves understanding aspirations of all stakeholders — students, faculty, parents, staff and employers. The expectations from an institute head have also multiplied. They must not only have a vision but also excellent management and communications skills. She or he should be able to generate resources for the school and be able to motivate, build teams and infuse enthusiasm for inter-disciplinary research. None of this comes from mere academic achievement,” says Shashi Gulhati, retired professor of IIT, Delhi and former CEO of Educational Consultants. According to him, the whole concept of giving thrust to just academic achievements while selecting heads for institutions needs to be turned on its head. That’s precisely what Dr Yeravdekar did when she tracked K.S. Subramanian, an alumnus of Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, to head its flagship institute, Symbiosis Centre for Management and Human Resource Development (SCMHRD). They had been unable to find anyone right despite interviewing academicians, till they met Subramanian who was working with a Dubai-based firm at the time. Though, not a PhD, he made SCMHRD a brand. “I have arguments with statutory council committees when they come to Symbiosis and tell me that some of your heads of institutes are not PhDs. I tell them, we need performers and look for dynamic leaders and not just qualifications on paper,” says Dr Yeravdekar. To give a fillip to its research activities Amity University appointed senior scientists from government research institutions like Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), in leadership roles. It filed over 120 patents in a single year following the change. Thinking outof-the-box also makes sense when institutes are venturing into new fields. When Symbiosis started its institute of Geoinformatics, there were not many academicians who could head it. The University appointed Brigadier K.K.V. Khanzode, from the Military Intelligence Corps to head it.

COVER STORY

The New CEOs of Academia

ometime in the 1970s, when governments globally began to move away from funding higher education institutions (HEIs), universities had to bring in professionals — strategic business management consultants — to run the show. Thus, a new parallel leadership emerged as the role of the institutional administrative head began to change. In the US, this new leader was referred to as the president of a university. In the UK, they were referred to as provosts — experts who balanced entrepreneurship with academics with a focus on fund-raising. In India, too, when public funding in HEIs began to decline, it resulted in the birth of many private, self-financed universities, especially in states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. “There emerged a thought process which entailed that it was not necessary always to have an academician at the helm. And, appointing IAS officers as heads became a trend,” explains Dr Nigavekar. In the past five years, more state governments have gone ahead with the Private University Act, making revenue generation and stakeholder management an even more important part of an education leader’s job. Naturally, universities are now creating leadership positions parallel to the vice chancellor, taking in people from corporate backgrounds. The job of this new leader, often referred to as the president or an executive director, is similar to that of a company’s CEO. The person is in charge of establishing a university, governing it and finding the right resources — faculty and finance — image-building and managing stakeholders. “HEIs now function as strategic business units (SBUs), with a professional outlook, visionary approach and long-term planning,” says Karad. His warning: though there is sense in managing HEIs as SBUs, the fact that universities shape lives has to be kept in mind. “Healthy governance balances academics and entrepreneurship,” says Dr Nigavekar. Perhaps keeping in mind, HEIs are appointing industry experts with a some degree of academic exposure as the new CEOs of academia.

Demand for Development This new trend is more of a necessity today. “As higher education is expanding at a rapid pace, there is a shortage of leadership resources from pure academics. Most institutions still prefer academicians for the top job. But it is time to start thinking out-of-the-box,” says Pramod Joshi, a Delhi-based education consultant. India needs to quickly ramp up its gross enrolment ratio from the present 12% to 30% by 2020. The National Knowledge Commission report recommends that we establish 1,500 universities by 2015 to achieve a GER of 15%. India currently has around 400 univer-

sities and 20,000 colleges that take in about 13 million students. The XI Five Year plan envisages a major capacity expansion including 30 new universities, 373 degree colleges and 1,000 polytechnics among others. This would necessitate a huge crop of academic leaders to head it. Leading an institution is very demanding and compares to any high pressure job today. “For the top job in a university, an industry person with research and development experience and connect with academics, has an edge over someone who has only been into academics. It is critical that an academic leader is exposed to real world problems. It is not necessary June 2011 EDUTECH

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Leadership

to have 20 years of teaching experience to be a good academic leader,” says M.P. Kapoor, founding Vice Chancellor and Project Director, NU and former IIT Kanpur professor. It was Kapoor who had identified Shorey for the top job at NU. Shorey, who has worked at IBM Research Lab and SASKEN Technologies, admits that the multiplicity of responsibilities and breadth of dimensions one has to handle in a university is huge. Understanding the issues of all departments, adding new programmes, creating the right environment for research and working with faculty to figure out their needs can be overwhelming. For Shorey, blending in with academia was easy thanks to his brush with academics earlier. A PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, he was adjunct faculty at IIT Delhi, and faculty in the Computer Science Department at the National University of Singapore. Similarly, Sachdev, who has 35 years of industry experience, was

adjunct faculty at business schools such as the ISB, Kelly School of Business, Indiana University and others. He chose to teach even while working as a CEO of two consultancy firms he founded. In the mid-1990s, the search committees for selecting directors for IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Bangalore had tried to rope him in for the top job.

Connect and Mingle However, not every professional leader who is joining the academic world today has academic experience. For such people the new set-up can be quite daunting unless they decide to take certain steps to gel. Teaching can be an ideal way to connect with students and gain acceptance from colleagues. “Teaching helped me understand the pain points of faculty members, like the amount of preparation needed for lectures, the time taken to evaluate answer-sheets, and provide feedback to students. I also learnt how to deal with students in and

out of class,” says Viswanathan of VIT. He taught a course in database management systems for BTech computer science and engineering students in the initial years after joining the university. According to him, this hands-on approach helps in taking the right decisions. For seven years, Aruna Katara, President and Dean, Administration, International Institute of Information Technology (I²IT), worked with every department in the institute — finance, human resources, admissions, examination and IT. It was only after this that she got a formal designation. Even Shorey teaches for six to eight hours a week. Sachdev averages 20 hours of teaching per week, a mean feat even for die-hard academicians. Some of these administrators are also trying to enhance their qualifications. Dr Yeravdekar got a degree in law as she felt it was necessary for effective administration. “Understanding the legal jargon helps

Crossover Captains Designation and Organisation

Professional Background

Additional Information

Vice Chancellor, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies

Corporate

Was the CEO at the Feedback Reach, and Director at All India Management Association

Vice Chancellor, Azim Premji University

Corporate

Behar has an MBA in marketing and finance from XLRI Jamshedpur, and a degree in electrical engineering from REC, Trichy

Najeeb Jung

Vice Chancellor, Jamia Millia Islamia

IAS

Nikhil Sinha

Founding Vice Chancellor, Shiv Nadar University

Corporate and academics

Vice Chancellor, Bangalore University

Medicine - Cardiologist

Former Director, Sri Jayadeva Institute of Cardiology

Vice Chancellor, Amity University

Armed Forces

Chairperson, IRMA

Economist, Former Union Minister

From 1996 to 1998, he was a Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Planning and Programme Implementation, Science and Technology and Power for the Government of India.

Director, Amity School of Natural Resources and Sustainable Development

Indian Forest Services Officer

He was Project Director, the World Bank Forestry Project and National Co-ordinator, task force on interlinking of rivers

Name Parag Diwan

Anurag Behar

Dr N Prabhu Dev Maj Gen K. Jai Singh

Dr Yoginder K Alagh

B.K.P. Sinha

EDUTECH June 2011

He began his professional life in the Government of India’s Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in 1983

Leadership

in reading UGC notifications, buying land for new projects and even signing MoUs,” she says. She is also doing her PhD. “Our biradari (community) takes PhD seriously,” says Katara, who has registered for a PhD programme. Her topic, “A New Model for Development and Management of University of the 21st Century” is relevant to her job. Viswanathan is also pursuing a PhD in education management on “Faculty Motivation”. However, for those going for the degree merely to get the stamp of an academician, Dr Ashok Kolaskar, Vice Chancellor, KIIT University, has a word of advice. “Go for it only if you truly like it. If you have the stuff that is needed, degrees do not matter. Imagine Mukesh Ambani going for a PhD just to be accepted by the faculty,” he remarks. Dr V. Shantha, Head, English Department, Jyoti Nivas College, Bengaluru, offers another suggestion. “Decentralise some of the decision-making processes and spend the first few months learning systems and structures,” she counsels.

Build Consensus The new-age academic leaders also need to keep the faculty clued in on major decisions. That was the trick Matthai used at IIM Ahmedabad. A follower of this principle, Rangnekar did not move ahead on a fellowship programme for two years as the ISB faculty was not in favour of it. It was only this year that they gave the go-ahead. “A wise dean uses consensus, not authority. It is important to hear out everyone and convince them, rather than thrust your ideas on others,” he advises. On the first Monday of every month, Yeravdekar meets directors to discuss plans. NU holds “all-hands meetings”, an industry concept Shorey brought to the university set-up, where everyone including the students participate. At VIT, too, important decisions are taken after deliberations at many levels. “Though this takes time, decisions don’t go wrong as someone is sure to point out the cons,” says Viswanathan. The university also consults student representatives on decisions that affect them. Rahul Karad, Executive Director, MIT Group of Institutions, also values stu-

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“My background in the IT industry helps me analyse issues and think of work in terms of flow charts. I did some simple things like putting bar codes on assignments, introducing online tracking to ease things” —Swati Mujumdar Director, Symbiosis Centre For Distance Learning

dent inputs. “I interact with students directly and share their feedback with the faculty and directors,” he says. He also discusses management issues with the staff. According to Karad, administrators require keen understanding of the psyche of senior directors to be able to work in tandem. Having the right mentors also adds up to their image, as Katara, a postgraduate in management, realised early. “I am a quick learner, but I was very lucky to have eminent people like Dr Vijay Bhatkar guide me,” she says. Rangnekar, too, regularly interacts with thought-leaders like Dipak Jain, Bala Balachandran and Sri Sridharan.

