Volume 02 Issue 08
150
eDU | volume 02 | Issue 08
A 9.9 Media Publication AUGUST 2011 www.edu-leaders.com
FOR
Leaders
in
higher
educ ation
Technology
IT-enabled exam systems can ease pressure on academia P30
Administration
Leveraging technology to make campuses safer P38
perspective
C Raj Kumar, VC, OP Jindal Global University, on excellence in research P56 FOR LEADERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Sudhir Kumar Sopory VC, Jawaharlal Nehru University
www.edu-leaders.com
The
EnablingVC Sopory’s open door policy is breaking accessibility barriers at JNU Pg 18
FOREWORD Freedom to Choose
A
“When the mind is open, barriers melt, solutions are sought and geniuses are made”
ugust is the month when we celebrate India’s Independence, sing patriotic songs, eat jalebis and fly kites. It is also a time to take stock of where we are as a country today. What does independence mean to us today and how are we using it? When it comes to higher education, we happily talk about the increasing number of colleges, their reach and accessibility and the quality of our graduates. Of course, we also lament the fact that we are far behind what is desirable in terms of our gross enrolment ratio, the employability of our graduates and the quality of our faculty. What we often don’t do is talk about a ‘minor’ issue like how our higher education institutions measure up in terms of accessibility for the disabled. That is exactly why we chose this subject for our cover story. In a country where higher education is still pretty much the prerogative of the haves, the disabled figure very low on the list of the have-nots. Yet, is it not worthy of discussion? Where would the genius of Stephen Hawking be if he was denied education because of his motor neuron disease? If Cambridge had been inaccessible for a wheelchair user like him, he would not have been able to complete his PhD and the world would have been in the dark about the Black Hole and Baby Universe. Hawking’s disability did not come in the way of his research or teaching at Cambridge. Or was it that the university administrators did not come in the way of Hawking’s success? Admittedly, the UK and the US are technologically advanced and life is easier for the disabled in a developed country. However, often it is not the lack of infrastructure but the closed mindset of administrators that comes in the way of making our campuses disabled friendly. Thankfully, the EDU team found a growing awareness of the needs of the disabled in many institutions. The Vice Chancellor of JNU, Sudhir Kumar Sopory’s open door policy scores really high on what we mean by an accessible institution.When the mind is open, barriers melt, solutions are sought and geniuses are made. While you unfurl the flag in your institution this Independence Day, take a moment to think about what freedom means to that disabled student in your institution. Does it mean that she like any other Indian citizen has an equal chance of getting educated at your institution? Or does it mean that she will be advised to take up something more appropriate to her situation?
Dr Pramath Raj Sinha pramath@edu-leaders.com
August 2011 EduTech
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Contents EDU august 2011
update 04 05 06 07
Collaboration grant INVENTION ENDOWMENT REVIEW ADMISSION AID
30
Viewpoints 08 rahul choudaha Call for a National Policy on Internationalisation 10 Dheeraj Sanghi Say No To Ragging 14 Rishikesha t krishnan The Power of Vision
55
expertise 16 aaron b schwarz Let’s Build College Towns
Technology 30 examine it IT-enabled exam systems not only ease the pressure on academia, but bring in transparency and control 34 tech interview 36 tech tutes
administration 38 securing the campus Use technology for safer campuses By Teja Lele Desai
“Reaching more students has always been the key challenge. The cloud might change that” —Nitin Khanapurkar Executive Director, KPMG
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49 in egypt, history for the people By Ursula Lindsey 52 4 globally-oriented tips on using social media By David Wheeler
Perspective
Global perspective Find out what’s happening in varsities around the world through The Chronicle of Higher Education
44 saudi arabia’s $10 bn experiment is ready for results By Ursula Lindsey
56 slipping ranks, sinking pride By C Raj Kumar
Timeout 34
54 books • For the University: Democracy and the Future of the Institution
FOR LEADERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
cover Story
18 Ability Unlimited
A stronger political will is required to push the agenda of inclusive education, if we are to reach out to students with special needs. More often than not, it is just a matter of extending that hand or walking an extra mile to find out their unlimited abilities By Rohini Banerjee
22 Indian Campuses must be Inclusive to be Globally Competitive: Aaron B Schwarz 26 Sudhir Kumar Sopory - The Accessible VC
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August 2011 EduTech
3
from the world of higher education
05 grant 05 invention 06 endowment 06 review 07 admission 07aid & more
NUEPA Honours Amartya Sen The National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA) has conferred Doctor of Literature, Honoris Causa, on Prof Amartya Sen. He is the second recipient of this honorary doctorate. Nobel Laureate Prof Sen is Thomas W Lamont University professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science. On the occasion, Professor Sen said, “The Indian economy may be doing much better than before in many different ways, but India is still paying quite a heavy price for having a far less educated general labour force.”
5-year MBA at IIM Indore Initiative: Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh with his New Zealand counterpart John Key announcing the joint initiative for higher education
India, NZ Joint Education Council Both countries will contribute equally to fund the initiative amounting to NZ $1mn per year Collaboration: India and New Zealand will be establishing a joint education council, announced Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his New Zealand counterpart, John Key recently. The prime focus of the council would be higher education, research and skill development. With this joint venture, the two countries now take a step forward in their education co-operation programme. Both the countries had already signed an Education Exchange Programme treaty during Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal’s visit to New Zealand. The total funding for the initiative is expected to be NZ $1mn annually, with both India and New Zealand contributing equally. The University Grants Commission of India will provide the funds for India. The education council will be the flagship programme of the education cooperation initiative between the two countries. The initiative is expected to strengthen the relationship between India and New Zealand, promote academic and industry links, and open up opportunities for education services collaboration between them.
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EduTech August 2011
IIM Indore has recently launched a five-year Integrated Post Graduate Programme in Management (IPGP), which includes a threeyear degree programme followed by a twoyear masters. The first batch will have about 120 students and is expected to be launched this year. Students in the age group of 17-19 years with at least 60 per cent marks in class X or secondary exams and class XII or higher secondary exams can apply. Final selection will be based on the academic performance, scholastic achievements and performance in the aptitude test and personal interview.
schulich B-school GMR Group, one of the world’s leading infrastructure developers, and the Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada, have entered into an agreement to develop a Schulich campus in Hyderabad. Under the agreement, Schulich will develop the learning environment and academic infrastructure and the GMR Group will provide the land and build the campus. A seamless extension of Schulich’s Canadian campus, it will offer the same high quality of programmes.
update
Nandan, Rohini Nilekani Gift 50cr to IIHS IIHS will use the grant to set up its School of Environment and Sustainability Grant: Nandan and Rohini Nilekani announced a gift of 50 crore ($11mn) to the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) towards the establishment of its School of Environment and Sustainability. In a statement, they said, “IIHS is at the convergence of both our interests in education, urbanisation and sustainability. We are excited about contributing to an institution which will help people engage with new challenges in an innovative and interdisciplinary manner.” IIHS Board and Director Aromar Revi said, “India is returning to a tradition of philanthropy to build independent
national institutions for the common good. Rohini and Nandan Nilekani’s support to IIHS’s School of Environment and Sustainability is in the spirit that created some of India’s greatest universities almost a Philanthropy: IIHS sees the return of the spirit of century ago. We hope to benevolence that built many Indian varsities match up to this aspiration.” IIHS was created by a number of interdisciplinary schools, one of South India’s leading entrepreneurs, urban Asia’s largest reference and digital professionals and thought leaders. libraries and other facilities for its This fund is a major step in 300 Bangalore campus. An additional 100 crore ($67mn) IIHS resource crore ($22mn) will be raised for mobilisation campaign to fund five chair professorships.
California College First to go Grid Positive Sustainability: Butte College in California has become the first college in the history of the United States to go ‘grid positive,’ meaning that it will generate more electricity from its solar arrays than it consumes and will deliver power back to the electric grid. The college estimates that it will save between $50 mn and $75 mn over 15 years, even after accounting for project costs and interest, by eliminating its electricity bill, getting paid for excess electricity production, and avoiding future electricity rate increases. These savings can be used to improve student offerings and increase enrollment. “Butte College has had a longstanding commitment to sustainability. Achieving grid-positive status marks the culmination of years of effort to build the college’s supply of solar power and to improve energy efficiency on the campus,” said Dr Diana Van Der Ploeg, President, Butte College. The college now operates a total of 25,000 solar panels that will generate over 6.5 million kWh hours of electricity per year – enough to power over 941 average-sized homes, or the equivalent of removing 615 passenger cars from the roadways.
global update
$75
million will be saved over 15 years by Butte College’s solar arrays that produce electricity
6.5
million kilowatt hours of electricity will be generated per year
August 2011 EduTech
5
update
Bajaj’s $2.5mn Endowment to Carnegie Mellon The gift will be used to institute the Bajaj Family Chair to be held by a Tepper School of Business professor Endowment: Kushagra Nayan Bajaj, Vice Chairman, Bajaj Group, Mumbai, has gifted $2.5mn to endow a professorship in the university’s Tepper School of Business, to be named by the university’s president and provost. The endowment will support teaching and research in a field selected by the chair recipient. Bajaj graduated from CMU in 1997 with a degree in economics, political philosophy and finance from the Tepper School of Business. He is providing the gift through his family foundation, the Kamalnayan Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. “I am proud to strengthen my association with Carnegie Mellon University and this endowment is a gesture of appreciation for my alma mater. I wish the university the very best with its
Inspire Innovation campaign,” Kushagra said. Carnegie Mellon President Jared L Innovative The university has a $1bn Inspire Innovation Campaign to build its endowment, campus and faculty Cohon said, “Through his equipment and facility and building generosity, Kushagra is further strengthendowment. The Bajaj Group, one of ening the connection between Carnegie India’s top 10 business concerns, has Mellon and India. Many of our faculty interests in power generation, consumer and students hail from India, and the goods and coal mining among others. country is home to many of our alumni. The group’s revenues are more than Kushagra is truly a global business lead$1bn with a gross market cap of over er, and we are pleased to partner with $1.5bn. The main campus of Carnegie him through this professorship.” The Mellon in the US is in Pittsburgh. It has university’s Inspire Innovation camcampuses in Silicon Valley and Qatar, paign worth $1bn, is aimed at developand programmes in Asia, Australia, ing support faculty and research, Europe and Mexico. upgrading the physical campus with
Technical Education
Sibal Suggests Review of NITs Review: The second NIT Council meeting, focussing on improving the quality of technical education in the country, was held recently under the chairmanship of Kapil Sibal, Union Minister, Ministry of Human Resource Development. Since NIT is going to complete a decade of its existence, the minister suggested conducting a review of the system under the chairmanship of Dr Anil K Kakodkar on the lines of the report already submitted by him on IITs. Distinguished members of Parliament, Chairperson and Directors of National Institute of Technology and other council members were present at the meeting. Several other important decisions having long-term implications on improving the quali t y o f t e c h n i c a l e d u c a t i o n w e r e t a k e n .
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The council also reviewed the admission policy for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. wSibal expressed the government’s desire to have a single national level examination for admission to all engineering institutions. The minister reaffirmed the support of the ministry to the NIT system and to the 10 new NITs in the development their infrastructure and recruitment of faculty and staff. He also stressed the need for networking amongst IITs, NITs and other institutions. He also spoke of the need to hold annual meeting between the directors of these institutes to discuss larger issues connected with technical education and research.
update
AICTE Relaxes Admission Criteria Over 1.14 lakh seats in the 309 engineering colleges in Maharashtra; more coming up Admission: The All India Council for the 309 engineering institutions in the Technical Education (AICTE), the apex state. This number is expected to rise body for technical education in India, with the AICTE’s decision to have new recently announced that the eligibility institutions, courses and the revision in criteria for admission to first year engis t u d e n t i n t a k e t h i s y e a r. neering courses has been The new schedule for the lowered to 45 per cent in process of admission will Class XII physics, chemistry be declared after the deciand maths (PCM) group sion of the AICTE reaches (40% for reserved category). marks in Class the state directorate of Therefore, students with technical education (DTE). XII PCM marks between 135 to 149 The AICTE has also lowneeded for out of 300 in PCM can apply ered the benchmark for admission to to the course. Earlier, the bar admission to polytechnics engineering was 150 of 300. from 50 per cent to 35 per The DTE has announced cent in Class X exams courses more than 1.14 lakh seats in from any board.
45%
`228cr WB Aid to Karnataka for Engineering Courses To encourage quality postgraduate education in engineering, research, development and innovation Aid: The World Bank will provide 228 crore to promote quality engineering education in Karnataka. Fourteen engineering colleges will benefit from it, state Higher Education Minister VS Acharya said. Ten of these colleges will also be helped financially to set up centres of excellence for research in various fields, he added. The bank is extending the finances as part of the central government’s scheme of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQUIP), intended to encourage postgraduate education in engineering and research, development and innovation, the minister said. Karnataka has over 180 engineering colleges – 14 government colleges and the rest private. Around 60,000 students are admitted into these colleges every year.
voices “India has many achievements in the success of a relatively small group of privileged people who are welltrained in higher education. Yet our educational system remains deeply unjust.”