Wanted, a Leader The trend of getting professional administrators will only grow with the slated growth in the sector. RNCOS, a market research and information analysis company, recently said that the higher education market will grow at 15% and cross $22bn by 2013. What any institution needs is a good leader. That leader could be from academic background or be a professional from any other field. More than their background, it is the qualities these leaders possess that count. There have been enough academic heads who failed miserably, while there were professionals who felt disconnected and quit. According to the document, “Cultivate Leaders for Educational Institutions”, written by former chairman of University

Grants Commission, Dr Arun Nigavekar, “Senior academicians, though they have spent decades in the university system, remain aloof from the mainstream of dealing with complexities and intricacies of ‘intellectual human minds’. When they become a VC, she or he is neither mentally ready nor intellectually focused to play the role.” It would also be quite unfair to say that academics cannot manage institutions as much as saying that professionals have no place in academia. Even Nigavekar would agree that what is needed is a vision, a will to succeed, an understanding of the faculty and students, and sensitivity towards the role of a head of an institution as the facilitator who shapes future generations. Both academics and professionals can hone their skills to make up for their weaknesses and learn from each other. “This sort of cross-fertilisation is good as long as you are passionate about education and can align with the long-term goals of the organisation,” says Kolaskar. He also thinks it is a good idea to create training programmes for higher education administrators. It is time that the community accepts these new captains who are in a league of their own. If respected institutions like the ISB and Symbiosis have been successful with heads from diverse fields, there every reason for others to take a leap. What Indian institutions need is effective leadership to begin a successful chapter. June 2011 EDUTECH

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Story Name

“It is a huge challenge to build a culture of excellence, while all the time keeping the business growth objective in sight” —Ajit Rangnekar Dean, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad

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Leadership

COVER STORY

Old Game

New Rules

Ajit Rangnekar, Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB), has brought keen business sense to the greater purpose of running a world class educational institution

A.PRABHAKAR RAO

Q: How has your experience of over 30 years in consulting and industry helped in managing ISB? A: It has given me a business perspective into the management of a premier academic institution like ISB. I run the institute from a business point of view, applying strategic thinking and planning. For instance, even before we reached out to the student community, we did a market analysis of our prospective clients, here students, just as it is done in the corporate world. We found that typically, larger numbers of male engineering graduates apply to business schools as compared to other categories. This helped us strategise on how to reach out to a wider audience, including women, lawyers and armed forces personnel. For placements too, we conduct market segmentation of prospective employers into value buyers or champions among others, and accordingly decide on our sales pitch for each. Q: In the eight years you have been at ISB, what are the challenges you faced and how did you tackle them? A: In the beginning, I did not understand the business of education. I slowly discovered it’s a different kettle of fish! Here, faculty members do not consider themselves employees but part owners, just like partners in a consulting firm do. At least in a consulting firm there is an easy-to-measure indicator of performance – profit. But, it is very difficult to

measure academic output. Also, unlike a corporate research organisation where there exists a clear, common agenda, in the academic world, faculty members usually pursue their own research agendas. All you can do is create an environment in which they can flourish. You should never try to impose a top-down view. It is best to work smartly and find a way by either getting pure researchers to do the research you want, or incentivise faculty with greater budgets, more people to work with and as much data as you can provide. It is a huge challenge to build a culture of excellence, while all the time keeping the business growth objective in sight. I also realised that recruiting outstanding faculty is not going to be an easy task. It is not just about pay packets. They look at things like culture of the institution, peer group and presence of other thinkers. Do you know the single biggest factor that attracts good faculty? — Availability of a good school for their children. To ensure this, we are partnering with a reputed school in the vicinity of ISB and helping it get funds, while our faculty is training its teachers in effective teaching methods.

complex and constantly evolving. When we first reach out to the student community, we are selling our product to them; the moment they apply, they start selling their calibre to us and once they join the institute, we become partners in mutual development. As alumni, they become cocreators of our brand. It is in the interest of an institution to ensure that students achieve their potential and become the best they can. We are launching an initiative called ‘Alumni Lifelong Learning’ this year, designed to help our students grow in their careers. Institutions must recognise that a student’s education is not over the moment s/he steps out of our portals. There is a lot more collaboration happening in the academic world and it is necessary to spend more time on building consensus among faculty. However, sometimes it is difficult for such a diverse and intellectual set of people to agree on something. Your only option then is to take a deep breath and decide, but with an open mind and keen understanding of every individual’s concerns. To become a great institute, it is also important to build a great community, take care of your support staff and be relevant to society.

Q: What insight have you gained during your long stint at ISB? A: Despite my business approach to the administration of ISB, one of the crucial facts I have learnt is that students are not customers. A higher educational institute’s relationship with its students is

Q: How did you gain the confidence of the various stakeholders of ISB? A: By being available to all the people all the time and listening to them. Decisions here are taken in a transparent manner and no major decision is ever taken unilaterally. June 2011 EDUTECH

COVER STORY

Story Name

“Doctors make good administrators in any field. They have all the requisite managerial qualities ingrained in them” —Dr Vidya Yeravdekar Executive Director, Symbiosis International University

EDUTECH June 2011

Leadership

Doctor

Without

Borders

JITEN GANDHI

Q: Has your expertise as a gynaecologist helped you in your role as a university administrator? They are two very different jobs. A: Doctors make good administrators in any field. They have all the requisite managerial qualities ingrained in them. We are used to taking snap decisions as we deal with matters of life and death. We are trained to be sensitive to the needs of patients, and hence are naturally empathetic towards the needs of people, be they employees, faculty, staff, students, parents, or other stakeholders. Doctors are also capable of hard work, used to working long hours and often round the clock during emergencies. There is an inherent quality of entrepreneurship in every doctor, as most of us are geared towards building our own practice ultimately. Q: What is your approach to administrating a university? A: I believe in total autonomy for faculty and staff, but with accountability. After taking charge in 1997, one of the first things I did was slash the number of holidays and give a thrust to punctuality. Then I restructured our administrative set-up, creating departments of finance, human resources (HR), projects and purchase. Before this, the registrar was

COVER STORY

Dr Vidya Yeravdekar, Executive Director, Symbiosis International University, has brought surgical precision to university administration

responsible for most of these operations and several staff members too were multi-tasking. Imagine an organisation employing nearly a 1000 people functioning without an HR head! Another critical area that caught my attention was the piecemeal purchases being made under the many ongoing projects and institutes. To leverage economies of scale, I centralised purchase and put in a system which required each institute to fill in a requisition form for whatever they required well in advance, with no ad hoc purchases allowed. There was a lot of opposition to these streamlining activities. Some heads of institutes found it difficult to accept the change as they perceived it as a curb on their freedom. Q: How did you handle the staffâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s resistance to change? A: The resistance died naturally, once people understood the benefits of the new system. It freed them from routine administrative work and gave them more time to concentrate on academics. In fact, now they perceive us as the backbone of support. We clearly demarcated roles - the vice chancellor takes care of the academic governance and I look after education administration - which I believe has no business to meddle with

academics. Under this system, the HR department takes care of staff welfare, recruitment and general training in areas like team building and motivation, while the specific academic training is left to the directors/professors of individual institutes. I do not intend to venture into teaching, as I believe that I can contribute much more to the governance of the university by keeping out of academics. It is also important to have faith in yourself and your decisions. Once I take a decision, I stick to it no matter what. However, I always communicate all plans to the faculty and staff well in advance and try to build a consensus. Q: Tell us about your administrative innovations. A: I launched the Symbiosis National Aptitude Test (SNAP), a common entrance exam for admission to all Symbiosis institutes, which has been a huge success. I am currently thinking of starting an incubation centre on our campuses. I also wish to set up a public relations department and hire a chief information officer, considering that we spend 10 crore annually on information technology, and are investing another 10 crore in an enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. June 2011â&#x20AC;&#x192; EDUTECH

COVER STORY

Story Name

Anatomy of an

Able Administrator Dr Ashok Kolaskar, Vice Chancellor, KIIT University and advisor, National Knowledge Commission, says non-academics can be trained to be good education administrators. However, academics have higher chances of success for they understand the sector better

SAUMENDRA

Q: Is it essential to be an eminent academician to head a higher education institute (HEI)? A: There is no rule that says only academicians can head an academic institution. However, if you are one, the chances of your succeeding are better, as you have the advantage of understanding the culture and ethos of the system better than an outsider. You would also have a good idea of the changing higher education scenario and so would keep pace with it. An academician is also more likely to understand the needs of his/her colleagues and students. It is a specialist’s job and like in any other field, those with experience in the sector have an edge over others.

Q: How can people from other backgrounds become good leaders in education? A: Interested government officials or corporate leaders should be deputed to universities or other HEIs to work as faculty members or research scholars. This exposure will help them develop an understanding of the system instead of being thrust into it suddenly. If you do not belong to the community, you may not be aligned with the long-term goals of the organisation. Such aspirants must also be given training in academic leadEDUTECH June 2011

ership, government functioning, etc., to enable them to govern better. At present, there is no formal training or leadership programme for higher education administrators. It is learnt entirely on the job. Q: What are the qualities of a good leader of an HEI? A: Apart from vision, innovativeness, administrative capabilities and leadership qualities necessary to head any organisation, leaders of higher education must possess certain specific qualities: ABILITY TO LISTEN: It is important to listen to all stakeholder – teachers, students and parents. Even if you cannot resolve their issues, they have the satisfaction of being heard. It is an important psychological process. HUMILITY: You must respect faculty and students. Even if the faculty is not an otherwise aware lot, it is important to know that they are specialists in their field. Never belittle them. Same with students who come from different regions and strata of society. LEARNING QUICKLY: The ability to quickly learn and adapt to the culture of higher education institutes is a prerequisite. The organisational structure and cultural bearings of an HEI are different from organisations in any other sector. There is no clear

hierarchy. Students are not employees and are not answerable to anyone; you have to earn their respect. In corporate set-ups, the boss is always right. In universities, everyone is the boss and thinks they are always right. As a university top boss you have to not only handle all kinds of people, but also nurture them with care and carry them along. TRANSPARENCY AND FIRMNESS: Never promise what you can’t fulfill. If something is not possible, say so firmly. Closed door meetings, especially with students, are a strict no-no. It is best to hold discussions with them in the open. Q: How is a good education leader judged? A: By the number of positive changes or innovations you have brought in. Be it major strides in research, new ways of delivering education or the impact students of the institute have made. Certainly not by the number of buildings or roads you have built or at which hill stations you have held your meetings. Leadership is more about governance than day to day administration. Governance involves putting processes in place and improving existing systems. It is about how you take the organisation forward, and the changes you introduce.

CAMPUS

Xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx

KEEPING

COOL

GREEN WAY THE

EDUTECH June 2011

Green Cooling

CAMPUS

Green cooling may sound like a newfangled concept, but India has a tradition of natural cooling methods. Happily, institutions are now borrowing from the past to turn campuses into state-of-the-art bowers. We walk through the leafy bays to learn about sun orientation, day lighting and passive cooling BY TEJA LELE DESAI

tion, day lighting and shading has led to functional buildings where energy-efficient practices have brought down electricity bills. Apart from ensuring energy conservation, green methodologies offer benefits such as increased access to daylight and fresh air. On a campus, such environment-friendly architecture principles help nurture healthy attitudes and let the next generation perfect the green language. Some cool campuses have paved the way for design innovations in architecture using traditional methods.