—Amartya Sen, Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, India
“In order to bridge the quality gaps in teaching, the government needs to lay down a fibre optic network for the country in two years, and also provide last mile broadband access.”
—Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, India
”Academics would love to be able to get the hours in their timetable and the recognition professionally but, in reality, the question will be: ‘How can we come as close to this as possible?’.”
—Paula Hixenbaugh, Professor of Psychology,University of Westminster, and Co-editor of Personal Tutoring in Higher Education (2006)
August 2011 EduTech
7
Viewpoint
Rahul Choudaha
Call for a National Policy on Internationalisation
T
he foreign universities bill is hanging fire and the academia is at sea. India must wake up to the need for internationalisation of higher education and put in place a policy framework to address the various concerns, if it wants to reap the benefits.
The foreign universities bill has turned out to be like a car with square wheels. Although the bill is still awaiting approval of the Parliament, it has generated excitement and bewilderment among many institutions in India and abroad. There are serious questions about the bill’s effectiveness and relevance. Also, there are a few foreign institutions, like Lancaster University, which decided not to wait for the bill and have started their campuses in partnership with GD Goenka. This is a classic example of how a disjointed approach can render a policy irrelevant. It highlights the need for a comprehensive internationalisation policy on higher education which can maximise the relevance and benefits at three primary levels: infusing excellence, encouraging institutional diversity and building capacity. Jane Knight defined internationalisation as the “process of integrating an international, intercultural or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary education.” This definition clarifies that internationalisation is a much broader, more comprehensive and flexible
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concept. It recognises and encourages diverse approaches and accepts that there is no one prescriptive formula for all institutions. The context in India is different, and so, the concept of internationalisation should be adapted to the unique challenges and needs of the country.
Infusing Excellence There is no denying that Indian higher education is struggling to infuse quality at the systemic level and has limited itself to a few islands of excellence like the IIMs and IITs. Consider the recent case of the 100 per cent cut-off requirement by the Sri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi for admission to undergraduate programme. Instances like these, question the whole premise that Indian higher education is reforming and expanding access to college courses. In reality, the availability of quality institutions is unable to keep pace with demand. Indian institutions are facing a crisis of confidence where many students are aspiring for the same select institutions. A systematic approach to internationalisation may help bring in global good practices and more high quality institutions. For example, in just a decade, ISB, Hyderabad has emerged as an
Rahul Choudaha
inspiration (sometimes object of envy) for many other Indian institutions. It is a hallmark of global practices adoption, covering admissions, teaching, research and governance. In a country where absolute scores are still considered the only benchmark for admissions, ISB adopted a holistic admissions process on the lines of the best B-schools by integrating personal interviews and essays. This expanded the choice for many talented students. Unfortunately, regulatory structures had tried to restrict the ISB model and its growth.
Institutional Diversity Indian postsecondary education is facing acute quantitative and qualitative challenges in both, vocational education and research-based doctoral studies. Of course, lack of funding and policy are a concern for the sector. But a major reason for the crisis is the poor quality of the programmes, which restricts labour market rewards. This in turn leads to a socio-cultural environment in which only respected and encouraging professional fields like engineering and management exist. So, internationalisation had been confined to a handful of institutions in bigger cities offering business or engineering programmes. A national policy on internationalisation should encourage diversity of location, programmes and institution types. Global higher education comprises a diverse set of institutions ranging from world-class research universities to vocational education institutions. Incentives should be created through policy initiatives, encouraging institutions to enter fields like agriculture, energy and urban planning or vocational training and branch out into nonmetro cities. For example, Montgomery College is leading an initiative of advancing the community college model in India with a grant from the US-India Education Foundation (USIEF). The policy should facilitate opportunities beyond traditional models, level of programmes, categories of institutions and fields of study.
Capacity Building There are several approaches to internationalisation, depending on the mission and resources of an institution. One approach may be to look at capacity-building: the creation of an enabling environment of resources (financial, technical and human) and regulatory framework in line with national needs. Consider the case of some of the country-level partnerships that have been focussing on enhancing educational and research engagement with India.
Viewpoint
“Indian higher education needs a comprehensive internationalisation strategy, both at the national and institutional level” For example, a delegation of university presidents from Canadian universities committed to spending $4mn for India-specific engagements. UK too has renewed the UK India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI). These engagements will bring together critical resources for Indian institutions that will help them learn and develop their practices. Similarly, technology has transformed the communication and content delivery mechanism and it could be a major source of involvement with internationalisation efforts despite limited resources. Indian higher education needs a comprehensive internationalisation strategy, both at the national and institutional level. Like any uncharted territory, there will be some risks of the misuse of an enabling environment. For example, there may be institutions that will perhaps make higher education unaffordable in the name of internationalisation. However, the test of a good policy framework is to have the ability to distinguish the wheat from the chaff. Uwe Brandenburg and Hans de Wit in the article “The End of Internationalisation” acknowledged that “Over the past two decades, the concept of the internationalisation of higher education has moved from the fringe of institutional interest to the very core.” They argue that with this change it is time “to rethink and re-define the way we look at the internationalisation of higher education in the present time.” It is ironical that conversations on internationalisation of higher education have not even begun in India while the advanced world is moving into the next phase of re-defining and re-discovering it. It is time for some reflection at policy and institutional level as to how best Indian higher education can leverage internationalisation to achieve its goals. 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 blogs on www.DrEducation.com and 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
August 2011 EduTech
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Viewpoint
Dheeraj Sanghi
Say No To Ragging
E
xtreme measures are proving to be a hurdle for institutions in eradication of ragging from their campuses. All that is required is a strong will to end it. A new academic year has just begun in the country, and with it the fear of ragging has once again raised its ugly head. Time to nip the menace in the bud.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has framed rules to curb ragging. It mandates the creation of an anti-ragging committee in all higher education institutions, with the provision that freshers be given mobile numbers of committee members; institutions conduct surprise night checks in hostels, take no undertakings from seniors (signed by parents too) that they will not indulge in ragging; and put up posters across the campus warning seniors of the consequences of ragging, while informing freshers about whom to contact in ragging cases. An institute is also required to lodge a compulsory FIR within 24 hours of a ragging case coming to the notice of the institution. However, as per the Supreme Court guidelines, the police will treat senior students accused of ragging humanely and not as criminals. The “zero tolerance” policy being espoused by most is, in fact, proving to be a major hurdle in curbing ragging. In my discussion with a dean of students’ affairs of a reputed institute, it turned out that schools feel helpless in taking any action for they fear its consequences. For instance, earlier, if a minor case was reported, they would give exemplary
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punishment commensurate with the act, which acted as a deterrent for others. However, now they do nothing and simply destroy the complaint after giving an oral warning. For, if they were to punish the senior student, there would have to be a record of complaint and punishment. As per the rules a ragging case must be reported to the police. It would thus be difficult for an institution to argue as to why it did not file an FIR. Unfortunately, when an institute trashes ragging complaints and gives only oral warnings, the message to the student community is loud and clear—the institute will tolerate ragging till it reaches a level where they feel it is justified to involve the police. No academic institution wants to involve the police or the district administration in insignificant matters. By insisting that they do, the UGC and others have actually tied their hands.
Recognise the Signs To nip ragging in the bud, it is extremely important that institutions recognise the first signs of it. Ragging starts with identification of freshers. Different institutes have different ways of identifying them, but invariably it involves seniors dictating what juniors wear. Academic administrators ignore such episodes, as they don’t
Viewpoint
Dheeraj Sanghi
want to interfere in a “good” campus tradition that teaches freshers how to present themselves. What they fail to understand, is that, such differentiation will lead to discrimination. On some campuses freshers are forced to contribute a small amount for a party. Seniors students organise the party outside the campus where anti-ragging committee members are unlikely to make a surprise visit. And there it is a free-for-all ragging. While many institutes forbid seniors to go to the hostel rooms of freshers and vice versa in the first month, they refuse to take responsibility for anything that happens outside the campus. But institutes need to ensure that anything done against the will of the freshers, including a small financial contribution, or a party outside the campus, must be stopped. Another reason for ragging taking place is that new students do not know anyone on the campus. They also are not aware about of their institute’s take on ragging. They cannot trust the anti-ragging committee, or simply feel shy of approaching them. Thus, the senior students know that no complaint will be made and are not afraid of rules.
Where There’s a Will… To counter ragging, the focus of institutions in the first few days should be on making freshers comfortable and laying emphasis on interaction between the faculty and freshers. This will not only melt their shyness but also make senior students realise that during such close interaction with faculty, some fresher may actually complain about ragging. When I was at LNMIIT Jaipur, we would ask freshers to join the institute a week before the seniors would come. In this one week, there would be an orientation programme, where there would be lectures on general topics – campus life, time management, stress management, values, and so on. Such interactions succeeded in breaking the wall between the students and the faculty. During this time the only seniors on campus were those who had been carefully chosen as volunteers to help the freshers settle down. We also organised several matches between faculty and freshers in different sports – cricket, badminton, table tennis, etc.— further cementing the ties. Such interactions may vary from one institute to another, but it must be held if ragging is to be curbed. In IIT Kanpur, one faculty member is assigned the responsibility of talking to five to six students. He meets them, invites them to have a meal at his home and interacts with them – all this, to make them feel comfortable enough to complain, if the need arises.
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“When an institute trashes ragging complaints and gives only verbal warnings, the message to the student community is loud and clear – the institute will tolerate ragging” The place where discrimination usually starts is the mess. A fresher can be easily spotted here, as unaware of the mess culture, he can be found asking simple questions. Senior students either ask freshers to sit with them where they can carry out verbal ragging, or ask them to stand last in the queue, just to discriminate against them. Our solution at LNMIIT was to make sure that at least one faculty member was eating in the mess at every meal in the first couple of weeks. Another strategy adopted was to find any newsitem about a student punished for ragging and forward it on email to all students. This sent out a strong message to the students that if such an incident happened on our campus, we would not shy away from taking similar action. We also adopted community punishment. We told all students that if there is ragging in any hostel wing, and if we are not able to identify specific individuals involved, then the whole wing will be fined. This way if there was even one student opposed to ragging, he would ensure that it did not take place in his wing. Once you have ensured that there will be no ragging in the hostels, you have already won the war. Yet another strategy is to involve parents. Students do not want their parents to get any negative news about their behaviour. Parents ensure that their ward does not do anything silly again. It is possible to eradicate ragging from our campuses – if we want to. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters
Dheeraj Sanghi Dr Sanghi is the Former Director of LNM 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
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August 2011 EduTech
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Viewpoint
Rishikesha T Krishnan
The Power of Vision
V
isioning can be the much-needed transfusion for academia, or it can be an exercise in futility. It all depends on how you power your vision to propel aspirations of excellence. As Indian institutions prepare for the future, visioning exercises are becoming commonplace.
Apart from the IIMs which are expected to use such managerial tools, many other leading institutions and deemed universities have started using this tool. It has become particularly popular with older institutions that seek to forge new paths and exude dynamism. A visioning initiative can have multiple positive outcomes. It can bring together stakeholders who don’t often have a chance to dialogue with each other. It can push an institution away from navel-gazing to look at future challenges—this is particularly useful for institutions that excelled in the past but are today just harvesting the brand they created years ago. Most importantly, it can help build aspiration and provide the energy required to move ahead. In other words, to adapt an evocative Honda tag line, it can help harness the power of dreams. But many visioning initiatives don’t seem to live up to this promise. Why does that happen?
Academic Blinkers In my experience, vision exercises are particularly challenging in an academic setting. Faculty are the backbone of an institution and have long term stakes in its vision. At the same time, individual professors are highly autonomous
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in their thinking, and resist any effort they perceive as robbing them of their individuality. Further, professors come from different academic disciplines and tend to be wedded to the assumptions and frameworks of these fields. Many economists (including one of our former directors) believe strongly in neoclassical market economics, and that the best outcomes arise from individual market participants (in this case faculty) each maximising their own welfare. Vision and strategy have no role in their book. Contrast this with a strategy professor who values strategy and the importance of organisational alignment for effectiveness. In India, this is complicated by the diverse aspirations, motivation and socialisation of faculty members. In contrast, a typical US university would have much greater homogeneity among its faculty and what they expect from their career and the university. Many institutions today have a large number of corporate leaders on their boards. Not surprisingly, the demand for visions and strategies seems to be more from board members than from faculty or students.
Blurred Exercise I have seen different processes backfire, and for different reasons. One favourite process is to get a
Rishikesha T Krishnan
committee of faculty (sometimes expanded to include students, alumni and board members) to drive the visioning activity. This ends in a vision of that group rather than that of the institution. This defeats a fundamental purpose of visioning. A more ground-up process is to have a visioning workshop conducted by an external facilitator with a large group of stakeholders. Here the challenge is to direct the process towards building a consensus among people who have different world views. It can flounder due to three reasons—inadequate skills or patience on the part of the facilitator; non-availability of enough time to go through the rounds of discussion needed to create a degree of consensus; and the impatience of the leadership regarding this process. A third possibility is that the leadership has a vision of its own. This often happens when a new leader takes over an institution. While individual charisma or reputation of the leader may be adequate to take such a vision forward, more often, leaders need to have strong communication and persuasion skills, tremendous energy and stamina, and the willingness to handle conflicts in order to get others in the institution to buy into such a vision. Few leaders in academia seem to have this skill set. Leaders sometimes use either the committee process or the ground-up process to legitimatise a vision that they already have. But if people perceive that they are just being manipulated to come up with the leader’s vision, the result can be cynicism and distrust instead of positive energy.
Do We Need a New Vision? Visioning is a precursor to change. Adoption of a new vision will result in an expectation of a change in faculty attitudes and behaviours. Clearly, visioning, and all the resultant challenges, will be seen as worthwhile only if faculty see the need for change in the first place. Unfortunately, most leaders of higher education in India fail to make a case for change that is both rational and emotional. In contrast, what faculty see every day is tremendous demand for seats in their institutions, rising enrolments, and their graduates going into good jobs. It’s only natural for faculty to ask, “If nothing is broken, what is there to be fixed?” The imminent entry of foreign universities with strong brands, research capabilities, and a track record in knowledge creation is often cited to justify the need for new visions and strategies. But, it’s difficult to predict when the legislation for foreign universities will be passed, and how many top universities will be willing to come in, given the limitations imposed by the statute.
Viewpoint
“The visioning process needs to be a sincere effort to engage with faculty and their concerns, not a quick fix or an attempt at wordplay” Aspirations in Default? In most institutions I am familiar with, the visions are centered on international rankings, and research and knowledge creation are two significant items on the strategy agenda to make the vision reality. Some years ago, an alumnus of one of the IIMs was trying to persuade me to support a project he was interested in. I demurred, citing a lack of alignment with my expertise and interests. Increasingly frustrated, the alumnus hit back and said, “you know what’s the problem with you faculty? You suffer from an aspiration deficit.” Perhaps his statement was too much of a sweeping indictment of faculty in Indian institutions. But it would be dishonest to pretend that he was completely off the mark. Unless we can build an aspiration for excellence in education, which is a multifaceted construct with both teaching and research as core components, visions and strategies centered on international rankings and research will remain pipe dreams. Specially when the principal motivation of many faculty for joining academics was teaching and not research. Just as Rome was not built in a day, the path to international excellence will be a long and arduous one. Faculty need to have their heart and soul in this endeavour, if it is to succeed. Stamina and perseverance will be critical. The visioning process needs to be a sincere effort to engage with faculty and their concerns, not a quick fix or an attempt at wordplay. And though this will be particularly relevant to old institutions, this is applicable to newer institutions which are drawing on the same faculty pool. 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
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By Aaron B B. Schwarz asktheexpert@edu-leaders.com
Let’s Build College Towns
I
nstead of building gated and isolated campus islands, it would be more beneficial for new campuses to develop a college town culture. Here, divisions between the private and the public dissolve, with each providing support to the other. College towns become vibrant social hubs and provide safe and secure environment around the campus
Many of the famous colleges and universities around the world are intrinsically tied to the city or town in which they are situated. In many instances, where the definition of campus begins and town ends is blurred. There is a symbiotic relationship between the life of the city and the campus. For example, consider the precincts of two major cities in the United States: Harvard University/Harvard Square and New York University/Washington Square. In both these cases (perhaps not from the beginning) the interrelationship between the private and public uses is carefully studied and intermixed to create a vibrant, safe environment. There are also examples of college towns where a major economic engine for the entire town is the academic institution. Reasonable examples include University of Virginia and Charlottesville and Cornell University and Ithaca College. In many such cases, the institution is the major employer for the region.
The College Town Concept The college town is the area typically surrounding the campus, where private enterprise creates a synergy with the institution by providing many important support services for student and faculty life. This includes residential flats, restaurants, bookstores, banks, provision stores and the like. The college town is a social hub of the institution. If the private and public sectors work carefully together, they can both benefit from this synergy. While the
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Aaron is Principal a Principal and Executive and Executive Director Director at Perkins Eastman. He has more than 25 years of experience in architecture. His award-winning portfolio includes numerous projects for colleges and universities in the the United States and other countries. He is currently involved in designing some university projects in India
institution provides the captive clientele for new private enterprise, private enterprise can reduce the infrastructure requirements of the university by providing a significant portion of the necessary facilities for residential and student/faculty life.
Break the Wall The tradition in India is to build, secured walled environments; just as every residential society and bungalow first builds its perimeter wall. This is explained as necessary for security. We need to break down this obstacle and focus on finding a way that allows the growth of college towns as part of all of these new campuses. For sure, the college town can grow right outside the castle wall if necessary, but in the long run not having the mote and castle approach would be an improvement. In New York City, Columbia University was designed and built as a walled campus. Over time, the neighbourhood around the university has changed to become much more a part of the university. This
happened through land holdings, as well as both positive and negative negotiations between the university and the dwellers outside the wall. At this point, while the wall may still be there, the campus engulfs the entire neighbourhood and the town-gown relationship continues to evolve. An opposite approach was taken by the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia. This relatively small institution began to buy older underutilised structures in the middle of this historic US City. They converted these buildings to university uses while some remain mixed use. The campus does not have a defining wall or specific boundary. Yet, it has done a magnificent job of revitalising a portion of the city and making it their home. By doing so they have created a college town for themselves, invigorated private enterprise and created a wonderful and safe life for their students.
Symbiotic and Sustainable In India, many colleges and universities are being built on appropriated farm lands. They are being designed as walled oases within areas that are undergoing development. Each of these institutions is being built as a self-sustaining walled oasis, without planned connections to the adjoining parcels or contexts. This may be a missed opportunity. Colleges and universities typically require many services that do not necessarily need to be all owned and operated by the university. Residential services for students and staff, food establishments and book stores, are just some of the services that a college town can provide. Colleges and universities far from other urban settlements find themselves building major sports and fitness centers, entertainment theaters, bowling alleys and the like, because there are no other competing venues. A very large portion of the total square footage a residential campus builds is for residential and student life functions. There are several ways to consider moving forward so that eventually a college town is created, if it is not already there. In planning a new campus, we may consider locating these retail functions at the edges of the property, where like development may occur on adjacent parcels.
expertise
By Shigil N.
Aaron B. Schwarz
Town to tango If the private and public sectors work carefully together, they can both benefit from this synergy. While the institution provides the captive clientele for new private enterprise, the latter can reduce the infrastructure requirements of the university by providing the necessary facilities for students and faculty
This placement will likely spur faster development of other venues by private enterprise. In addition, the campus can gain additional revenues if these functions are open to the larger growing community. Also, a new campus should consider placing other public functions such as auditorium/theatres or sports venues proximate to this area, if they plan to open it public. Another consideration is to allow the retail functions on your campus to be run by local businesses. The same idea can be used for smaller businesses as well, like food service, fitness centre, etc. The selection of vendors will require careful consideration in order to maintain the brand and quality of services commensurate with the university’s standards. Some campuses are asking private developers to build and operate their student housing for them. This has mixed reviews, but it does defray start-up capital costs. The economics of the college town is only provided to illustrate potential financial benefit. The more significant benefit is the creation of a vital town where students, faculty, staff, and others involved with the campus build a sense of community. It is a very important part of the culture of an institution to have such a setting, which is quasi private, quasi institutional. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters August 2011  EduTech
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COVER STORY
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Accessibility
Accessibility
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Our campuses are opening up to students with special needs. But a stronger political will is required to push the agenda of inclusive education if we are to reach out to this largely ignored section. More often than not, it is just a matter of extending that hand or walking an extra mile to discover their unlimited abilities by rohini banerjee
Admissions 2011: A Quick Question – what connects Manish Arora, Kanika Saxena and Shivangi Aggarwal? Primarily, their youth. The three are enviably young, fresh out of high school and barely in college. The world’s their oyster. They’re also critical components in HRD Minister Kapil Sibal’s plan to raise India’s gross enrolment ratio (GER) in a phase-wise manner by 2020. Link three: Arora, Saxena and Aggarwal made the headlines recently. Arora was denied a chance to study his choice of subject despite making the cut. Saxena went through hell and high water on the day of her college interview and Aggarwal was in the news for desperately trying to find a “way out” of the Indian higher education system, despite receiving admission to one of the most prestigious NCR colleges. The fourth and most defining similarity: they’re all students with some form of disability. Admissions 2010: Sangita was neither born deaf nor a paraplegic. And this provided her the opportunity to study in the best institutions of the country. But the progressive nature of her ailments has today rendered her totally deaf and barely mobile. A working professional, wanting to pursue a childhood dream – that of becoming a lawyer – she sat for the law entrance (in general category) and cleared it in the first list. August 2011 EduTech
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Accessibility
She gained admission to the campus law college, not knowing the ordeal in store for her. The law faculty follows a semester system and mandates over 60 per cent attendance to qualify for semester exams. Sangita, at the time, had her leg in a cast due to a bad accident and was immobile. She decided to seek some counsel from the college on how she could attend classes. On her wheelchair, she met the professor in-charge, and asked for advise: Sangita: Sir, is there any way I can attend classes? Prof: We cannot hold over 35 classes just for you on the ground floor Sangita: Sir then can you waive my attendance? Prof: No, it cannot be done. Sir: Then can you please transfer me to a more accessible campus (law faculty three campuses)? Prof: None of the campuses are wheelchair accessible. I can’t do anything. Sangita: Then what do you think I should do? Drop out? Prof: Go. Go meet the VC, the dean… (waves her off rather disdainfully) Sangita met the Dean. Though a kindly gentleman and an accessible person, he too expressed his inability to do anything. Sangita’s, “So sir, should I drop out?” meets a shrug and a nod. Sangita gives her dreams a cold burial. Admissions 1984: Rajiv, a bright student who had covered many miles to get admission to one of the prestigious colleges of Delhi University (DU). Admis-
sions over, when it came to getting a room in the hostel, his parents were advised against putting him there, by none other than the college principal. Reason: How would he manage? Rajiv is a paraplegic. He took admission in the correspondence course, but the first year exams dashed his hopes of a DU degree. The examination centres were a nightmare. Rajiv finally did his degree course from his home state, where the administration was certainly more accommodating and understanding than DU. The physical barriers were, of course, there as well.
Of Rights & Righteousness These are not fictitious tales to pad up our story on inaccessibility issues plaguing our campuses. Nor are these isolated incidents. There are many such stories of apartheid in the halls of higher education that remain untold. From education to employment, the field is rife with incidents of discrimination; with some stories making the headlines. In 2010, a visually challenged Ajit Kumar was denied the coveted Indian Administrative Services (IAS) rank despite qualifying for it, in 2011. Sukhosohit Singh, a thalassaemia patient, who cracked the civil services in 2008, is still struggling to find a berth. Rigzian Sampheal and Lokesh Kumar had scored ranks that entitled them to the IAS; yet again they were offered appointments at a much lower scale in the Indian Information Service. The explanation provided for this discrimination said that since no posts had been identified for disabled
people in the IAS, they could not be placed in that service and were instead forced into the Indian Information Service. The two finally got justice and were appointment to the IAS only after the a disabled rights group took up their cause. The Delhi High Court also admitted it as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in February 2004. It was in February 2005 that Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh issued a landmark order opening some of the top Group A and Group B services to disabled candidates. Coming after 10 years of The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection Of Rights And Full Participation) Act, 1995; it was a tad late though and lacking in political will. The implementation of the PWD Act granting “equal opportunities, protection of rights and full participation” to the disabled populace, ironically remains unfulfilled in letter and spirit. Little wonder, that students like Arora, Saxena and Aggarwal are still trying to fit in. We are being taught to be politically correct euphemistically, with terms like ‘differently abled’, compounds with ‘impaired’, ‘persons with special needs’, ‘wheelchair-user’ and the like replacing disabled, deaf, dumb, blind, etc. But without attitudinal changes these linguistic replacement remain cosmetic. This is not to say that the people are not alive to the needs of the disabled. Rajiv could not have managed to pass school and be the life of the party, had his classmates and teachers not ensured his presence everywhere: from carrying him atop their backs up to second-floor
According to UGC’s XIth Plan guidelines, every college is entitled to a one-time grant of 5 lakh to improve physical accessibility. HEIs can access the grant to make all the on-campus structures and construction projects disabled-friendly
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Accessibility
Removing Barriers The PWD Act 1995 mandates that three per cent of seats in higher education institutions (HEIs) be reserved for students with special needs. In 1998, the University Grants Commission (UGC) recognised a landmark scheme called the Higher Education for Persons with Special Needs (HEPSN) under which it aids colleges to upgrade infrastructure to accommodate students with special needs. There are basically three components under the scheme: 1. Establishment of Disability Units or Special Units for Differently-abled Persons in Universities/Colleges. This unit facilitates admission of the disabled in these institutions and provides guidance and counselling to them. The units are also meant to assist disabled graduates seek gainful employment 2. Improve the accessibility of these institutions by making their infrastructure and architecture more disabled-friendly 3. Provision of special equipment to augment educational services for disabled students According to UGC’s XIth Plan guidelines, every college is entitled to a onetime grant of 5 lakh (raised from 3 lakh of the Xth Plan) to improve physical
Defining an Accessible College Nipun Malhotra is a postgraduate student of economics at the Delhi School of Economics. An alumnus of St Stephens, and one of the first few wheelchair users on campus, Nipun talks to EDU on what he considers to be an inclusive campus
T
o a great degree, I would call St Stephen’s an accessible and inclusive campus. For the three years that I was there, I felt that I belonged. I and another student of history were the first two wheelchair users that the college admitted. Despite having not dealt with orthopaedically impaired students before, the administration gauged our needs quickly and reacted within weeks to accommodate them. Usually, first year economics classes are on the first floor. A week after I started classes, the college administration relocated the department to the ground floor. Also, ramps were built to help me access relatively inaccessible places. Stephens’ greatest gift, however, was the way its faculty and students treated me. They did not treat me “differently”. I met some of my closest buddies there. Looking back, I realise that I got away lucky. There are colleges under Delhi University that do not have the infrastructure to support students with certain needs. Also, they don’t have the willingness to change for the better either. An inclusive college is defined by its willingness to change and accommodate each and every student within its fold. Because every student, whether from the general or special category, has their needs. A person with visual impairment requires a different set of infrastructure when compared to a student who let’s say uses a hearing aid. To make a campus accessible, dialogue is essential between the involved parties – college administration and students. Administrations need to hear its students out. The youth ought to clearly define their needs and realise that they too have the right to education. It’s essential that both work together to a compromise or a middle point. I guess this understanding is what sets an inclusive college apart – it’s willingness to take a step. In my present institution (Delhi School of Economics) there’s a lone classroom on the ground floor for the first years. In my second year getting to the classroom could have been a problematic situation. This is where the administration heard me out and accommodated their schedule around. The School rescheduled second year classes and they are now held on the ground floor, after the first-year classes get over. A small step on their part; a great, positive change for me.