Life is a Breeze The Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) is a cool campus. Students here are a chilled lot â&#x20AC;&#x201D; without an air-conditioner. No sweat, what if the country is reeling under the sweltering temperatures? For students here, keeping cool is a breeze. CEPT is an architectural marvel where traditional systems of cooling have been successfully blended in the natural design June 2011â&#x20AC;&#x192; EDUTECH

PHOTO COURTESY: PEARL ACADEMY

cross the world, with concerns for environment dominating the collective psyche, green campuses have become the byword. Institutions everywhere are taking the lead in going natural to cut down on carbon footprints. Green cooling is among the concepts adopted by campuses to beat the summer heat without carbon-emitting air-conditioners. Green concepts dominate the planning stage itself. Thinking about green cooling during the design process provides opportunities to incorporate some of the basic principles of sustainable design, including passive cooling. Be it earth-air tunnels, shaded angled apertures, displacement ventilation or natural insulation techniques, architects and designers are advocating the use of natural methods to keep the heat out of buildings. The shift to building ideas based on considerations like sun orienta-

Green Cooling

Beating the Heat with Green Cooling CEPT • Deep shaded angled apertures • Building raised on pilotis • Double-height airy interiors NIIT University • Earth-air tunnels • Light shelves and skylights • Minimal exposure on west • Shading devices for glazed areas TERI University • Smart orientation • Earth-air tunnels • High-performance window glazing • Insulation on walls and roofs • Efficient lighting system University of Jodhpur • Displacement ventilation • Thick stone walls • Shaded windows • Insulated roofs Pearl Academy of Fashion • Structure designed around water body • Evaporative cooling • Inverted matkas used for roof insulation

and architecture plan. Architect B.V. Doshi, who compares his structure to a “functional factory building”, says: “Apart from deep shaded angled apertures set in the wall to keep the glare and heat out, we decided on a north-south orientation of parallel bays for better air flow and to diminish the impact of the sun.” He adds that the height of spaces was planned according to activity requirements, for example double-height airy interiors to be used as drawing studios and single-height ones for discussion groups or classrooms.” The utilisation of open spaces in CEPT is again worth emulating. The Centre has a series of walkways, a combina-

EDUTECH June 2011

tion of steps and platforms, which serve as interlocking common spaces for informal gatherings. The building has been raised on pilotis (piers) and the shaded areas underneath work as multifunctional spaces where classes, indoor games and competitions are held in the natural breeze. As a result these areas are wellused at times when campus activities in other institutions see a decline.

Borrowing from Tradition At NIIT University, Neemrana, the designers, Space Design Consultants, and master planners, YRM London, turned to an age-old building technique

to keep the interiors cool. The university showcases the use of earth-air tunnels — a low-energy cooling system that works on the principle that the temperature recorded at about 4m below the surface is around 10-12 degrees lower than the temperature on the ground. In this system, which uses only 30% of the energy of a normal air-conditioning system, fresh air is drawn through an underground duct (the “earth-air tunnel”) laid 4m down. Heat exchange with the underground duct cools down the air, which is then treated for temperature, humidity and dust, and supplied to the building. Later, the air is expelled through a chimney. The system produces 100% fresh air and maintains a healthy environment inside. Speaking about the system, Kamal Singh, Infrastructure Advisor, NIIT University, says, “Air is sucked through a tower — that adds to the architectural signature of the design — and is released at the other end, which opens out into the building. Along the way, the temperature is brought down about 10-15 degrees.” The passive solar control measures allow the buildings to be well-lit and free of dust, while the up-and-down ventilation through vertical shafts averts the need for windows for ventilation. Skylights and light shelves (horizontal lightreflecting overhangs placed above eyelevel and with a high-reflectivity upper surface to bounce daylight onto the ceiling and deeper into a room) and skylights are used to conserve energy through day lighting. All buildings are oriented in a north-south direction so have minimal exposure to the hot western sun. The use of glass on exteriors is limited and, whenever used, the glazing is shaded from the sun. “The buildings, built with a high percentage of recycled materials, are insulated from outside and detailed to avoid thermal bridges. They are designed to be cool and dust-free,”Singh elaborates.

Dig up the Tunnels At TERI University, earth-air tunnels are employed to keep temperatures down in the hostel block. The orientation of

UNIVERSITY OF JODHPUR PHOTO COURTESY SPACE-DESIGN.COM

CAMPUS

Green Cooling

building blocks and spaces ensures glare-free daylight in regularly occupied areas. The east, west and south facades of the building have minimum glazing and the form of the building casts a shadow on the glazing, blocking direct sunlight. The use of insulating material on walls and roofs, and highperformance window glazing that minimises thermal gain, enhances energy efficiency. The lighting system is designed to minimise energy consumption and takes advantage of day lighting. Rajiv Chhibber of TERI University says green design features contribute about 40% in energy savings compared to conventional buildings. He adds the rationale is that “the campus has been planned to provide a setting that enhances learning and showcases the concept of modern green buildings.”

Wind Towers for Natural Ventilation Passive cooling is also possible through the process of displacement ventilation, an idea that has been around for years. This process allows buildings to be ventilated by letting in cool air and letting out warm air. In practice, designers can provide openings at low levels to bring in cooler air and high openings (such as clerestory windows — windows that rise above adjoining rooflines) to let out the rising warm air, so as to create a natural flow of air. The University of Jodhpur, also designed by Space Design Consultants, provides thermal comfort by using displacement ventilation to keep the rooms cool. Here, a wind tower with an evaporative cooling system and small exhaust ducts is used to bring cool breeze into all rooms of the building. Massive stone walls, made from locally procured stone, shade windows and insulate roofs, and also add a pleasant ambience in the peak of summer.

Sun Blocked At NIFT, Hyderabad, architecture has been used innovatively to keep out hot air. The design is such that the central court remains shaded most of the time, making outdoor activity possible.

CAMPUS

“Apart from deep shaded angled apertures in the wall... we decided on a north-south orientation of parallel bays for better air flow” —Architect B.V. Doshi,

Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology

Blank walls lined with lockers run along the main internal circulation spine on the south-west side. The walls work as an insulating layer and keep solar radiation and heat out. Sonali Rastogi, co-founder of awardwinning architectural practice, Morphogenesis, is responsible for the low-cost, environmentally sensitive campus, Pearl Academy of Fashion in Jaipur. After intensive solar and thermal analysis, the building was conceptualised based on the baoli, or stepwell, of ancient Indian architecture. The structure is raised over the ground, creating a scooped out underbelly that forms the “sink” for the water body. Recycled water helps maintain the microclimate through evaporative cooling and reduces dependence on mechanical environmental control measures. “The building casts a long shadow on the water body, so it doesn’t heat up. To ensure that it’s sustainable, the water is recirculated. The structure is wrapped in a jali (screen) and water is dripped onto the jalis, bringing down the temperature,” Rastogi explains. Since this was a low-budget project, Rastogi also turned to a cost-effective Rajasthani insulating technique. “We put inverted matkas on the roof; this keeps the temperature down and reduces the need for air-conditioning significantly,” she says. The passive environment design reportedly helps achieve temperatures of about 27˚C inside even when the temperature outside is touching 50˚C.

Solar heat and radiation are also absorbed through windows and roofs. Plantation cover and landscaping shading concepts help reduce the solar heat gain and bring down costs. Shading and evapo-transpiration (the process by which a plant actively moves and releases water vapour) reduce surrounding air temperatures by 5˚C to 6˚C. The temperature directly under trees could be as much as 15˚C cooler as cool air settles near the ground. Planting trees of appropriate sizes, densities and shapes can help throw shade on windows and openings, blocking the sun’s rays. Adding perennials and vines that cluster on walls also helps.

Old is Cold Too New campuses can plan to be green starting with the first building block itself, that is, at the design stage. But, for old campuses, designers need to take into account existing constraints and aim to maximise the energy efficiency of mechanical cooling systems and not just incorporate new concepts into the design. An open floor plan allows optimisation of passive solar cooling. Improvements to the building envelope — sunshading, insulation, thermal bridging and high-performance glass — can optimise the design. Since the positioning of openings can’t be changed, experts suggest fitting windows with double-glass panes where the insulating air space between the panes reduces heat transfer. Placing direct shading devices such as pergolas and solar June 2011 EDUTECH

CAMPUS

Green Cooling

screens at appropriate places can also enhance energy efficiency. For shading roofs, one can use fixed shades of lightweight materials, movable shades of canvas, or landscaping elements. However, experts say keeping windows shaded is more important since glass permits sunlight to enter the building but does not allow long-wave heat radiated by room surfaces to escape. Deep overhangs or solar screens can be used to shield glazed areas from direct sun rays and avoid excessive heat gain. When it comes to sun control, low e-glazing can also help, especially on the western side of buildings. The importance of landscape shading elements rises manifold in existing campuses — trees, vines and vegetation cast shade and reduce the effect of solar gain. Awnings can also reduce heat gain by as much as by 65% on windows with southern exposure and by 77% on those with western exposure. Daylight harvesting, a lighting strategy designed to minimise energy consumption and lower bills, takes advantage of day lighting wherever available. Light shelves and skylights can help in this endeavour. Switching to energy-efficient compact fluorescents can also help lower temperature as about 80% of the energy consumed by incandescent lighting is wasted through heat.

Rastogi says, “If the basic orientation of the building vis-à-vis the sun is wrong, there’s not much that you can do about it. After all, any building that faces the west is a killer. Otherwise, one can adopt simple solutions like jalis, second skins and shades to bring down the temperature.” She also advocates the use of water bodies to keep the atmosphere cool.

A Wise Investment

“If the basic orientation of the building vis-à-vis the sun is wrong, there’s not much that you can do” —Sonali Rastogi,

Co-founder of award-winning architectural practice, Morphogenesis, Delhi

Keep Your Cool • Dark coloured exteriors tend to absorb anywhere between 70% and 90% of the sun’s radiant energy, leading to heat gain. Using light colours or reflective coatings on existing roofs can help minimise this • Commonly used appliances such as computers, laptops, televisions, ovens, dishwashers and dryers are overlooked sources of interior heat gain. Compare appliances and choose energy-efficient appliances that generate less heat and use less energy • Don’t forget that green building design is associated with factors that are positively and significantly correlated with increased productivity. A building that uses passive solar control measures is on an average 25% to 30% more energy efficient, has better lighting quality (more day lighting and better daylight harvesting) and improved ventilation

EDUTECH June 2011

Considerable R&D shows the cost of building green is higher than conventional building. The major cost contributors are energy-related systems: the building envelope, lighting, electrical and HVAC (heating, ventilating and airconditioning). A study, Costing Green: A Comprehensive Cost Database and Bu d g e t i n g Me t h o d o l o g y , r e v e a l s integrating green features into a project early is critical. “The choices made during design ultimately determine whether a building can be sustainable, not the budget set,” says the report by Davis Langdon Adamson, a construction cost-planning company. Though initial costs may be higher than conventionally designed buildings, the savings — be it o n e n e r g y, w a t e r, m a i n t e n a n c e , operations or health costs — justify expenditure. The Costs and Financial Benefits of Green Buildings report by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative for the California Sustainable Building Ta s k F o r c e s a y s , “ W h i l e t h e environmental and human health benefits of green building have been widely recognised...minimal increases in upfront costs of about 2% to support green design would, on an average, result in lifecycle savings of 20% of total construction costs — more than 10 times the initial investment.” It is estimated that going green in India costs approximately 10% more. “But this incremental cost, when compared to the lifecycle cost of the building, is small. There are extensive savings when one looks at the lifecycle of the building,” Rastogi says. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters

ADMINISTRATION

VC-Appointment

State universities of Gujarat need a facelift. The process must start with the selection of the right vice chancellors BY K.M. JOSHI (Professor of Economics, Bhavnagar University)

EDUTECHâ&#x20AC;&#x192; June 2011

R R

ight from the first commission on university education, the Radhakrishnan Commission (1948), to the Kothari Commission (1964-66), Gnanam Commission (1990) and Ramlal Parikh Commission (1993), all have been unanimous in defining the role of the vice chancellor as central to the quality and relevance of universities. A leader who stands for the commitment of the university to scholarship and pursuit of truth, a bridge that yokes administration to academic excellence, a visionary who shapes thousands of young lives and a pillar for nation building. A VC must be an individual with values, personality characteristics and integrity in addition to academic excellence and administrative experience. No doubt, in these times of moral bankruptcy such luminaries are hard to come by, yet these expectations indicate a standard. Finding the right person to fit into the position is important, not only in the interests of the university, but also in the interest of the nation, as young India looks up to them to set the tone and tenor for their generation.

Power Struggles The issue is especially relevant when it comes to selecting Vice Chancellors at the grassroots level of state universities. Despite recommendations by various committees, the process has unfortunately not been streamlined effectively. Gujarat, too, is a state struggling with this issue. The search committees set up for selecting candidates for the post of VC for around four Universities have, yet again, failed to nominate deserving names. The panels seem to have followed in the footsteps of their predecessors. Politicisation, unionism and favouritism are the hallmarks of VC appointments these days, leading to an infiltration of non-deserving persons as vice chancellors. As a result, former politicians, bureaucrats, industrialists and low profile academics find berths as captains of the education ship. More often than not, rules and quality parameters are flouted or twisted to suit the larger political purpose, thus compromising this sacred seat of higher learning. As a corollary, the quality of higher education across many state universities in India has become sadly compromised due to undue political influence. Though these VCs alone cannot be blamed for the steady deterioration of the university education system, to a large extent, it can be attributed to their

VC-Appointment

ADMINISTRATION

questionable academic merit and purpose. The recent appointments of vice chancellors across universities have led to quality corrosion in academia and proliferation of political groupings. These politically aligned incumbents have encouraged malpractices and ushered substandard administration. It is a given that a person sans academic vision and insight will never be able to translate higher education objectives into achievables.

Locked in Mediocrity The vice chancellor is the principal academic and executive officer of the university. Finding a person of calibre to fill this role is the task of the search committee set up for this purpose. This body recommends three names for the post. But the foremost question here is: Are the members of the search committee themselves qualified to select and recommend persons for a post that requires such high distinction?

GUJARAT ISSUE BHAVNAGAR University had two of its professors fasting unto death to protest the selection process for VC. The post has been lying vacant since November this year ANAND Agriculture Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s post for the VC was vacant for a year until A.M. Sheikh was appointed in April this year

June 2011â&#x20AC;&#x192; EDUTECH

ADMINISTRATION

VC-Appointment

While we all know that the VC is the “keeper of the university’s conscience (Radhakrishnan Commission — 1948: 422)” and, to quote the Kothari Commission Report, “one who stands for the commitment of the university to scholarship and pursuit of truth”, there is a cloud over the qualification and competence of search committee members whose mandate is to select suitable candidates for this high office. Theoretically, the selection committee must have persons of eminence in the sphere of education on board, nominated by various concerned authorities. In reality, such scholars of repute are in a minority or totally absent from the body. In several cases, even the chairman of the committee was found to be below the rank of a professor and without a sound academic background. There have also been instances where senior professors were inducted as members of the committee under a chairman who was of a lower rank – against university protocol. Hence, the mission to appoint a visionary as the vice chancellor fails largely because of the incompetence and under-qualification of the search committee to identify and recommend one. This brings us to the competent authorities involved in electing, selecting, nominating and appointing the search committee members. It must be made

“A search committee must fix minimum eligibility criteria for the post of VC“ incumbent upon these bodies to nominate only distinguished scholars and academicians to the committee.

Quality needs Calibration The search committee must fix minimum eligibility criteria for the post of a VC. The desirability of a candidate may be measured by the excellence of research and publications of the person. Only those academicians who are reputed scholars — as is manifest from international and national awards, fellowships, citations received, quality publications, research projects, consultancy and recognition by academic bodies — should be considered a right fit for the leadership position. The parameters for qualification have been addressed well by different commissions including the National Knowledge Commission and University Grants Commission Pay Review Committee. The Office of the Chancellor and the Ministry of Higher Education can work together to fix a minimum quality benchmark or yardstick for candidacy for the post of VC. Another measure that would yield positive results is instituting a Vice-Chancellor Fitness Index based on academic and administrative variables, for judging a candidate.

RIT to the Rescue Fixing accountability on the search committee would also be a move in the right direction. For this, the functioning of the search committee must be brought under the purview of the Right to Information Act. This would lead to greater accountability of the search team and transparency in the selection

EDUTECH June 2011

process. The stakeholders can then seek information about the applications received by the panel and the reasons for recommending or not recommending the names of specific candidates for the post. This would be the most apposite and effective step towards higher education governance. On the other hand, accountability of the VC office would also yield quality improvements. The decisions taken by him at the micro platform, i.e., at the university level, and also at the macro or state level, would then be available for scrutiny. Stakeholders can then know if the VCs are participating in and working towards agendas for the development of higher education through a Joint Board of Vice Chancellors’ Committee (JBVC). As of now, we have no clue to the number, if any, of academic discussions that have taken place in the JBVC meetings. We do not even know if there are any records of work initiated and implemented.

Required — a Visionary VC The concerns expressed above strengthen the conviction that appointing eminent scholars as leaders of universities will lead to a definite improvement in the educational firmament with genuine academic issues being addressed in timely and effective ways at correct forums and platforms. The failure to nip the trend of non-academics taking over the reins of university administration will definitely push state universities into substandard benchmarking in terms of quality in both research and teaching programmes. The gap between private universities and state universities will also widen further. Currently, a majority of the state universities are passing through both financial and quality crises and negligence in the appointment of vice chancellors will have multiple negative spillover effects. The controversial Common Universities Act, if implemented in consultation and as per the suggestions of the various stakeholders, should also focus on the qualifications of the VC. While moving towards the knowledge-driven economy objective, Gujarat State must ensure a competitive advantage for its higher education in terms of the nature of programmes offered along with research output. A process that begins with the appointment of the vice chancellor — with vision, mission and qualification. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters

“Wharton has three priorities: innovation, global presence and social impact”

THOMAS S. ROBERTSON EDUCATION: BA in Business from Wayne State University MA and PhD in Marketing from Northwestern University CURRENT ENGAGEMENT: • Dean of the Wharton School • Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise at the University of Pennsylvania

Thomas S. Robertson

MISSION INDIA

DIALOGUE

The

Wharton Way

Thomas S. Robertson, Dean, Wharton School of Business, discusses his India plans with EDU. For now, the focus is on making healthcare management in India a professionally managed enterprise BY R. GIRIDHAR

SUBHOJIT PAUL

EDU: Why did you decide to come to India? Thomas S. Robertson: We are signing an MoU with the Indian School of Business (ISB), Mohali. We will be working with them, and the Max Group, on designing a healthcare management course. Wharton is not new to India. We have been associated with the ISB Hyderabad right from its inception with our faculty assisting in teaching, curriculum and faculty management. What will be Whartonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in the design of the curriculum? Healthcare management is one of the 11 specialisations offered at Wharton. We have a dedicated faculty for the course. About 10% of our MBAs graduate with a major in healthcare management. Healthcare is an important part of the US economy. In the near future India, too, will demand sophisticated management in healthcare enterprises. In both countries, hospitals have been traditionally managed by physicians. While physicians may be good for medical reasons, they are not always the best administrators. I think we have a major role to play in making medical organisations more efficient. We have courses designed to provide professional expertise in healthcare management that we hope to bring to India. I know much of it needs to be customised, but we hope to learn in the process. Our experience with the Indian healthcare system can perhaps be used to improve US healthcare. We recently offered a course at ISB Hyderabad for students

majoring in healthcare. We had 30 students from Wharton and 20 from ISB take it up.

Wharton recently reviewed its MBA curriculum and announced some significant changes. Why? One reason for the changes introduced was that the curriculum had not been revised in a number of years, though other courses were updated regularly. We reviewed the curriculum, admissions process, career management and the whole culture of the MBA programme. This was an extensive exercise. There were about 4,000 interactions, including interviews and questionnaires, and student, alumni, CEO and recruiter surveys, to understand what the curriculum should be. As the Dean what do you aspire to accomplish in the next five years? Wharton has three priorities: innovation, global presence and social impact. We want to be a globJune 2011â&#x20AC;&#x192; EDUTECH

DIALOGUE

Thomas S. Robertson

I think we have a major role to play in making medical organisations more efficient al B-school. So, we are focused on hiring faculty from around the world and internationalising the curriculum. The two dominant economies in the world are India and China. So, we should be wellrepresented in both. We must also reinvent constantly. In education, technology is very important. Social media, IT, simulations and online media are all part of a new educational paradigm. Instilling an innovative temperament within the school is important. It is important for our students to possess a scientific temperament. Then they will be willing to move in new directions. Our third thrust area is social impact. B-schools have to be a force for good in the universe. By this, we don’t mean that all students will work only for non-profits. But, we do hope that they will be managers with a social conscience.