August 2011 EduTech
Subhojit Paul
classrooms and cinema halls, to road trips to hill top cities like Kathmandu. Sangita could never have become a journalist without the unobtrusive help and encouragement of her classmates, teachers, colleagues, peers and bosses, and Nipun would not be studying in DU today (see box). Yet the barriers remain — physical and psychological. Some of the questions we need to answer to understand the impediments to the barrier removal are: a) How are quotas followed? What happens to the vacancies when the quota remains unfulfilled? What if there are less applicants the next year too? b) Do most institutes have the infrastructure to support students? c) Apart from spatial accessibility, do students have easy access to content? d) After receiving the degree, are placement services available to students?
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accessibility under this scheme. HEIs can access the grant to make all the oncampus structures and construction projects disabled-friendly. Colleges are supposed to write to the UGC for the grant, following which a team inspects the college facilities and later sanctions it. However, accessibility audits of campuses around the country conducted by leading NGOs in the field have repeatedly thrown up disappointing results. Inclusive Education – Quota Talk In most institutions the quota rule is “more or less followed”. “In Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) around 2-3 per cent of all students across all courses are
those with special needs. Sometimes when the rule is not being followed, our association takes a stand and brings it to notice,” says Sandeep Kumar, Treasurer, JNU Disabled Persons’ Association (JNUDPA). While in JNU its JNUDPA, DU has its Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC), IIM Bangalore has its Office of Disability Services (ODS) and Jamia Millia Islamia has an “on-campus facility” to help students with special needs. When the EDU team visited the DU and the JNU campuses this year, volunteers and members of both the universities’ special cells were busy. “We are keeping a keen eye on the admission
process and informing the students about the facilities and the processes. We want to come up with a database of the of students who take admission, which would allow us to monitor them and extend assistance when required,” stresses Navneet Sethi, Associate Professor and JNUDPA president. Nisha Singh, member of the Equal Opportunity Cell in DU, and her volunteers, too were busy setting up assistance booths around the admission offices. So, there’s a bit of good news after all. Universities seem to be taking steps to fulfill the UGC mandate of setting up a special cell for the disabled. Just like
Indian Campuses must be Inclusive to be Globally Competitive Aaron Schwarz, Architect, US, has faith that upcoming Indian campuses will get their designs right and be more sensitive to students’ needs Can you describe some of the global accessibility standards? There are a few that have been published and eventually became benchmarks. The US-based ADA’s Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities or ADAAG (accessboard.gov/adaag/html/adaag.htm) include some of them. In addition, there’s American National Standards Institute or ANSI guidelines (ansi.org) that provides information on accessibility standards. Another source for information is Resources for Universal Design and Accessibility Standards.
Are the US rules on accessibility strict? What’s the state of financial aid for such purposes? It’s mandatory for buildings in the US colleges and universities to adhere to the ADA Accessibility Guideline. When properly implemented, these allow equal access to everyone. I’m not sure of financial aid. However, the federal government does prioritise on aid for upgrading accessibility standards before even approving capital for programme growth.
Since you have worked closely with some Indian institutions, can you mention one that is relatively inclusive?
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My interaction is too limited to justify the question. Personally, I’ve not visited a campus that is hundred per cent accessible or inclusive. But I believe that newer campuses will increasingly meet global benchmarks. In fact they will be forced to do so in their attempt to compete with international universities when they enter the Indian higher education sector. The new breed of edupreneurs are cognisant of both Indian and global design standards. They
Accessibility
Indian universities are moving towards multidisciplinary and holistic content, similarly campuses here are also trying to become more inclusive, DU for instance. It has increased seats under its OBC quota from 1,220 to 1,620 – 400 more than 2009.
Universal Accessible Design On the flip side, while seats may have been added, it’s failed to attract enough applicants. In 2009, DU had 700 seats vacant because there weren’t enough applicants. “The problem is that either students aren’t aware of the facilities or they fear that they aren’t there at all,”
believes Anjlee Agarwal of Samarthyam, an NGO that has been working with the government trying to make the city more accessible. The fear that Agarwal refers to is justified to a degree. As far as spatial accessibility is concerned, most Indian campuses are poorly planned. When Samarthyam conducted an audit of 150 DU buildings (south and north campus) in May 2006, it found amenities missing. “An access audit is never a fault-finding exercise, but often it ends up being so. Because Indian campuses are so old and badly-planned,” says Agarwal. For her, what makes up for this lack of planning
are putting in effort to meet a higher level of accessibility. Having said that, India has a long way to go and Indian universities should keep that in mind and allow every member of its campus access to its spaces. Students should be treated equally.
There are three categories of disabilities: visual, locomotor and auditory. How can architecture and design aid institutions to become accessible for different categories? I agree that there are three main categories. But there are several more categories which cover individuals who have more than one of these conditions. Mobility is the immediate issue that people (designers, planners and administrators) think of. Thus, most buildings and campuses have elevators and ramps. But there are other concerns. Heights of counters, switches, door handles and lavatory fixtures should be correct and proper to make campuses accessible. Then there should be enough turning radius for a wheelchair user. Doorways and hallways should be wide enough to allow everyone to pass through. For persons with visual impairment there should be tactile surfaces and Braille and non-visual communications available in the libraries. For auditory concerns, sound amplification systems are a must. Typically when planners visualise persons with disabilities, they think of people who are permanently so. That’s short-sighted. There are conditions which last for shorter periods. The idea is to plan ahead and think long-term.
Are newer institutions which claim to contain state-of-the-art infrastructure adhering to accessibility norms? There are millions of disabled Indian citizens. Yet, to my knowledge, there exists no national standard for barrier-free design. This means that most institutions and designers are left on their own to do what they can to create barrier-free spaces. I don’t believe that any institution can yet claim that they are inclusive. Perhaps, for the shortterm India can adopt universal standards. However, in the long-term, the country’s think-tanks have to come up with designs that are more suited to the climate and environment here and then adopt these as standards into the national building codes. Perhaps the Centre should also finance incentives and grants for adhering to these standards, if not adopt them as law.
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are people who want a change, like professor Deepak Pental, who contacted the NGO requesting them to conduct an access audit. Samarthyan has a checklist for campuses gauge their accessibility (See edu-leaders.com) “We looked at the usual areas that students, guardians and staff use everyday – roads, pathways, walkways, campus entrances, drop-off zones, parking areas, offices of the dean, vice chancellor and the registrar, utility building, examination counters and windows, administrative and science blocks, coffee house, general circulation areas and public facilities (toilets, drinking water, cafeteria, etc). Most were spatially inaccessible,” reports Agarwal. The NGO’s audit report was used to transform the campus to its present avatar. Samarthyam has done similar accessibility audits for JNU, IGNOU, IIT Kanpur, IIM Ahmedabad, SLATE (Punjab) and the Garhwal University. While some fared better than the others, none of the institutions came across as cent per cent accessible. She points out that it doesn’t take a fortune to construct some amenities and that vendors who specialise in special construction are also there. “The main university campus (DU) is not very disabled-friendly yet. But some colleges such as Lady Sri Ram, Lakshmibai, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Khalsa College, Mata Sundari, Gargi, Kamala Nehru, Jesus and Mary College have already started working on making their campuses accessible. The audit helped. Ramps and toilets have been constructed. Today, there is at least one accessible lavatory on every campus. Now we are trying to push for the other amenities, such as tactile paths, accessible parking spaces and ramps leading to ATMs. However, the work gets done at a snail’s pace. Some colleges are slow to respond, others prefer not to act at all, while for some it’s a long wait for grants that can make change possible,” says Nisha Singh.
Missing Funds Absent funds is a common refrain. “Colleges do receive the UGC grants under merged funds meant for the OBCs and August 2011 EduTech
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Accessibility
students with special needs. But often, institution’s are not aware that they can draw from this fund to upgrade the college infrastructure,” says Nisha Singh. “There were once some special grants being released by the UGC and the ministry. We sent out requests for those. So, we tasked the engineering department to make a tentative proposal for corridors and ramps. Now we are waiting for the grants to arrive,” she adds. Apparently, the implementation of the UGC scheme is yet to take off in a big way.
Absent Students A UGC survey states that 6 per cent of India’s youth study in some sort of HEI or the other. Keeping that figure in mind, and considering that 3 per cent of that figure should comprise students with disabilities, a ball-park estimate of the number of disabled youth enrolled in HEIs should be 3,160,000 (A National Sample Survey 2003 estimate). In a report entitled “Status of Mainstream Education of Disabled Students in India - A Research Study” (www.aifo. it/) conducted some time ago, around 322 universities in the country were sent a questionnaire covering several aspects of accessibility on campuses. Of these only 119 responded. The total number of disabled students studying in the 7,280 institutes under the 119 respondents was 1635. Even according to a conservative estimate, the figure is too low and it appears that Indian higher education is accessible to a miniscule percentage of disabled youth. Now compare this to the US. A July report of National Centre for Education Statistics, US Education Department’s statistical arm, says 88 per cent of their two and four-year colleges reported enrolling students with disabilities in 2008-2009, which means more than 7,07,000 students. About one-third of the students had a specific learning disability. A large number of the institutions (93 %) offered students with disabilities additional time to take exams. Some 71 per cent offered them an alternative exam format. At 77 per cent of the colleges, students with disabilities were provided with note-takers; 72 per cent
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Power Tools JAWS: The programme enables one to work with Lotus Symphony, a suite of IBM® tools for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation creation and with Lotus Notes®. JAWS also is compatible with Microsoft® Office Suite, MSN Messenger®, Corel® WordPerfect, Adobe® Acrobat Reader, Internet Explorer™, Firefox™ and more applications that are used on a regular basis in school. With a refreshable Braille display, JAWS provides Braille output in addition to, or instead of, speech. It comes with an array of versatile features and customisable options. DAISY: “Save as DAISY” add-in for Microsoft Office Word has a “Lite” version of the DAISY Pipeline. One can select to generate the DAISY XML for further processing, or generate a fully conforming DAISY file set with full navigation and full text, synchronised with audio. The audio is generated by the default text-to-speech (TTS) engine on the Windows. Only catch, the source document in Microsoft Word has to be well structured, created using styles and saved before it can be converted to fully conforming DAISY book. Ivona Text-to-Speech: IVONA TTS is a program developed by IVONA Software converting text to speech. It is used in market segments. Its technological potential, high-speech quality comparable with human speech, variety of voices, and licences contribute to the fact that it is used by both large corporations and small enterprises as well as non-profit organizations. RoboBraille: It’s an e-mail service capable of automatically transforming documents into a variety of alternative formats for the visually and reading impaired: Contracted Braille, mp3 files, DAISY books and visual Braille. Furthermore, RoboBraille can convert otherwise inaccessible documents into more accessible formats. RoboBraille is available free of charge to all non-commercial users who don’t need to register in order to use the service. In addition to the traditional email-interface, RoboBraille can be accessed via a simple, accessible web-interface. Adobe InDesign CS4 includes a “\Save as DTBook\” (DAISY XML) option. Users can choose DTBook (aka DAISY XML) content within EPUBs, compatible with the NIMAS standard, mandated in the US for providing access to K-12 instructional materials for the visually impaired.