What is the Business Institute for Global Good at Wharton? The three pillars of Wharton — i.e., global impact, innovation and social impact — are institutionalised within the school. We have vice deans dedicated to each. For social impact, we not only have a vice dean, but also a managing director. Our students and faculty work on projects for the community and also a wider audience. One of our projects is in partnership

EDUTECH June 2011

with Goldman Sachs which aims to educate 10,000 women and develop entrepreneurship skills among them.

You’ve been an advocate of R&D. Why is R&D important? We are in this business for some basic purposes: to create new knowledge, educate future practitioners and disseminate knowledge to existing practitioners. If we do not create new knowledge, who else will do it? Half of what we do is creating new knowledge that improves businesses and makes governments efficient. This results in enhanced economic and social welfare. You’re not a university if you are not creating new knowledge. We are judged by the knowledge that we create and ideas we disseminate. Do you see Wharton setting up a campus in India? It is a distinct possibility. We may come with a stronger Wharton presence in India, but not to offer degree programmes. We would rather communicate knowledge to the Indian market. For example, we have the “Knowledge at Wharton” initiative with 160,000 subscribers. We are already developing India-specific content and disseminating it on the internet.

Do you see any potential for Wharton to step into executive and continuing education in India? Yes, that is a possibility. We have done a little at ISB. If we had a more fixed presence in India, we could possibly do more in the field of executive education or lifelong education for our alumni who are located here. There’s one thing which you’ve been keen on — the diffusion of innovation. Why? It simply means how you disseminate information. Usually, what you’re trying to do is disseminate it quickly. Most firms, when they have innovated something, are interested in getting it into the market fast. But how do you get customers to adopt it quickly? A lot of my research over the years has been focused on that. In running a B-school what matters is how I champion innovation and make sure that we have the leading edge. I must also ensure that organisations accept our innovations and are willing to move in a new direction. You have to work on them to convince them why it is better to be ahead. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters

TECHNOLOGY

Cloud Computing

Moving to the

Cloud Shifting to technologies based on the internet is cost-effective, simple and flexible. Institutions should make the move before adoption spikes in two to five years

EDUTECHâ&#x20AC;&#x192; June 2011

Cloud Computing

TECHNOLOGY

Deployment Models Cloud services can be based on a public, private or community model, depending upon the customer’s needs. “Public clouds” mean that anyone can access the provided services over the internet. A private cloud is set up on a proprietary network and is intended to serve a customer organisation or institution. Under this model, the customer doesn’t benefit from lowered costs. But like all clouds, private clouds offer other advantages, which include scalability and easier recovery from failure. A “community cloud” is when a group of organisations in the same domain or with common concerns, sets up a cloud infrastructure to be used by all of them. They share costs and the benefits of using cloud resources.

Service Models

PC ANOOP

efinitions of cloud computing often are cloudy. Vasudeva Varma, Associate Professor of IIIT Hyderabad, explains the concept more clearly than most: “Cloud computing is an enabler that provides elastic (infinitely scalable) computing and storage, without the need to buy any computing infrastructure. It is just the same as using electricity as a utility, whenever we need it and however much we need it, and paying for what we use. That is why it is also known as utility computing.” Cloud computing makes IT services, both basic and complex, available on the internet. It does so by using various models. Cloud services can be delivered using standard infrastructure, which means there is no need to invest large sums of money on in-house infrastruc-

ture or applications that demand a lot of computing power. Organisations can work with their existing infrastructure and pay a service provider for the use of hardware and software. The idea of cloud computing is that you can reduce costs, particularly on infrastructure management, which is part of the service provider’s responsibility. The model also benefits the service providers themselves, because they can leverage economies of scale, hosting several customers on the same infrastructure and cutting down on costs. There is considerable debate on the risk involved in moving applications to the cloud. Experts say the risk is not significantly greater than that in any IT undertaking and in any case, there are available methodologies to reduce it even further. A careful selection of functions to shift to the cloud also helps minimise threats to data security.

The delivery of services to customers also follows different models. These include Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The IaaS model gives you access to an infrastructure. This frees the customer from having to buy the servers or set up data centres and network equipment. The customer pays based on the extent and amount of resources used. The PaaS model gives you access to a specific platform or solution stack, without having to buy the hardware or software required. The SaaS model entails providing software over the internet. Applications designed for the cloud enable you to carry out tasks using a standard web browser, without having to buy the software or worry about licensing.

Cheap, Simple, Flexible Working with cloud services gives you several advantages, one of which is cost savings. All that a customer needs is computers with web browsers — no investment in specialised or dedicated infrastructure is involved. “On the cloud, you don’t have to worry about that kind of a capex. You build as you go along and wait for the results before you enhance your infrastructure,” says Nitin Khanapurkar, June 2011 EDUTECH

TECHNOLOGY

Cloud Computing

1 SEVEN-STEP

CSP

(CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDER)

SELECTOR Collated by Sameer Kulkarni, Head—IT Automation Architecture (Data Center Business), Reliance Communications

BUSINESS VIABILITY Pedigree: Brand visibility of cloud service provider, entrepreneur track record, management, strategic investors or VCs

Financials: Balance sheet, cash flows, VC funding rounds, equity structure

committed to cloud per se, R&D or innovation budget

Roadmap: Expansion plans

Partnerships and tie-ups:

PORTFOLIO AND PRICING

Published track record of partnerships (the more the better)

Portfolio: Breadth and depth of portfolio offerings, medium to long-term roadmap

Forums: Forums hosted, steered, sponsored

Pricing flexibility: Maturity

Commitment level: Capex

Industry rankings: Assessments from third party analysts like Gartner, Yankee and IDC

Executive Director, Advisory Services, KPMG India. “You only pay for what you use, and there is no maintenance cost.” Also, you save on resources to manage your infrastructure. You may need to deploy staff to manage the service provider, but that is about all. Your regular IT staff can take care of the rest. “With the cloud coming in, technology is no more a challenge,” says Khanapurkar. Cloud services are flexible and scalable. If there are some services that you need today but want to give up tomorrow, the cloud ensures that you do not end up with under-utilised IT infrastructure later. You can ask your vendor to stop giving you those services. If you unexpectedly need a large amount of resources or storage, the cloud can make those available to you, without the problem of having to buy the infrastructure, set it up, or install the required software. Besides all that, the cloud is also a greener option than running and maintaining proprietary hardware and software. A study by Microsoft, Accenture and WSP titled Cloud Computing and Sustainability, examined the environmental impact of running proprietary hardware and software EDUTECH June 2011

STRATEGIC CAPABILITIES Manpower: Quality of manpower, average industry experience, qualifications, certifications, attrition rate

announced publicly and commitment to growth

Patents filed: (if any)

and flexibility of the pricing model and up sell model

Cloud Equals Low-cost and High Access Vasudeva Varma, Associate Professor, IIIT Hyderabad, explains why cloud computing is also known as ‘utility computing’.

Is your institution using cloud computing? At IIIT Hyderabad, laboratories are using a cloud computing paradigm. Search and Information Extraction Lab (SIEL) was the first to adopt the method for research. It is now being used at the Centre for Data Engineering, Machine Translation Lab of Language Technologies Research Centre, Centre for IT in Agriculture and Centre for Visual Information Technologies, among others.

How has using cloud services helped you? It has benefited us in several ways. First, it reduces cycle time for research experiments. Earlier we used to run experiments for weeks and often miss deadlines for publications, because the experiments were not complete. Now, we are able to not only complete experiments on time, but conduct several additional experiments at the same time. This has resulted in an increased number of publications. We are now investing less in buying individual workstations. Regular laptops are being used to connect to the cloud, and researchers and students are able to work from anywhere with ease. We are also creating better infrastructure by adding more machines to the cloud. That should help us further reduce the budget.

Cloud Computing

TECHNOLOGY

OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE Portal experience: Portal of a company says a lot about it (how rich, contemporary and up to date?)

Web enablement: Degree of sophistication in web enablement of customer operations

Customer empowerment: Extent of “self-care” automation of customer and service life cycle management

TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE

Real time visibility: Real

Choice of virtualisation platforms, servers, OS, ISVs

time reporting, application visibility, topology, dependency maps

Notification & escalation process: Means, processes and sophistication

Disaster recovery: Architecture, tools and readiness

Choice of platforms:

Ecosystem: Extent of vendor neutrality, migration, commitment to open source option

6 SLAs AND CONTRACTS Measurements: How transparent is the measurement and reporting, and is it automated?

Enforceability: Contractual terms and obligations to the SLAs

Extensibility: How seamlessly extensible (on-tap available) is the computer, storage and network?

versus running the same applications with cloud services. They found that moving to the cloud can help organisations reduce 90% of their energy consumption. This however, is not the case with private clouds, where a closed group uses the infrastructure.

Security Concerns Lack of standards and clearly defined service level agreements (SLAs) in the industry occasionally cause ambiguity, especially for those inexperienced in working with cloud services. Providers should be evaluated and tested and strict controls must be put into all contracts, to ensure that they don’t become lax with your data. Ownership of data and responsibilities must be clear from the start. Users often complain about provider lock-in. Many providers use proprietary formats that make it difficult to migrate data from one platform to another, or access data via other applications. So, it is important to examine your migration, support and future options thoroughly.

Cloud-based Learning Many people believe that cloud-based learning can level the playing field for

students who are forced to make do without a proper education. Khanapurkar says, “The best professor in Delhi, for example, is available only to a select community. Now, using the cloud, we can digitise lectures and put them on the web. Eventually the cyber café will see a revival, especially in the ‘B’ and ‘C’ class cities, for people who may not be able to afford personalised teaching. They can start facilities where students just come and attend a lecture broadcast online.” At specialised institutes which need dedicated IT labs and have high-performance computing requirements, moving to the cloud can help simplify the process and make education available to students. Teachers and staff don’t have to worry about managing the network, but can focus on helping students derive the maximum value from resources. Upgrades are also easier. Sharing information is, too, easier on the cloud. Students or professors who are unable to attend class physically can access lectures, and collaborate with other students from other places. The cloud enables better learning because of the digital media that can be used to teach. Rich content that would

7 SECURITY AND LAW Privacy policy: Stated privacy policy and enforceability

Jurisdiction: In which country is the CSP located and covered by what jurisdiction?

otherwise be difficult to access, can be used to enrich the learning experience. Khanapurkar says, “This kind of content will aid retention and make the learning last.” For example, medical students may be able to see a video that explains the workings of the heart. “Eventually you will see an ecosystem where the curriculum will be very interactive. Video streaming will enable students to take lectures in whichever way they want and on whatever topic they choose,” says Khanapurkar. “With media getting more interactive on smartphones and tablets, this content will no longer be limited to only computers.”

Challenges in Adoption Cloud adoption in the education sector in India is far from widespread. According to Vasudeva Varma, the biggest factor holding Indian institutes back is lack of awareness. When more people are aware of the benefits, adoption will go up significantly. “The second challenge is the lack of migration tools and techniques. If you are using conventional computational paradigms and would like to shift to the cloud paradigm, you need the help of migration tools,” Professor Varma adds. June 2011 EDUTECH

TECHNOLOGY

Cloud Computing

“Institutions will have to generate a roadmap for cloud computing and decide what’s their ultimate vision, because that will drive their investment” —Nitin Khanapurkar

Executive Director, Advisory Services, KPMG India

“The third challenge is the unsuitability of the cloud paradigm for specific research areas. If your computing needs cannot be satisfied by the cloud paradigm naturally, it can work as a de-motivating factor, because you will need to work on dividing your tasks to suit this new paradigm,” he says. According to Khanapurkar, “One of the reasons for slow adoption in India is the multiple price point. Then, computer and internet penetration is another factor that has a major impact. Another factor is of course the cultural challenges in adoption. But in three to five years, we will see exponential growth in this sector.”

Choosing Right The model you adopt should be tailormade to suit requirements. “It depends on the purpose: for once-a-year requirements (such as admissions or entrance tests), it may be more economical to use a public cloud setup. If your university is research-focused, calling for large-scale computing everyday, it would be better to set up a central cloud infrastructure,” says Professor Varma. Before moving to the cloud, you should evaluate which functions to take to the cloud. It may be a good idea to start small and move functions gradually. Khanapurkar says, “It may help institutions to first do a prototype or a group of concepts within the university or the college. They can create some kind of content which is used only by their internal students, and

EDUTECH June 2011

once they are confident that it is working and is interesting enough for the student community to take it, they may want to open it up to the larger community.” It may also make sense to try out cloud applications as an add-on instead of a replacement for your typical desktop applications. Many institutes have already adopted e-mail on cloud services. Other applications that can easily be moved to the cloud include knowledge management, collaboration (e-mail, chat, etc), portals, content management, information management (for example, digitisation, record management, storage services, etc), among several others. According to Vasudeva Varma, there are many options. You can set up department or research lab-level clouds to address the problem of under-utilisation of existing computing infrastructure. You can set up central (institute or university-level) cloud facilities for running large jobs. You can use special purpose cloud infrastructure that is set up for education or research purposes (such as the Academic Cloud Computing Initiative, which is an IBMGoogle-UW partnership, and the Open Cirrus project by HP, Yahoo, Intel and others). You will need to make special arrangements to avail of these facilities. Finally, you can also use public clouds such as Amazon Web Services. Also consider your future needs. Are you planning to add new courses and learning formats which may need a scale-

up? Make sure you have the right infrastructure, and a provider who will be able to deliver the services as you need them. Bandwidth, too, has to be considered. Once you have decided on the model, there are other things to be worked out, such as content and pricing. “First, the institutions will have to generate a roadmap for cloud computing and decide what is their ultimate vision, because that will drive their investment into the cloud,” says Khanapurkar. “Then they also need to work hard on the content, because if the content is not of high quality, nobody will want to take up your courses. The third thing is the pricing.” He adds, “In the future, I won’t be surprised if a few colleges come together and actually widen their network — coming in sort of as one institute — because they see much bigger advantage in doing that rather than competing with each other, because the physical space will no longer be the key USP.” It might take a while for people’s mindsets to change, for data security and privacy issues to be effectively addressed, and for various institutions to evolve the kind of public-private partnerships and collaborative models that will enable cloud-based education to take off in India. But there can be no doubt that clouds are here to stay. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters

PROFILE

Sudhir Kumar Jain

FACT FILE NAME: Sudhir Kumar Jain

THINGS HE LIKES: BOOK: My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi & How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (the first English book he read) QUOTE: “Reasons don’t count, results do” PLACE: Caltech campus (makes him nostalgic) FOOD: All manners of vegetarian food PASTIME: Reading MOVIES: Satyakam, Anand MUSIC OR POETRY: Urdu poetry, though he admits he may not understand it well HIS LITTLE SECRET: Can cook. Is proud of the way he can chop onions

My Tryst with Truth Professor Sudhir Jain, Director IIT Gandhinagar, is honest to a fault. Like Mahatma Gandhi, who influenced his formative years, he also believes in bold experiments BY SMITA POLITE 50

EDUTECH June 2011

udhir K. Jain was 12 when he saw the movie Satyakam. The intense film about the struggle of an upright young civil engineer, Satyapriya, with a corrupt system in post-Independence India, left a deep mark on young Sudhir. As a student of Islamia College in Etawah, Uttar Pradesh, Jain’s class teacher, Azmi, a staunch idealist, further instilled the ideals of truth, conviction and self-respect in him. Reading Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth at the age of 13, cemented it. Upon joining IIT Gandhinagar (IIT GN) as its founderdirector, Jain gifted this book to each student of the 2009 batch. Jain’s life has been guided by Gandhi’s beliefs. “When I was interviewed for the post of director for the new IITs, I made it clear that I am a candidate only for IIT Gandhinagar. I knew the chances of building a world-class institute were higher here. I was honest with myself and the interview panel,” is Jain’s frank admission. No task is taboo at IIT GN as long as it helps bring in world-class standards. They had to have a common hostel for girls and boys and call in sex-education counsellors. “We do not shy away from doing either unpleasant or difficult things, if it is important,” asserts Jain.

ALPESH

CURRENT ENGAGEMENT: Director, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar

Sudhir Kumar Jain

Bold Experiments Jain has often been warned that his experiments may land him in trouble. But the thrill of building something new is his motivation. “Seeing my ideas take shape gives me immense energy. I feel fresh every morning, even if I have slept just for a couple of hours,” he says. Mundane details like quality mess food, often ignored or left to hostel administration, are of special concern to this director. A nutritionist works along with the students to ensure that the right mix of healthy yet tasty meals are served at the mess tables. “Come and have lunch with us, you will probably not find better food in any other IIT,” Jain claims proudly. Sports is another area of interest to Jain, himself denied the opportunity in school. The schools he attended did not even have mats to sit on and students carried their own gunny sacks. While appearing for Class XII exams in Bijnor, Jain decided to sit for IIT entrance tests. In the 10-day gap between his school exams and IIT entrance, he memorised a booklet of Hindi-to-English translations of scientific terms. There were questions he could not understand and left unanswered, yet he made it with an all India rank of 69. Jain wanted to be a civil engineer, but stories of corruption in the field deterred him. It was a meeting with the upright Roorkee professor of civil engineering, O.P. Jain, that dispelled his doubts. “I was sure then that I wanted to attend Roorkee University and become a professor of civil engineering too,” says Jain. Satyakam was still fresh in his mind. Jain visited Professor Jain once again when in fourth year. This time it led him to apply for a PhD programme in the US. “I applied to Caltech because that was the only university requiring no application fee. The next few days passed like a dream, running around for my passport and tickets. I was still weak in English, but understood one word clearly — Congratulations,” reminisces Jain. Caltech campus remains among Jain’s favourite places. It played a key role in building his confidence and taught him to ensure quality in all endeavours. However, he yearned to return to India to pursue his dream of becoming a professor. Jain had planned to return to his alma mater, Roorkee Univer-

sity, however, he had offers from many institutes and decided to explore before settling on one. He joined IIT Kanpur for its bonhomie. A professor at 24, Jain’s students were almost his age, some older. But he was in the right place, for it fanned his passion to research earthquakes. In 1988, when a devastating earthquake struck Bihar, Jain with two of his students boarded an Ambassador car, and travelled non-stop for 72 hours, covering more than seven districts, sleeping barely 4-5 hours. It struck him then that his research had to be practical and people-oriented. It led him to design codes for earthquake-resistant buildings that are being used all over India today.

PROFILE

appointed head of the department and then Dean of Resource Planning. In May 2008, when the ministry announced institution of new IITs, all three directors whom Jain had worked with and the then chairman, sent him separate e-mails to propose his name. Jain was in a dilemma. On the one hand, he was not sure if starting new IITs was such a good idea, when the older ones were stretched for resources. On the other hand, this was an opportunity to see all his dreams take shape. It took him one month to clear his doubts. He turned to friends like Dheeraj Sanghi and Ajit Gill for advice and was convinced. “Earlier, I had mentors like Azmi O.P. Jain, N.C. Nigam, and

“I have been lucky to have lived life on my own terms and still be honest to my ideals” IIT Kanpur was productive for Sudhir on other fronts too. He met his soulmate Abhilasha, currently a professor of English at a Kanpur college. His son and daughter are studying in the US. Though his family is in four different geographies, Jain would not have it any other way. “I did not expect my wife to relocate. It has not been easy for my family, but you have to make certain adjustments to chase your dreams,” he admits.

People’s Professor Back from a sabbatical at Michigan and planning to write a book, Jain was caught off-guard when called to take on administrative work by the then Director, Dr R.C. Malhotra. He put his plans on hold and headed placements. One year on, after his experience with students, he was ready to take on more. He was later

George Housner. Now I find inspiration in younger people, like Dheeraj,” he says.Jain and Sanghi go a long way back to his IIT Kanpur days. Jain makes friends for life. All his friends have been receiving New Year cards unfailingly for the past 30 years. “I look for people and then look for the right jobs for them. If I empower people, they deliver much more than they believed they were capable of,” says Jain, explaining his people-oriented approach to life and work. “I have been lucky to have lived life on my own terms and still be honest to my ideals,” states the upright professor. Jain has scripted his own Satyakam without the sad ending, thanks to his faith in human values. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/ content/newsletters

June 2011 EDUTECH

THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE FROM

O F H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N

INSIDE 54 | Plagiarism Sleuths Undo Thesis 56 | UK’s Private Schools to Learn from US mistakes

Across Classes, Videos Make the Grade More and more colleges, universities are considering adding video-making to their list of core skills BY JEFFREY R. YOUNG

F BY PHOTOS.COM

ilm students aren’t the only ones producing videos for homework these days. Professors teaching courses in writing, geology, forensics, sociology, anthropology, foreign languages and many other disciplines now assign video projects, pushing students to make arguments formatted for the YouTube age. So far the trend exists mainly among tech-savvy professors, though in some cases students asked to write traditional papers are lobbying to turn in video essays instead. Now a few colleges and universities are considering adding video-making to a list of core skills required for graduation. Recording may take its place among the age-old R’s of education: reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic. I found that the University of Southern California is one institution pondering camera-happy measures. “We want all of our students that graduate from USC to have a signature experience that includes multimedia,” says Susan E. Metros, associate vice provost and associate CIO for technologyenhanced learning. The goal, she argues, is to prepare students for today’s highly visual communication landscape, and to push them to think more critically about the videos they consume. However, Metros also told me that the university has yet to figure out exactly how to do this. “We want it to be campuswide, and we want it to be something that is part of the curriculum, but we don’t know how yet.” Among the options being discussed: Adding a required course in which students make digital videos; or asking all undergraduates to complete a capstone multimedia project.