Accessibility
provided written course notes or help with learning strategies; and 70 per cent offered “adaptive equipment and technology”. Notably, our education department is still to come up with any such comprehensive report. Most researches in the field have been done by disability bodies and individuals.
The Silver Lining “It should be our endeavour to make higher education available to a wider cross-section of students, and especially to include those who’ve been left out of its fold, which includes among others, people with special needs. In order to do so, we need to make facilities available which can aid the process of learning for them,” says Vice Chancellor Najeeb Jung, Jamia Millia Islamia. He adds, “In this day and age, there should be no prejudice. Ability and disability is a matter of perspective. I know of several successful people who overcame their disabilities and became winners.” It’s academics and administrators like Jung, Pental and Professor Sudhir Kumar Sopory, JNU Vice Chancellor, whose interest helps shed light on an issue that’s otherwise brushed under the carpet. “We have a campus facility that aids students with disabilities. The facility is available centrally in the university library. Students who are visually challenged can access academic material through this facility. Besides, there is a specialised scanner and reader which makes books available to visually challenged students. Moreover, there are also hearing aids available for students who may have hearing impairment and through which they can access a lot of academic material too,” stresses Jung. Also, Jamia has a fairly spread campus with ramps in most busy spots. The university also practices an inclusive policy where students, teachers and staff pitch in to make rooms available on the ground floor for people with special needs and there are volunteers who become writers for their visually challenged classmates.
Barriers in the Mind For Samarthyam’s Agarwal attitudinal
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Point to Ponder
3 per cent of seats in all Indian universities and colleges are reserved for candidates with disabilities, who have passed the qualifying examination, who are eligible to apply for admission irrespective of their percentage of marks in all programmes of study. However, in most of the institutions, candidates are considered for admission to only those fields of study and disciplines where their disability is not considered a hindrance
barriers are several times worse than the architectural barriers. “A campus may be disabled-friendly on paper. But as a policy students are barred from subjects such as science and certain humanities topics because laboratories often are in the upper storeys of buildings.” Agarwal should know. As a DU gold medallist and a topper, she abandoned her hopes of pursuing science after she became a wheelchair user in the final year of her college. And so should Manish Arora who has been fighting to take up geography despite people expressing doubts over his ability to manage the excursion required in the second year. “Beyond physical and systemic barriers, there are the attitudinal barriers. A glaring example of prejudice is discrimination in employment, which the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities prohibits. These are major challenges, but there is no reason why they cannot be addressed with sufficient political will,” believes Professor Rishikesha T Krishnan, who Chairs, the Committee on Disability at IIM Bangalore.
Sit Up and Take Note There’s soon to be a new law defining the rights of persons with disabilities. Tentatively titled, “The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill, 2011; it may replace the PwD Act if it receives the
nod. Its final draft has been submitted to Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Mukul Wasnik. The proposed law seeks to repeal the Persons with Disabilities Act of 1995 and replace it with a comprehensive set of rights in accordance with the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Against All Odds Till then, occasional headlines like the above sub-head, glorifying the feats of differently abled persons will actually be written despite all our journalistic dislike for the ‘done to death’ clichés and jargons. For, it is really a battle of grit and gumption against all odds that makes some individuals with disabilities shine. Take for example the famous British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He states in the Foreword of the WHO World Report on Disability: “We have a moral duty to remove the barriers to participation for people with disabilities, and to invest sufficient funding and expertise to unlock their vast potential. It is my hope this century will mark a turning point for inclusion of people with disabilities in the lives of their societies.” The new law on the anvil, we hope, will usher a new era of accessibility in our HEI campuses. August 2011 EduTech
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Accessibility
Sudhir Kumar Sopory Vice Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru University 26
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Accessibility
cover story
The Accessible VC
Subhojit Paul
There are accessible spaces and accessible people. One needs more of the latter to create the former. The newly-appointed VC of one of the largest and most prestigious universities in India, Professor Sudhir Kumar Sopory, is our pick as an accessible VC. He’s on a mission to create an inclusive and accessible campus. To do so, Sopory has begun one-on-one interactions with his students, staff and professors, to discuss ways for making JNU an inclusive university. In July, he met members of the JNU Disabled Persons’ Association (JNUDPA). Later, he spoke to EDU regarding some of his plans Tell us how you plan to deal with the special issues that have been put before you by JNUDPA? My plans are generic for now. Whether it involves general or special students, my focus would be on twin fronts – academic and campus. I want to focus on individual problems: whether be it related to the students, the staff or the professors. I wish to micromanage, which is going to be difficult. However, looking at individual cases is important because that’s how problems will receive the attention that they deserve. I’ve asked students, staff or professors, who have a grievance, to meet me at the beginning of every month. This month the members of JNUDPA met me. I listened to their problems and have made a list. I’ve also asked them to do the same to highlight issues according to priority.
On the academic front, how do you plan to assist the special students? As a guide. That’s my role as the vice chancellor and my commitment to every student in JNU, whether falling in special or general category. I am not going to take a piecemeal approach to the issue of education. I admit that academic, and administrative, concerns got derailed in the university in the recent past. So, we’ve decided to set up an internal quality assessment cell (IQAC), which will assess academic quality issues in each department of JNU. Then there would be a group called JNU 2020 Vision. This group will include associate professors and professors who will contact former students, faculty and the general public and listen to their present views on the
university and find out where they want to see the university go from here. It would be this group’s task to prepare a document with the IQAC. Then we will stand back to see where JNU should be in terms of world ranking and where we wish to see it reach in the next 10 years. The most important task of a university is to fulfill its social commitment – we have a commitment to making JNU an inclusive campus.
Any specific plans for the students in the special category? At JNU there’s an active Equal Opportunity Cell (EOC). From this year, we will hire two teachers who will impart English and communication skills to people chosen by the EOC. Even the most meritorious student needs a little bit of help while dealing with the real world. And August 2011 EduTech
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Accessibility
our attempt would be to help the students learn communication skills to handle life after the university. Also JNU’s computer centre will initiate courses that help students learn specific programmes which they may need to use on a daily basis or for course work. After meeting the members of the EOC, I spoke to the administration regarding expansion of funds so that caretakers can be paid more. Also, there will be a dedicated technical officer in the Helen Keller Library who would be helping students with their everyday work – scanning documents. We are
they are accessible enough. But it’s an issue that I am willing to look into.
What are the immediate issues that you plan to look into? The EOC members came up with a request in the last meeting. As you probably know, the over arching three per cent reservation is further sub-divided between orthopaedically challenged, visually challenged and hearing disabled students. The EOC’s request was to fill up vacant seats in any of the sub-categories, with applicants from the most crowded sub-category. This way, the
three members of the EOC who immediately agreed to contribute. We’ve also requested the authorities to consider students in special categories for the Rajiv Gandhi Fellowship or make a separate category of fellowship for them.
How about the campus? I move around the campus, eat in the canteens, get a hair-cut in the regular saloons. The point I am trying to make here is that I am aware of the certain areas which may be inaccessible to some students. But making the campus accessible is an ongoing process and it’s
“Making the campus accessible is an ongoing process and it’s on. JNU is sensitive to the needs of all its students, and where it’s not, we want to change that” —Sudhir Kumar Sopory
also going to load all the programmes that students need on every computer in every school.
EDU found that in most campuses students with disabilities were encouraged to take up either humanities or commerce. The reason being that science laboratories are either located at a higher storey or there aren’t enough teachers to deal with students in special category. Is JNU equipped to allow students to take up subjects of their choice? JNU science laboratories have a special “advance instrumentation research” facility which is also available to outside researchers. Honestly, I don’t know if
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members believe, the quota would be justified. Why leave empty seats just because there are less number of applicants in a certain sub-category? However, to make this into a norm, I will have to talk to the UGC and other bodies. That’s on my to-do list. In our XII Plan we are going to ask for more grants from the UGC. Some OH (orthopaedically handicapped) students who rely heavily on their caregivers or escorts need to raise the allowance that’s paid to them. That is another issue that we will deal with. Till that extra grant comes in, I’ve requested the alumni and the faculty to start contributing, however, minimally, to a fund that may be used for this purpose. I am trying to sensitise the faculty regarding this as well. I am happy to note that there have been two to
on. JNU is sensitive to the needs of all its students, and where it’s not, we wish to change that.
Tell us about the Monday meetings. Let me make this clear that this is a meeting that’s open to all students. Problems related to academics or infrastructure vis-a-vis degrees, lectures, professors or classes are discussed here. I want every student to get her degree. I will personally intervene in these matters when they come before me. Obviously, I expect people to respect the fact that only very serious cases will be dealt with in these meetings. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/con-
TECHNOLOGY 34 Tech INTERVIEW: Nitin Khanapurkar, KPMG 36 Tech TUTeS: Know Your Gmail
by Photos.com
30-37 Tech Snippet: Tehnology News and Tips and Tricks
Examine ITÂ E IT-enabled systems not only ease the pressure on academia, but bring in transparency and control by Tushar Kanwar
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xaminations. The very mention of the word sends a collective shiver down the spines of the student populace. Little do they realise that for administrators and heads of institutions, conducting examinations and evaluating answer sheets is no less a daunting task. It is fraught with many challenges, semester after semester, year after year. Yet, with a clever infusion of technology, higher educational institutions can solve the traditional challenges of the examination system. We spoke to leading solution providers and institutions that have implemented IT-enabled examination
Examination
TECHNOLOGy
Tech Snippet | Project
Tech Snippet | Social Network
Indira Gandhi National Open University has launched an electronic resoures venture called the Remote Access To E-resources (RATE)project. RATE aims to deliver a wide variety of electronic study materials including lectures and notes, as well as e-books to students online. The service can be accessed by a limited number of teaching staff, students, and centres currently, but would be widely available soon. The university, using TCS powered Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), has also automated much of the routine work of its officials. It also recently teamed up with Nokia to provide distance learning courses via the mobile platform.
Google recently unveiled the Google+ project that allows users to share photos, videos, and more with their friends. Circles — a social layer added on Google search is now part of Google+. Google’s answer to Facebook, isn’t just a social networking product. On the contrary, it is an extension of Google search itself, with an layer of social network to enrich your overall Google experience online.
IGNOU’s Online Strides
and evaluation systems to find out the important considerations you must bear in mind while choosing a system.
Collapsing Legacy The numbers say it all. According to N Subramanian, CEO of TRS Forms & Services, a leading exam system provider, the current system is ripe for collapse. He estimates there are 504 universities and 25,951 colleges with 5.9 lakh teaching staff imparting higher education to a whopping 36.4 lakh students in the country. He goes on to stress that the moment the GER (gross enrollment ratio) of Indian students pursuing higher education rises from the current approximate 12.4 per cent to above 40 per cent (on a par with Europe and the US), the current brick-andmortar way of conducting exams, generating marksheets and certificates, and verifying their authenticity is bound to fail. In addition, as Praveen Deshpande, Sr VP of Technology Services and Delivery, Mindlogicx Infratec Ltd, describes each step of the exam lifecycle – be it pre-exam (hall ticket and question paper generation), exam time (conducting and collecting answer scripts) or post exam (valuation, tabulation and results) – is crippled by the current pen-and-paper mode of operation. At each of these steps – whether it is the security press, valuation centres or tallying and publishing of
g+ Launched
results – the legacy system allows for multiple points of mishandling and malpractices (not to mention human errors) since many unconnected people at multiple locations gain access to what is otherwise expected to be protected information. Tracking each of these steps
requires laborious planning on the part of the exam in-charge officers, and is a complex logistic issue to handle. Looking forward, restricting the examination process and evaluation system to decades-old methodologies, narrows the opportunity for an institution to change
Tech-enabled Transparency
Dr HK Sehgal
Vice Chancellor, Chhatrapati Shahu Ji Maharaj (CSJM) University, Kanpur How has IT-enabling your examination system helped? Essentially, we needed a large number of answer booklets decoded and evaluated, in a timely manner. IT-enabling our examination processes allowed us to do this without compromising the secrecy associated with student identification. At the same time, we achieved greater transparency in the process, making the system more student-friendly. What are your recommendations for institutions intending to deploy IT for their examination and grading systems? First, the institution’s administrators need to understand the technology being deployed properly and should have a team onboard to evaluate the service providers. Of course, the service provider should have trained manpower with a track record in the particular kind of solution the institution is looking at (in our case, it was the scanning and processing machine/technology TRS).