EDUTECH June 2011

GLOBAL.CHRONICLE.COM Several other courses at Purdue ask stu“It used to be that ‘multimedia literacy’ meant dents to shoot and edit video as well, includthat you just needed to be able to understand ing a forensics course and — this one is a graphics or images,” Metros said. “Now natural — a course on American Sign Lanthere’s a sea change, and it means you have to guage. A distance-education course in public be able to actually make them.” speaking requires students to not only film Tools to produce videos now travel in Sign up for a free weekly themselves giving a talk, but to recruit a small almost every student’s backpack. More than electronic newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education at audience to watch them. As Bowen put it, 89% of students at four-year colleges own Chronicle.Com/Globalnewsletter “You can’t do public speaking if you’re not laptops, according to the latest data from The Chronicle of Higher Education is speaking publicly.” Student Monitor, and today most laptops a US-based company with a weekly There are some drawbacks, though. Many come equipped with a built-in web camera newspaper and a website updated professors do not feel comfortable making vidand easy-to-use video-editing software. And daily, at Global.Chronicle.com, that cover all aspects of university life. eos, much less grading student footage. And the latest smartphones feature cameras and With over 90 writers, editors, and students often focus on adding glitzy effects video-editing software as well. About once a correspondents stationed around rather than doing research and crafting an argumonth, my sister-in-law e-mails me videos the globe, The Chronicle provides ment, says Elizabeth Losh, director of academic from her iPhone4 of my niece and nephew timely news and analysis of academprogrammes for the Culture, Art, and Technolgoofing around. ic ideas, developments and trends. ogy programme at the University of California at “The creation of video and the publishing of San Diego, who has assigned videos for years in video is getting to the point where it’s almost her media-studies courses. as easy as creating a written assignment,” says Many students think “all they need is something that’s got some Kyle D. Bowen, Purdue University’s director of informatics. visual sizzle, and they don’t need to address the kinds of research And he’s trying to make it even easier: He recently helped objectives that you might want them to address,” she says. design an iPhone app to let students submit video assignments At USC, officials have set up a centre where non-film majors to their professors. can go to get help crafting videos for classes. It’s called the Professors who have assigned videos say that students are Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Among recent projects: a enthusiastic — but that though they may fancy themselves geology class that asked students to make short documentaries young Steven Spielbergs, they often turn in schlocky, B-movie instead of writing term papers. fare. And even professors are still trying to figure out what makes a good academic argument in video form.

Movies About Issues Michael Fosmire, associate professor of library science at Purdue University, recently started assigning video homework for a survey course he helps teach called “Great Issues in Science and Society,” a required course for science majors. The 80 students in the class divide up in groups of four to write a white paper proposing policy on a scientific issue, such as supporting wind energy. Then they must produce a “persuasive yet accurate” short video to build momentum for their policy, says Fosmire. The professor says he has been surprised by how much time and energy the students invest in the videos, which have included mock newscasts and send-ups of popular sitcoms.

More than 89% of students at colleges own laptops says data from Student Monitor

Visual Competency

To Holly Willis, director of academic programmes for the centre, video is only one aspect of what she considers multimedia literacy, which can also include other forms of digital communication, including audio and interactive presentations. “For us, it’s really being able to communicate effectively in a networked culture,” she says. Some colleges, including the University of Cincinnati, have revised their statements of “general education core competencies” to include “oral and visual communication” in addition to writing skills. Video assignments are one way to achieve that goal. Librarians are also stepping in to define what they call “visual literacy.” The Association of College and Research Libraries recently drafted visual-literacy standards, the first time the group has issued such guidelines. They include a call to encourage students to “design and create meaningful images and visual media.” Even when colleges aren’t asking for videos, students are diving in on their own. One self-taught student video blogger from Villanova University, for instance, has scored 50 million views of her playful videos on Japanese culture. Perhaps professors can help make those homemade videos better. Subscribe to a free weekly electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter June 2011 EDUTECH

THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Plagiarism Sleuths Undo German Minister’s Thesis Participants of an online chat forum dissect former German defence minister’s thesis, page by page, and assign a bar-code indicating plagiarism on each page BY AISHA LABI

EDUTECH June 2011

Also, the University of Konstanz announced that it had stripped Veronica Sass, the daughter of another leading conservative politician, of her law doctorate. Another politician, Silvana KochMehrin, whose doctoral dissertation is under investigation by the University of Heidelberg, stepped down on Wednesday from her posts as a vice president of the European Parliament and the board of her political party. Part of the explanation for the apparent proliferation of plagiarism among politicians is the prevalence of doctoral degrees among figures outside of academe. Many German politicians and business leaders have doctoral titles and have few qualms about using them, even if they never set foot on a university

campus after they earn their degrees. “Everybody has their name on their door in bronze and wants to have their doctoral title there, too; that’s really important,” said Debora Weber-Wulff, a professor of media and computing at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin who has been active in the recent online plagiarism-detecting movement. The attitude toward academic titles, she said, has much to do with the traditional Ge r m a n r e v e r e n c e o f l e a r n i n g . “Someone who has a doctorate is highly respected,” she said.

Online Teamwork Guttenberg was hardly the only German politician to proudly affix “Dr” to his name, but he was the first to be subject-

BY PHOTS.COM

he bad news keeps coming for the disgraced former German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a once-rising star in his country’s conservative party. The University of Bayreuth published the full report of its investigation into plagiarism in his 2006 doctoral dissertation in law. The university’s assessment, which Guttenberg had initially sought to prevent from being made public, was unsparing: Not only was most of his dissertation plagiarised from a range of sources, including newspapers, journals, and the official research service for German parliamentarians, which lawmakers are forbidden to use for personal purposes, but even if the work had been Guttenberg’s, it would not have merited the summa cum laude it was originally awarded. The revelations of how extensively Guttenberg had plagiarised came as no surprise to one group of people: an online community of plagiarism detectors that formed since allegations against him came to light. That loose band of academic vigilantes helped to compile and disseminate the information that eventually brought about Guttenberg’s downfall. Its members have since set their sights on other high-profile figures, and, though they do not work directly with universities, their online sleuthing is having an impact.

GLOBAL.CHRONICLE.COM ed to the forensic scrutiny of an online examination of his academic bona fides. The allegations against him first came to light in February, when a law professor at the University of Bremen raised q u e s t i o n s a b o u t t h e m i n i s t e r’ s dissertation in a newspaper article. Events snowballed from there, said Tim Bartel, who works as country manager in Germany for Wikia, a for-profit sister company of the Wikimedia Foundation, and an online community dedicated to examining Guttenberg’s thesis soon took shape. A handful of bloggers began looking into Guttenberg’s dissertation and posting their findings in a variety of online forums. As their output grew, it became clear that they would need a more hospitable venue than so many disparate sites or even the Google document that had been created, which allowed access to only about 100 people. The original creator of the site where they ended up collaborating, GuttenPlag Wiki, was a doctoral candidate with a background in online gaming, through which he was familiar with the collaborative wikia format, said Bartel. Like many who have been active in the online plagiarism-hunting effort, that person, who goes by the handle PlagDoc, prefers to remain pseudonymous. At the start, said Bartel, he and PlagDoc were the only two GuttenPlag participants. By the end of the site’s first day in operation, about 20 people were active online. “It’s pretty hard to say the exact number of people that are involved,” said Bartel. Because there is no requirement for participants to sign

up, some flit in and out of the forum while others are active on a regular basis. “Some people don’t come back, some people just sign in to fix a typo, some people join every day and work for several hours.” Max Ruppert, a doctoral candidate in journalism studies at the Technical University of Dortmund, and another doctoral candidate conducted an online survey of GuttenPlag participants during what Ruppert describes as its “hot phase,” when thousands were logging in each day. The results allowed them to form a profile of who was active on the site. They identified a “hard core” of 140 participants who were coming regularly to the site and taking the initiative in leading and managing online tasks. The successor site that has continued to investigate other allegations of plagiarism, VroniPlag Wiki, has many of the same active users, said Bartel.

tifying which pages contained plagiarised material, assigning a bar-code pattern to indicate plagiarism. The more bars in the pattern, the more plagiarism a page contained. “White means it was checked and there was no plagiarism, black means plagiarism, and red means plagiarism on this page from more than one source,” said Bartel. By the end, he said, “I think there are only about 5% of the pages on his thesis where there was no plagiarism, which was the opposite of what we had expected.” Though Guttenberg resigned in early March, the university also began looking into his thesis, spurred in part by the avalanche of coverage in the mainstream news media, much of which relied on GuttenPlag’s digging. In its full findings announced on Wednesday, it placed the blame squarely on Guttenberg and cleared itself and his supervising professor of wrongdoing. Weber-Wulff says she believes, however, that at least part of the responsibility for the culture that enabled Guttenberg to get away with such an egregious violation lies with Germany’s higher-education system. There is a longstanding notion that professors own all the work done under their supervision, and many are guilty of plagiarism, she said. “In Germany the professors let their doctoral students write for them and then publish under their own name. Doctoral students then steal from the bachelor’s and master’s students under them. We end up having plagiarism all the way down,” she said. One way of eliminating at least part of the problem would be to cut down on the proliferation of doctoral degrees. “We need to leave the doctoral titles in academia where they belong,” she said.

of pages of the defence minister’s doctoral thesis was not plagiarised

Color-coding Copying Organising online work was a challenge, especially since at the outset there was no real-time communication. Soon after, an online chat forum was set up. It was drawing around 100 active users at a time, and participants were then able to make sure there was little overlap as they dissected Guttenberg’s dissertation page by page. Site members created a means of iden-

Members created means of identifying which pages contained plagiarised material, assigning a bar-code pattern to them

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THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

UK’s Private Schools Should Learn from US Mistakes, Report Says British minister for universities, David Willetts, welcomes private providers in higher education, provided they ‘pass’ all requirements BY AISHA LABI

s private higher education makes inroads in Britain, lawmakers should look to the United States for lessons on shaping how the industry will grow and evolve, a new report says. “Private Providers in UK Higher Education: Some Policy Options,” from the Higher Education Policy Institute, an independent think tank, examines the landscape in Britain, where, as in the rest of Europe, most higher-education institutions are public. There is just one private university in Britain, the not-forprofit University of Buckingham. Last year BPP, a subsidiary of the Apollo Group, the parent company of the for-profit American behemoth, University of Phoenix, became the first for-profit enterprise to be granted the title of university college, roughly equivalent to an American community college. It is the sole for-profit provider to have been granted degreeawarding power by the British government, but the report says that “it is unlikely that the Apollo Group will remain the only major for-profit provider in the UK, and over all, we believe that the for-profit sector will grow.” Although just a handful of private institutions have been accorded formal accreditation, the report underscores that private providers already play a significant role in British higher education. The largest group consists of colleges based in and around London that serve mainly international students; some of the colleges have partnered with accredited British highereducation institutions to offer their degrees. The Higher Education Statistics Agency has identified 670 organisations that might provide higher education, according to the report. This includes anywhere from 50 to 90 branch campuses of American institutions, which operate in Britain but most of

EDUTECH June 2011

which do not enroll any British or European Union students. “There was more private higher education than we realised when we took a look at it,” says Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute. “We have more than the rest of Western Europe, it is growing, and the government is very keen on it.” Britain’s universities minister, David Willetts, has made clear that he welcomes a larger role for private providers in higher education. “If there are organisations that meet the quality standards, that pass all the rigorous requirements for degree-awarding powers, then I do think they would have a strong case” for being granted formal recognition, he said in an interview with The Chronicle last year.

UK should provide loans to students regardless of the nature of the provider provided they are legitimate and monitored to ensure quality

GLOBAL.CHRONICLE.COM Learning From US’s Mistakes Over all, the institute’s report strikes a positive tone about the role of private institutions in higher education. The sector’s growth “adds variety to what’s available and is not necessarily a bad thing. Some people are inclined to be rather snooty about it, and we’re saying you shouldn’t be,” Bekhradnia says. At the same time, regulation governing private higher education is “patchy, not systematic, and has been built up over a number of years,” he says. “We think it needs to be put on a better footing.” The report points to the for-profit industry in the United States as an argument for better regulation. It notes that critics say that US for-profit providers are overly reliant on government support through student loans and grants, “are making excessive profits,” encourage poor students to take out loans, have poor retention rates, and that “they ‘cherry pick’ profitable programmes which cannot then be offered by publicly-funded colleges, thus denying them the benefit of cross-subsidy to less-popular programmes.” There are many lessons to be learnt from the US, Bekhradnia says. “We’re saying, let’s not discourage private providers, but let’s get the regulatory framework right.” Just last month, as part of an overhaul of student financial aid in the run-up to a sharp increase in tuition at universities in

England that will go into effect next year, the government doubled the maximum government loan available to students at private institutions from 3,000 (around $5,000) to 6,000 (nearly $10,000). Willetts said the move was part of the government’s plan to make “sure students at alternative providers can benefit from the more generous tuition-loan system in place from 2012-13.” One of the report’s central recommendations is that “the government should provide loans to students regardless of the nature of the provider (for-profit, not-for-profit, or public), provided they are legitimate and are monitored to ensure a high quality of teaching.” Yet, many in Britain remain opposed on principle to the expansion of private providers. The University and College Union, the main faculty union, released a statement saying that the report vindicates the union’s views about the danger of increasing reliance on private providers. “As events in America have shown, the for-profit model is fraught with danger for students and taxpayers alike, and it is essential that our government rethinks its decision to embrace it,” Sally Hunt, the union’s general secretary said. Subscribe to a free weekly electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter

VIEWS, REVIEWS & MORE

Are Colleges Wasting our Money? A look at whether universities and colleges in the US and across the world are delivering what they promised HIGHER EDUCATION? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — and What We Can Do About It, discusses the state and structure of higher education in the 21st century with special reference to the fee vis-a-vis services delivered by institutions. Authors Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, take a look at the fee structure in the US and criticise what they perceive as an unsubstantiated fee hike, both by public and private institutions. The book argues that the present tuition structure either puts students in debt, or makes quality education impossible. It raises some basic questions like: Are colleges delivering value for money? Are its customers (read students and parents) receiving justified returns on their investments?

“We don’t look at education as an investment, though we should” CLAUDIA DREIFUS

The authors argue that in most cases students don’t receive what they pay for. The reason for the so-called failure, they say, lies in the fact that colleges take on more roles than they can perform. They point out that none of the colleges included in the book’s survey seem to be performing according to expectations. If the primary responsibility of colleges is to provide quality education, then, the writers conclude, higher education across the world has failed in its duty and requires a revamp. Higher Education? suggests ways to transform the sector. It justifies raised fees in colleges, but criticises the extra fee that institutions charge for facilities such as sports and campus infrastructure. One of the major arguments (which may not go down well with some members of the sector) surrounds the question of the professors’ fee. The authors state that some members of the group need to get out of their present preoccupation with the paycheck and focus more on teaching. They believe that professors, who choose teaching as a calling, have greater obligation towards their students, than what students have towards the professors. Later chapters deal with issues of college administration, fee structure and the role of sports in higher education. AUTHOR: Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus PUBLISHER: Times Books PRICE: $26

NEW RELEASES FOR YOUR BOOKSHELF Liberal Arts at the Brink The book demonstrates the difference

The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research

between intellectually nurtured education and occupational training. The author argues that liberal arts is on its way out and offers a solution — reduced discounts.

A complete guide to PhD for research scholars, the book deals with the subject of managing resources effectively while pursuing a PhD. It reveals the “unwritten rules of research”.

Author: Victor E. Ferrall Jr Publisher: Harvard University Press) Price: $25.95

Author: Marian Petre, Gordon Rugg Publisher: Open University Press (March 2009) Price: $27.18

EDUTECH June 2011

TIMEOUT

Couch Mouse Gives Freedom to Browse Tired of crouching in front of your laptop? Here’s a mouse that allows you to work on the couch. Just chill and browse LONG STUDY hours necessitate taking the notebook to bed or the couch. Logitech’s Couch Mouse M515 has been designed for hassle-free web browsing — anywhere, anytime. The device features a sealed case at the bottom that glides easily on any surface — fabric, leather or whatever. A hand-detection sensor keeps the mouse active only when you want it. Plug-and-forget wireless connectivity makes you do just that without the fear of frequent disruptions, delays or dropouts. The Couch Mouse M515 comes with a two-year battery life that cuts out the hassle of changing batteries frequently. Perfect value for freedom. PRICE: 2795

VISION Phone for the Visually Challenged INTEX AND National Association of Blind have together developed VISION Phone for the visually impaired. The dual-SIM smartphone has a braille keypad which reads out typed digits in English. The phone offers a built-in SOS feature that saves upto four emergency numbers which can be accessed just by pressing the SOS button. FM radio and a mobile tracker add to the fun quotient. PRICE: 2,600

GADGETS Economical Mini Theatre from Intex THE V3Show Mini Theatre IN 8809 from Intex is the economical successor to its first 3.2-inch touchscreen projector phone, promising all the benefits of the first. The dual-SIM phone with 2.4-inch screen also features a 3.5 mm jack that connects external speakers. Great stuff for campus. PRICE: 6,300

Artifice for Better Viewing THE new digital photo frame, Artifice, from Zebronics, is just what you need for better photo viewing and sharing. It has a USB flash disk, SD, MS or MMC card and can be connected to other devices for data transfer and printing. Artifice also features a 7-inch LCD display with 480x230 pixel resolutionwith rotational zoom function. PRICE: 2,100

Great Price, Greater Performance IF you’re searching for a media player with excellent quality videos, Amkette’s Flash TV HD Media player is just the thing for you. It supports all audio and video formats and comes with a very small remote. The slim and small device is designed aesthetically and can be set-up close to the TV. PRICE: 4,200

February June 2011 EDUTECH

LEGACY “A clear sense of purpose comes with the application of knowledge”

Ravi J Matthai The Able Administrator

here are administrators and then there are able administrators — while the first group do the minimum required — the special few have a lasting impact through the systems they leave behind. Among those who leave a legacy, there are those who ruffle a few feathers here and there in the process — and live to tell the tale. RJ Matthai, the first full-time director of IIM Ahmedabad, belonged to this category. As the story goes, a former Indian President called up Matthai when he was still in office at IIM Ahmedabad, hoping for a seat for his grandson. Matthai informed the titular head of the country that his grandson would be admitted just like the rest of the candidates — only if he passed the entrance test. Not only that, the brash director also strictly forbade future calls, warning the President that such requests would be taken to the press. IIM Ahmedabad was a relatively small and unknown institution when Matthai joined as its head. Instead of being daunted by its lack of process, Matthai took the opportunity to put in place systems that were highly democratic and innovative for the time, and also processes that would not cut off the institute’s academics. Instead, he got them more involved in teaching along with research and consulting, because he knew that the impact of an institution is greatest if all three are combined. Matthai also understood that to focus on business alone would limit the Institute. It needed to be an institute of management, not just a B-school. And it needed expertise in important Indian sectors, including agriculture. He established a system of frequent faculty meetings, inviting even the research staff. The culture of interaction between groups and centres was established during his time and he insisted that faculty exchange and comment on each others’ teaching material, including quiz and exam materials, extensively. Matthai himself addressed students periodically. RJ Matthai was born in 1927, the son of John Matthai, the first railway minister of independent India. He was educated in Allahabad and at Oxford University, where he specialised in economics. He began his career as a marketing executive in a Kolkata-based firm. He moved on to academics as a senior professor of marketing at IIM Calcutta in 1963. Dr Vikram Sarabhai invited him to join IIM Ahmedabad as the director when Matthai was aged just 38. Not only was he young, Matthai was neither a full-fledged academic with an advanced academic degree nor a so-called specialist. But, while he lacked academic credentials, Dr Sarabhai recognised what Matthai did possess: an understanding of what it takes to make an administrative system stand better so that faculty, students and the nation stood to benefit. And an empathy which did not require him to be an education specialist.

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(1927-1984) 1963 Joins as senior professor, marketing, at IIM Calcutta 1965 Hand-picked by Dr Vikram Sarabhai to be director of IIM Ahmedabad 1972 Steps down as director to return to professorship 1975 Launches the Jawaja Experiment The Jawaja Experiment • Matthai decides to test whether corporate management disciplines can be related to core issues of poverty • He selects Jawaja block (200 villages and 80,000 people) in Rajasthan: an area regarded by the government to be beyond the scope of development • Matthai begins to work with village communities along with IIM A and National Institute of Design volunteers • Forty years later, the Jawaja Leather Association and Jawaja Weavers’ Association, continue their struggle for selfreliance, with the workers and weavers winning a degree of economic independence