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Examination
Tech Snippet | On the Cloud
Office 365 in India Office 365, marks Microsoft’s major stride in the cloud computing segment. Launched in India recently, it will provide affordable businesses productivity on the cloud. The suite comprises Word, Excel, PowerPoint, email and other software that can be used by enterprises on the basis of a pay-per-use model. Office 365 plans start at $2 per month for basic email to $27 per month. Microsoft believes the suite will be beneficial to all kinds of enterprises. The company’s press release claimed that more than 12,000 organisations have opted for Office 365 trials over the past 45 days. It also says that over 2,00,000 customers
patterns and establish trends on how students respond to examinations. It also restricts institutions from engaging in system-wide improvements in syllabus and testing criteria, not to mention missing out on student-specific feedback. At a broader level, institutions following a pen-
“The e-valuation web-based exam system allows indexing, scanning and evaluation in a single mechanism” —Subramanian CEO, TRS Forms
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globally have signed up for the suite, making it the largest beta programme ever. Office 365 is supposedly taking the entire concept of cloud computing to an all-new level. “Microsoft Office 365, provides all the familiar enterprise class productivity solutions on a flexible usage and payment model, delivering streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security and simplified IT management. Customers who have already started using the services are realising savings from reduced hardware, software and operational costs. In a nutshell, it allows them to do more with less,” says Sanket Akerkar, MD, Microsoft Corporation India. Microsoft hopes Office 365 will provide ample growth opportunities for its ecosystem partners in India in the near future.
and-paper model lose out on potentially benchmarking themselves against other group institutions or those in their sector.
IT-Enabled For higher educational institutions, the greatest challenge around examinations has been the timely evaluation of answer sheets of a large numbers of students within the stipulated time frame. In the process, a number of manual errors or slip-ups are inevitable, and it is towards such scenarios that electronic valuation systems are targetted. For example, according to Subramanian, the e-valuation web-based exam system by TRS Forms allows indexing, scanning and evaluation in a single-pass mechanism. It ensures faster processing of results and also allows evaluators the flexibility to check answer sheets from any location. IT systems can bring together students from different campuses answering the same question paper in their own secure testing centers without the previous hassles of transporting the paper to each centre. Students can thereafter receive digitised evaluated answer sheets. This creates a more transparent system. Furthermore, each of these answer sheets can be stored and accessed from a central server, cutting out the huge economic and ecological costs (and efforts) of printing question papers and answer sheets. Digitisation of question papers and results open up endless possibilities for
students as well. Once evaluated, the students results can be sliced and diced as needed, with most systems letting users view results in popular data formats like Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or pictorially in charts and bar graphs. Candidates can then use the analysis to drill down on individual performance (vis-à-vis group performance) across the programme, over several years, across class sections or down to individual subjects or questions. Deshpande touched upon an oft-overlooked benefit to the institution: By relegating the non-core exam coordination activities to the IT systems, institutions and faculty can focus their energies on pure academics and research so that the sector and the institution is seen as an education system, and not an examination system.
Testing Times Replacing the current examination process would be tough for institutions. Not only should the new system fit in well with the staff and students expectations, but also maintain the sanctity and security of the core principles of examination and evaluation. Many universities have experienced staff handling the examination process, but the processes themselves are undocumented and inferred. Such stakeholders must be brought on board first, since migration of people who know the guiding
Examination
Tech Snippet | Innovation
Bionic Glasses If scientists at Oxford University succeed in their efforts, visually challenged people will have the gift of sight. They are developing slick and user-friendly bionic spectacles that use minuscule cameras and a pocket computer to alert wearers about the things around him. The glass spectacle uses the technology normally seen in smartphones and gaming consoles.The bionic glasses will help people with poor vision to navigate busy roads and even read bus numbers. They are likely to be available in the market by 2014, depending on the success of trials. Researchers are working to keep the spectacles lightweight and low cost. The glasses work on technology found in video cameras, depth sensors, face
principles of your examination system and what works and doesn’t work are the key to your system design. Noncooperation could mean the loss of your process. Of course, adequate care must be exercised to ensure that the access control rights in the system mirror your best practices offline, so that only right stakeholders have access to the sensitive parts of your system. If need be, consider an independent security audit of your exam system infrastructure to ensure
TECHNOLOGy
recognition, tracking software and position detectors. The cameras, fixed at the corner of the glass, capture what the wearer is looking at. The tiny lights in the transparent lenses, just like a smartphone display, provide information about things such as objects, people and obstacles. The lights are powered by a mini computer which is in the wearer’s pocket and provides information on the basis of video images captured by the cameras. The different colours displayed by the lights help wearer identify things around him. The level of brightness tells how proximate an object is.
that ill-intentioned parties cannot gain access to your systems through lesser known loopholes or backdoors. Next, taking the technology out onto the field will be your teachers and administrators responsibility, and they could potentially be averse to this transformative exercise and derail the smooth roll-out. Bring your faculty on board as early as possible, so that they are familiar with the planning and rollout of the system by the time the examination cycle
Exam-IT in Action: Case Studies Anna University, Coimbatore: Covering both undergraduate and post graduate courses and catering to about 1.7 lakh students and 160 colleges across eight districts of Tamil Nadu, Anna University tasked Mindlogicx Infratec Ltd with the implementation of their ‘IntelliEXAMS’ software suite to manage the entire examination lifecycle process – right from online registration of candidates, online scheduling of examinations, examination fee management, internal mark uploading, online hall ticket generation, distributed authoring of question papers, secured question paper delivery, multiple digital evaluation, tracking of students performance & performance analysis to publishing of results and printing of mark sheets and certificates. Kanpur and Bangalore University: With the recent introduction of automatic dummy numbering, TRS Forms & Servcies designed a new product called FireEye to automate the dummy numbering and data entry process for over half-a-dozen universities, most notable being Kanpur and Bangalore Universities which required the system to process around six million and two million booklets respectively.
rolls by. Students too will need ample training well before the examinations so that they are prepared to face the system.
Recommendations As with any technological initiative that re-looks at norms and practices that have been in place for years (if not decades), taking examination system off the penand-paper route and onto the computer needs a lot of organisational will. Deshpande suggests a champion of change to walk the talk — a person who could instil the value of technology and an open mindset into the system. This person needs to understand core needs of the system before even the first bid is invited. Universities are often seen adopting any result declaration system in a bid to seek IT intervention in order to create a technology front. Deshpande strongly recommends a phased manner of implementation and not a short-term ad-hoc arrangement that may meet today’s needs but compromise your future strategy. However, such change is not without a human impact. Subramanian says above all, significant foresight is required to imbue a culture of change required for the execution of new administration workflows, automated systems and to deal with substantial reorganisation processes. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters August 2011 EduTech
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Tech Interview
According to the report, the cloud can address issues such as cost and training in education
Tech INTERVIEW
Nitin Khanapurkar, Executive Director, KPMG
Higher Education takes Wing Cloud computing can make quality higher education accessible to all. Here’s how India can go about opening its knowledge resources What is the role of cloud computing in higher education? Nitin Khanapurkar: There is a vast space in professional and vocational education that is completely untapped. For example, the best professor in Delhi is available only to a confined community. So, if he or she is teaching in an IIT, others cannot access his lectures. Theoretically speaking, with cloud technology we can digitise the entire lecture, curriculum, question, etc., and put them on the web, making it available to a wider audience.
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So will the cloud lead to open knowledge resources? There may be a catch there. It may not be an open knowledge resource, as everybody wants to monetise it, right? Some part may be be available for free download, but many of the parts of that knowledge might have to be paid for. You would have to subscribe to those lectures and then they will be available to you on demand. The beauty of such an arrangement is that eventually an ecosystem will be created where curricula will be drafted in an interactive way, allowing people to take lectures in whichever way they want to. If today you want to learn English and not mathematics, you will be able to choose the lectures that you want. So flexibility will come. With media becoming interactive
Jiten Gandhi
Report on Cloud KPMG recently brought out a report titled on The Cloud: Changing the Business Ecosystem
Tech Interview
and touchscreens, tablets and smartphones coming up, this content (lectures) will no longer use only the computer as a medium. So in a nutshell, that is how education and cloud interrelate.
Why do you think the cloud is gaining importance now? Today, if a university has to put up its own infrastructure in terms of setting up of this kind of virtual education blackboard, it is not very cost-effective because you don’t know what traffic will be there for the kind of investment you will be making. Traffic may be restricted to the students of your university to begin with, but tomorrow if the traffic goes up, you will have automatic scalablity available to you. You need to be bothered only about the content, rather that creating the entire ecosystem. This is how cloud is going to make education more effective. How well do you think the cloud is being received in Indian HEIs? In the higher education sector in India, there is a high quality of teaching available in some institutions. Reaching more students has always been the key challenge. The cloud might change that. But there is an inherent cultural bias towards this kind of learning. Many people think they are getting a better education by sitting in a classroom. If a child says he is taking a lecture sitting at home at a PC, the parents may not believe him. These
TECHNOLOGy
“Quality teaching is available only in some institutions. Reaching more students has always been the key challenge. The cloud may change that” —Nitin Khanapurkar Executive Director, KPMG
are the kinds of challenges which India has to tackle. The way I see it, this revolution has already started and there is no way to turn the wheel back. I will not be surprised if eventually, especially in the B and C class cities, people who cannot afford personalised teaching, turn to virtual education.
What are the challenges faced by HEIs in cloud adoption? The first challenge is the content, which is going to be the key. You should be able to create content which is meaningful, unique and is able to attract people. Secondly, you will have to create social acceptance around this form of education. These are among a few challenges which I can foresee. But these can all be overcome. People will still go to college, but when it comes to
Tech Snippet | Technology
Brain Chip to Defeat Paralysis Researchers in the UK are on the verge of a technology that might allow paralysed patients to operate bionic limbs via a transmitter brain implant. The technology relies on tiny microprocessors that will sense nerve impulses, decode the signals, and then transmit them to the bionic limbs. All this takes place wirelessly. Most importantly, the new technology decodes algorithms which give the chips the ability to recognise which impulses will control which limb. Scientists from the University of Leicester, the University of Newcastle and the Imperial College London - who jointly developed the technology say it will take nearly five years for it to hit the streets.
special coaching classes or taking repeat classes, that material can be available on the cloud.
Are there any additional benefits to using the cloud? Different people understand things at a different pace. With digitisation of content you can keep on taking the same lecture till you understand. This is not available in the traditional system of teaching, which is a key advantage I can see. The other thing is that the new content being created is three-dimensional in nature. For example, if you are studying medicine, you can see a functioning 3D heart in simulation, that enables you to visualise what you read. This makes retention of information much higher. What are the administrative benefits of adopting the cloud? There are huge benefits. You hardly see e-enabled or computer savvy classrooms, may be because of cost issues or non-availability of technicians. With cloud technology these challenges will melt away. Institutes can build infrastructure as they go along and based on the responses, modify it. What advice would you give to institutions on cloud computing? An institution must first generate a vision of what they want to provide as education and then make a roadmap for cloud computing. Secondly, they need to work on the content so that people are drawn to take up their courses. If nobody wants the courses, it will negate August 2011 EduTech
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TECHNOLOGy
TechTutes
state-of-the-art infrastructure. The third important consideration is the pricing model. If institutions don’t want to pay too much, then students will have to bear the cost. If so, it has to be ensured that they benefit from it. I also believe that institutions should create an ecosystem. It is not merely about having good content or the right price, but also about the kind of support structure being created. Is the institution getting interactive, are they building communities around their content which also operate in the cloud? All these things have will also have to be thought of from day one.
Will institutions need to make infrastructure changes for the cloud? Many institutions may not have infrastructure for e-learning anyway, so they would have to do it from scratch. My advice to institutions would be to test a prototype or a group of concepts within the university or college first. Once the content and ecosystem have been fine-tuned and are interesting to the student community, they could open it to the larger community. By when will cloud computing take off?
I think three to five years would be a reasonable estimate. It may take a while to take hold in India mainly due to the multiple price points. Then computer and internet penetration will have an impact and the third thing, of course, is the cultural resistance to its adoption. It may also lead to collaborations between universities that are competing today. A different synergy will come up and it will be interesting to watch.
Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters
Tech TUTES Know Your Gmail
Much More Than Just Email by Tushar Kanwar
E
can share your calendar with your family ver since its launch in 2004, and even add other calendars such as the Gmail has found favour with one on Indian Holidays. Best of all, millions of email users for its Google calendar is deeply integrated with sheer simplicity and instant Gmail and allows you to add event relatsearchability, not to mention ed information from your current email the never-delete-any-email ethos that it by clicking on “Add to Calendar” link. encourages. But did you know that email Click on this link and it allows you to edit is just one of the many features that a the event details then save. Gmail account (it is a Or if you’re in Gmail and Google account really) need to create an event, use offers you. Here are five READER ROI “Create Event” in “More” services that you can sign You can access five different actions to create an event into instantly with your services with there and then. Google account, with most your Gmail Google Docs: Chances available from the top bar account are you have heard of Docs, of your Gmail screen. Google’s online office suite Google Calendar: An Log in to Calendar, Docs, that resides within your excellent application which Groups, Reader browser. Apart from basic is great for keeping track of & Picasa Web office format support to your appointments, anniAlbums view and edit your Word, versaries and meetings. You
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Functions Galore Your Gmail account offers unlimited opportunities. Go ahead and explore it
Excel and PowerPoint files, Docs packs in templates for you to get started and even supports storage for any file or folder, with Microsoft Office documents being automatically converted to Google Docs format. But where Google Docs truly shines is in its collaboration features – you can send out invites to other people via the ‘Share this document’ feature and as soon as they sign in, they are presented your document in a shared view with appropriate access control rights decided by you. From here on, you can work on the same version of the document, and Docs shows you exactly who changed what and when. There’s even an on-screen chat window for
TechTutes
Tech Snippet | Device
Now Mobile Diagnosis You can use your mobile phone as a media player, event scheduler, calculator, stopwatch and so on. But did you ever imagine using your phone to detect a cataract? Yes, it’s possible, thanks to a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The team is presently working on an inexpensive way to use
spreadsheets, and viewing presentations at the same time. Google Reader: The internet is an untamed source for news, and if you’re looking for some organisation, give the Google Reader a go. If you have a set of sites you would like to visit frequently, chances are high that the websites publish a list of updates, called “feeds”, that indicate when new content has been posted. In most cases, it is as simple as copying the address of the website and pasting it in Google Reader’s “Add subscription” box. If there’s a feed associated with the page, it will be added to your subscriptions. When you subscribe to a feed, Google Reader starts monitoring that feed for updates. New content posted to your subscriptions will appear in Google Reader, much the same way that new emails addressed to you show up in your email account. This way, you can keep up with all your favourite sites in one place, without having to visit each one individually. Google Reader is also a great way to discover new reading lists via the “Reader Play” feature, which suggests interesting reading material on the web, and over time, builds your preferences by the number of items you like or share on Reader. Google Groups: Much like the email groups that may connect you back to your school and college mates, Google Groups lets you create groups using your account, and start discussions within the group page or via email. Where Google Groups excels is the vast number of diverse interest groups that already exist, so if you have a hobby or interest and merely reading news items in Google Reader isn’t
TECHNOLOGy
smartphones to detect the eye disorder, especially when it is in early stages. The Catra system, developed by Media Lab Camera Culture Group Director Ramesh Raskar and colleagues, consists of off-theshelf components. The user needs to look into the component attached to a smartphone or any other smart device like an iPod Touch. The device scans the eye lens and creates a map of the cloudy areas. It is also capable of identifying shape, size, density of the clouds and produces a diagnosis of the cataract.
One app, multiple applications Log on to your Gmail account today and go exploring to find out the variety of its uses
enough, take your participation forward in an existing group and expand your social network. Picasa Web Albums: With Google offering over 7 gigabytes of storage with your Gmail account, why go elsewhere to share your photos? Offering tight integration with Google’s Picasa photo management software, Picasa Web Albums lets you share your memories with your friends and family directly by email without the typical worry on social networks – that your images can find their way onto the internet and into the wrong hands. Also recommended to try on Picasa Web
Albums in the face recognition feature – the software automatically recognises similar faces and allows you to tag them with names. You can then just flip through photos of one single person across different photo albums and events. And there’s more to explore with your Google account, like sites (web site creation), Blogger (instant blogs) etc. Take these out for a spin and let us know what you think. Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from EDU at http://edu-leaders.com/content/newsletters August 2011 EduTech
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Administration
Security
Securing the
Campus Security is a concern for university administrations the world over. Now, technology has come to their rescue with new devices for impregnable fortification by Teja Lele Desai 38
EduTech August 2011
ADMIN Snippets News
• Mumbai University wants degree
college admissions to go online from next year New Appointment
• IIM Udaipur • Punjab Agricultural University • Maharaja Sayaji Rao University • Lovely Professional University
C
ampus violence has scarred the academic landscape across the globe. As the spectre of urban terror looms large over the world, the list of possible terror targets has lengthened to include university and school campuses. Securing campuses is an increasingly complex issue involving layers of safety nets. Administrations worldwide are gearing up not only to provide a safe environment for students, staff and visitors, but also to secure property and establish a rapid response mechanism to address emergencies and unforeseen crises. Time was when the only security on a campus would be the guards at the entry and exit points, with a simple agenda: check identity cards and get visitors to fill in details on the visitor slip or registers. Campuses today are technologically fortified fortresses. Simple safety checks are passĂŠ; a
admission | University of Bombay
Degree Admissions go Online
University of Mumbai has announced that degree college admissions may go online from next year. More than 500 colleges are affiliated to the university and over six lakh students from various parts of the country get admission to it every year. The university has more than 200 courses on offer and has asked all its affiliated colleges to build their own websites for online admissions. Experts say that degree college students are experienced enough to fill their admission forms online and should not have to visit colleges to fill and submit forms. This would also save a lot of time and manpower. According to reports, Dr Rajpal Hande, Director, Board of College and University Development, said they would talk to the principals of affiliated colleges before taking a final decision. Students will just have to send a 100 demand draft to the college when they submit the form.
August 2011  EduTech
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Administration
Security
New Appointment |IIM Udaipur
IIM Udaipur Founder Director Appointed Dr Janat Shah, faculty at IIM Bangalore, has joined as the Founder Director of IIM Udaipur, which started its first batch in July this year. An IIT Bombay alumnus, Shah worked with the industry for five years before doing a Fellow Programme in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He was faculty member at IIM Bangalore since 1991. Shah was the chairperson, Centre for
complex setup involving elements of risk analysis, psychology, emergency response, and investigation is the need of the hour. No wonder then that sophisticated security technology such as automated card access systems (the industry standard on campuses around the world), intrusion detection systems, and security cameras have become de rigueur on campuses.
Supply Chain Management at IIM Bangalore and taught Operations Management, Supply Chain Management and Project Management. Professor Shah has been a visiting faculty with The Logistic Institute at National University, Singapore and a visiting Scholar at the Sloan School of Management, MIT. In his long illustrious career, he has received several awards including the best teacher award at IIM Bangalore in 1999. His works have been published in national and international journals.
Technology Helps At IISc, India’s premier scientific institute, the perspective on security changed completely after the 2005 attack that left a professor dead. MR Chandrashekhar, Chief Security Officer, IISc, says the security setup now is highly complex and versatile in nature. “The IISc campus is very vibrant with
Staying Safe
P
ost 26/11, the security and surveillance industry in India has grown at over 20 per cent annually. A recent Frost & Sullivan report has estimated the Indian video surveillance and CCTV market to be worth 333 crore— about 29 per cent of the 1,150 crore electronic security market in the country. A variety of electronic systems and devices are used to secure campuses and institutes. These include:
Access and Attendance Control Systems: Either biometric or cardbased, these systems keep track of attendance and control access to areas within the campus Guard Tour: Help control and monitor the movement of security guards inside the campus
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Wired/Wireless CCTV Solutions: Provide surveillance at key points such as entry/exit, canteens, labs, classrooms, hostels, parking lots, campus grounds, etc. Boom Barriers: Authenticate vehicle entry and exit, and allow vehicle access control. Options such as local/ remote operations, card access and vehicle ID systems available Intrusion Systems: Tamper-proof systems that can intelligently sense different emergencies such as fire and intrusion and raise an alarm in real time accordingly Other Solutions: Other vigilance systems adopted on campuses are metal detectors (doorframe and hand-held), photo identity cards, vehicle stickers and night patrols
activities throughout the day that often continue well into the night. Add to that the fact that we have a residential campus (around 10,000 people) spread over 430 acres. We know that in such a setup, security is paramount,” he says. The institute has a layered security system in place – apart from in-house security (it has 65 people on its rolls), an agency has also been hired to keep the campus safe. The levels of security relate to the vulnerability of the areas with the highest level provided for areas such as laboratories and the second rung allocated for open and common areas. “We have biometric access control and CCTV monitoring. The security personnel from outside undergo training every week to sensitise them to the needs of our campus,” Chandrashekhar says. Security is now routinely strengthened for seminars and conferences. At times, IISc seeks support from the Bengaluru police as well. The institute is also aware of the threat that depressed students and academics can pose, and routinely keeps tabs on potential cases. “We organise counselling sessions and ensure that an eye is kept on any disgruntled community members,” Chandrashekhar says. In the national capital, security concerns were raised in the aftermath of the Radhika Tanwar murder case. Radhika, a second-year degree student, was shot dead near a foot-overbridge outside Ramlal Anand College in Dhaula Kuan’s Shantiniketan area. The DU administration immediately promised to augment security, and began the first phase of the
Security
New Appointment |Punjab Agricultural University
Dhillon Joins as PAU VC Dr Baldev Singh Dhillon has been appointed as the new Vice Chancellor of Punjab Agricultural University (PAU). He is the 13th Vice Chancellor of PAU. Born in 1947, Dr Dhillon comes from village Daburji in Amritsar district and has earlier served PAU in various capacities. Dr Dhllon is a scientist of international repute and has served the Indian Council of Agricultural Research as Assistant Director General and the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Research as the Director. He was Director of
revamp. The first phase of its security revamp of the South Campus was completed recently. Night-vision CCTV cameras have been installed at four major points on the campus – the entry and exit points, the students’ centre and the biotech centre. The university is also collaborating with the Delhi Police to ensure patrolling on the campus till 10 pm. The second phase will include installation of CCTVs in all departments on the South Campus. Security systems clearly contribute to an increased sense of safety in the campus community. With demand rising exponentially, companies like Godrej, Eureka Forbes, Sparsh, Aditya Infotech and Zicom have entered the market with sophisticated technical systems to secure campuses. Apart from CCTVs and access control systems, innovations such as surveillance on mobile, remote surveillance and IP cameras are also available. “Campuses have traditionally depended on manned guarding, a system which has its limitations. The advent of new technology allows intelligent surveillance solutions, video analytics and digital security,” says Yogesh Dutta, Vice President, Security BU (SAARC Region), Aditya Infotech Ltd. “Academic campuses are huge, usually comprising several buildings, accesses and parking lots. Based on the needs and location, we design special surveillance solutions.” Educational institutes are seeking a total security package to guard against all kinds of threats – unauthorised entry, vandalism, unsafe parking lots, and ran-
Administration
Research at PAU and Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. Presently, he is working on maize biotechnology at the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgard, Germany. A doctorate from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, Dr Dhillon is known for scientific breakthroughs in maize breeding in particular and crop improvement research in general . He has published over 350 research publications and authored many books on these.
“Campuses need to analyse threat perception and install systems accordingly” —Sanjeev Sehgal, MD, Sparsh Securitech
dom acts of violence. Total security requires an IP platform and management software that centralises campus surveillance needs, and enables integration with other security solutions. Video surveillance is a force multiplier on campuses as it deters crime, prevents vandalism, monitors parking lots, aids in investigations and implementation of university policies, and allows remote access.
“Apart from emergencies, archived video can also be used to provide evidence in disciplinary situations, and can discourage smoking, drug use, and fighting among students,” Dutta says. Video surveillance and analytics systems also allow crowd behaviour recognition. An IP video surveillance system using video analytics can identify a variety of misdemeanours – be it a drunken person entering the campus, students bunking classes, disturbing the library environment, drug running within the campus, etc. “The system can respond to all these incidents by sending out pages, text messages or other forms of security alerts to officials,” Dutta says.
Holistic Solutions More clients are now keen on a holistic and integrated approach to security. Bringing all security systems onto a common platform can aid quicker identification of incidents, faster response to threats, and swift communication across channels, sectors and boundaries. Godrej Security Solutions believes that the security concerns on an Indian campus differ greatly from that on a US campus. “More campuses are opting for modern security systems these days. We offer solutions such as access and attendance control, CCTVs, intrusion systems, boom barriers, fire alarm systems and guard tours. An integrated solution on an IP platform is a value proposition,” says Mehernosh B Pithawala, Senior General Manager, Godrej Security Solutions. August 2011 EduTech
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Administration
Security
New Appointment |Maharaja Sayaji Rao University
Yogesh Singh Joins MSU as VC
Yogesh Singh, Professor, University School of Information Technology, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIU), Delhi, takes charge as the 16th vice chancellor of the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University (MSU), Baroda. Singh, who is from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, had been teaching at GGSIU for the past 10 years and was also its Controller Examinations. He was also the founder Head (1999-2001) and Dean (20012006) of University School of Information Technology. Singh
IP systems help integrate multiple systems and provide a more robust command and control centre, also decrease the response time in case of a threat. “Integrated solutions with advanced analytics features such as mob detection, object removal detection, and graffiti detection through IQ Vigil, work well on campuses. Among others, we have designed solutions for Aligarh Muslim University and T John College,” Pithawala says. No i d a’ s A m i t y U n i v e r s i t y h a s embraced the latest security and vigilance gadgets such as access control (electronic photo identity cards are used by staff and students on automated turnstile machines), boom barriers (to authenticate vehicle entry and exit), doorframe metal detectors and handheld metal detectors. Other measures used for the campus community are photo identity cards, vehicle stickers that authorise entry and exit to the campus, and night patrols. “The campus is well equipped with CCTV cameras that are monitored round the clock. Movements and events are tracked and a report is submitted to the security head of the campus. We also have a separate vigilance department to supervise and note shortcomings,” says Savita Mehta, VP, Communications, Amity University. Amity believes that though modern security systems carry a considerable price tag, it is essential to use the latest technology and keep updating security
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has an MTech and PhD in Computer Engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra (previously Regional Engineering College). Before joining GGSIU, he was the founder chairman of Guru Jambheshwar University’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Hisar in Haryana. True to his technological bearings, Singh has declared technological upgradation of the varsity’s functioning as immediate priority. To begin with, Singh plans to take all student-related services online and also look into the problem areas dogging the varsity.
Security Shake-up
T
he International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators Blueprint for Safer Campuses, put together after the tragedy at Virginia Tech, has identified specific recommendations for bettering security on campuses. The proposals include: ll campuses should conduct a vulnerability assessment, considering A natural, criminal, terrorist and accidental threats, as part of their risk management strategy A campus emergency alert system must include multiple means of sharing information, including high-technology (mass notification system) and lowtechnology (flyers, loudspeakers) solutions Institutes should develop emergency response plans that allow for a coordinated response to critical incidents. Annual training should be conducted for the emergency operations and policy group Faculty, staff and students need to be trained on how to respond to emergencies and on notification systems to be used. Training can be provided through presentations or internet-based delivery Institutes need to frequently review physical security infrastructure (such as door locks) to ensure safety of students, faculty, and visitors The nature of the emergency should determine what and how campus authorities communicate with the campus and how quickly A comprehensive programme to end violence and crimes against women on campus is needed. Stalking, sexual assault and relationship violence need to be tackled, and self-defence mechanisms provided for women All institutes should ensure that criminal record checks, as appropriate, are conducted on all members of the campus (students and staff)
Security
New Appointment |Lovely Professional University
Rameshwar Kanwar Appointed VC of LPU Professor Kanwar has taken charge as the Vice Chancellor of Lovely Professional University (LPU) after spending 35 years at Iowa State University Dr Rameshwar S Kanwar is a renowned hydrogolist, agricultural scientist, distinguished academician and a well-known researcher. He has an MS from G B Pant University of Agricultural and Technology, and a PhD in Water Resources from Iowa State University. Dr Kanwar specialises in irrigation, drainage, groundwater quality, animal waste management, water table management, sustain-
devices. The equipment is supported by security personnel round-the-clock at all entry and exit points and also at various sensitive points inside the campus. Sparsh Securitech offers access control for students, staff and visitors, smart cards, CCTV surveillance, intrusion detection, user identification and firesafety systems for campuses. “Our DVAMBS (Digital Video-Audio Monitoring & Broadcasting Switching System) Security Solution is specially designed for campus management. It’s a combination of CCTV and PA system. We soon plan to launch a biometric attendance system,” says Sanjeev Sehgal, Managing Director, Sparsh Securitech. Sparsh believes that it is important for campuses to partner with security providers who understand the criticality of safety and ensure that the campus community feels secure. “We have, through out channel partners, developed solutions for Amity University, Lovely P r o f e s s i o n a l U n i v e r s i t y, I n d i a n Veterinary Research Institute and J a w a h a r l a l N e h r u U n i v e r s i t y, ” Sehgal says. Meanwhile, at campuses abroad, administrations are engaged in developing security systems designed to suit specific needs. At University of California (UCLA), Los Angeles, threats and vulnerabilities have been classified as active shooter, bomb threat, earthquakes, explosions, fires and conflagrations, power outages, storms and flooding, suspicious packages, and terrorism.
Administration
able agricultural production systems and modelling of hydrologic systems and engineering solutions to emerging global environmental problems from agricultural and livestock production systems. Apart from Iowa State University, he also taught undergraduate and postgraduate and PhD students in Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Uzbekistan as well as India. Dr Kanwar has received numerous awards, fellowships and honours globally. On the occasion of his appointment, LPU Chancellor Ashok Mittal said, “Dr Rameshwar S Kanwar’s international experience and vision will help us in realising our dreams.”
Claudia Luther, support staff at UCLA Security, says the university’s priorities are its people, property and vital interests (values, rights, processes and operations essential to the identity, reputation and sustainability of the varsity). UCLA has developed a special system – the BruinAlert Mass Notification System – to deliver emergency warnings to students. The system is used to communicate official information during an emergency or crisis that disrupts normal operations or threatens the health or safety of the campus community. How does it work? UCLA students with current email addresses in the student database are automatically enrolled and receive email alerts. BruinAlert also offers SMS text messaging on a voluntary self-subscription basis. The system complements other tools already used to communicate with students and staff during crises. These include outdoor sirens and voice warning systems, mass email, a radio station, a cable TV advisory procedure, campus safety and emergency websites, and an outdoor mass notification system (sirens and warnings). As pressure increases to strengthen campus safety, colleges and universities are seeking security solutions that meet specific needs and goals. The safety and security of a campus’ greatest assets – its students, staff and property – is most important. However, at times, staff and students do perceive the measures as an intrusion. IISc’s Chandrashekhar says, “We know that we need to create an environ-
ment that is secure and safe, but we also need to keep in mind that most academicians and professors do not like barriers. So security has to be there, but it must be unobtrusive.” Mehta, of Amity University, says: “Our campus community is content to know that all the security measures we have adopted have been done with their best interests in mind.” Security providers reiterate that “prevention is better than cure”. “Instead of waiting for some incident and then upping security, campuses need to analyse threat perception and install systems accordingly,” says Sehgal of Sparsh Securitech. However, campuses are also aware that relying completely on technology and ignoring the human perspective can be disastrous. “We believe that technology is important. Cameras can keep track of people, but let’s not forget that someone has to keep track of the camera to ensure that the campus stays safe,” Chandrashekhar says. True, as has been demonstrated by the repeated failure of the high security surveillance systems installed in the state capital in the aftermath of the terror attacks. Systems need people.
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the global perspective From
o f h i g h e r ed u c a t i o n
INSIDE 49 | In Egypt, History for the People 52 | 4 Globallyoriented Tips on using Social Media
Saudi Arabia’s $10bn Experiment Is Ready for Results King Abdullah University of Science and Technology could become a global player — if it can find the right talent By Ursula Lindsey
F King Abdullah University’s 8,900-acre campus is a mini-city with residential neighborhoods, commercial areas, and social and recreational facilities
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acing a beautiful cove on the Red Sea — about an hour and a half’s drive from the town of Jeddah — King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is an anomaly many times over: a spectacular campus in the middle of nowhere; an international, co-ed institution in a gender-segregated society; and an aspiring world-class research graduate university created virtually overnight. Kaust, as it is known, also faces a unique challenge. It must convince the world that through a combination of wealth and vision, it can flourish in one of the most restrictive countries in the world. Many here believe that the next year will be a critical one in its development. The university opened in 2008, even while faculty and students were still camped in hotels in Jeddah and the university remained under construction. Now the 8,900-acre campus, basically a
Global.Chronicle.Com The membranes Pinnau’s lab develops mini-city that includes residential could help Saudi Arabia distill natural gas neighborhoods, commercial areas, and social and desalinate water more efficiently. Pinnau and recreational facilities, is nearly complete, is a Consulting Professor at Stanford Univerand most of the labs are operational. Members sity and worked for 20 years as Director of of Kaust’s fledgling community — professors, materials and membrane development at administrators, and students — say they must Membrane Technology and Research Inc. show they can succeed by publishing original Sign up for a free weekly in California. research, attracting more Saudi students, and electronic newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education at He and other directors of the university’s recruiting more top-notch faculty. Chronicle.Com/Globalnewsletter research centres have been able to acquire the King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s absolute ruler, The Chronicle of Higher Education is latest equipment, design labs specifically to donated the university’s $10bn endowment in a US-based company with a weekly their requirements, and assemble research the hope that Kaust will make his country “a newspaper and a website updated daily, at Global.Chronicle.com, that teams of their choice. They showed off their player in global science,” says Kaust’s Presicover all aspects of university life. labs with palpable excitement. dent, Choon Fong Shih, who formerly headed With over 90 writers, editors, and The university’s shared core labs also conthe National University of Singapore. correspondents stationed around tain an impressive array of equipment, from While Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s the globe, The Chronicle provides a “supercomputer” to some of the world’s wealthiest countries today, the kingdom is overtimely news and analysis of academic ideas, developments and trends. most sensitive microscopes. The university whelmingly dependent on oil for its revenue. has spent $1.5bn on equipment. But if current population growth and consumpAnother benefit for researchers here is the tion patterns continue, by 2025 the country relative ease with which they can get funds for could be consuming 70 per cent of its oil domestheir work: The university gives research grants of $3mn to $5mn tically. There is a growing realisation that a diversified private secover five-year periods, as well as providing other forms of support. tor, built on science and technology, is necessary to ensure a post“In the US, you are under tremendous pressure to find outside oil future and to create jobs for millions of young Saudis. funding. Here you don’t spend 30 per cent of your time writing The university is organised around nine research centres, proposals,” says Gary Amy, the Director of the water-desalination which focus, for example, on advanced membranes and porous and reuse centre and a former professor of water-supply materials, plant-stress genomics, and solar and photovoltaics engineering at the Unesco-IHE Institute for Water Education engineering. The work of all these centres feeds into three fields and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. key to Saudi Arabia’s future: solar energy, water desalination, There is also the chance to do first-of-its-kind work. For and drought-resistant crops. Christian R Voolstra and Michael Berumen, Assistant Shih cites the California Institute of Technology and the Professors in the Red Sea research centre, coming to Kaust Rockefeller Institute as models for Kaust. The university’s meant being among the first to work on a body of water that selective focus is intended to “build critical mass in areas where remains virtually untouched and uncharted. we can achieve global excellence, get world recognition,” he The southern Red Sea “offers a look into the future [of the says. It will be easier, Shih argues, to reach “a few peaks” than world’s oceans] because it’s so saline and so warm,” says to create “a high plateau.” Berumen. Yet it’s “immensely understudied. Everything we do And unlike many universities in the West, where there is “the is new.” unrealistic expectation that you can do more with less,” says “Which means we can publish it,” notes Voolstra. Shih, “we have enough resources to make things happen.” This past spring the two researchers were busy tagging a newly discovered community of whale sharks and pinpointing Dream Labs the time of year when local chorals spawn. Kaust has built itself quickly through academic partnerships The proximity of the university’s labs to the sea is also excepwith top universities, including Cornell, Stanford, Texas A&M, tional, they say. the University of Oxford, Institut Français du Petrole, the Hong “I can’t think of any place that has this combination of access Kong University of Science and Technology, and the American to reefs and to world-class facilities,” says Berumen. “It’s like University in Cairo. Much of its international faculty has been being at a field station and having your lab on the beach.” drawn from these partners or their networks. Kaust currently has about 85 faculty members, coming in near-equal proportions from the West, the Middle East, and Asia; it plans An Unusual Proposition to employ about 225. When recruiting, Kaust pitches itself as an adventure. And, Many of the academics here say they were drawn by the indeed, faculty frequently speak in those terms, describing their chance to design their own labs from scratch. “The designers experience at the new university as “an opportunity,” “chaotic told me: You will get 10,000 empty feet. Fill it up,” says Ingo and exhilarating,” and “peculiar.” Pinnau, Director of the Advanced Membranes and Porous “This is not a place for timid souls,” says Shih, the President. Materials Centre. “That’s a dream for a research scientist.” “We need people with big ideas and big ambitions.” August 2011 EduTech
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THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Yet while the university has been able to attract established senior academics ready for another challenge before retirement, as well as promising young faculty taking what they hope will be a career-making gamble, it remains difficult to lure tenured professors in the middle of their careers (especially since Kaust, in line with Saudi Arabia’s labour laws, can offer fiveyear rolling contracts but not tenure). “You have to have something very special to offer,” says James R Luyten, who headed Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution before coming to direct Kaust’s Red Sea research centre “or they have to be dissatisfied.” Luyten says he isn’t sure how many more top-notch researchers “who are willing to take the risk to start from scratch” are left in his field. The university, unsurprisingly, offers attractive financial packages. James A Calvin, Interim Associate Provost for academic affairs, declined to give figures, but he said salaries are in line with those at top international universities. The university also offers overseas incentives, which in the first rounds of hiring have included a 50 per cent raise above basic salary and a startup allowance of 25 per cent. The university’s commitment to its faculty is “implicitly ... quite like tenure,” adds Calvin. In any case, argues Pinnau,
“Yes, we live in a gated community,” says Shih, “but we aren’t isolated. Geography is less of a factor today.” For some, Kaust’s calm, compact, and secluded campus is a bonus. “I can come back to my lab after the kids go to bed,” says Jasmeen Merzaban, a mother of two and an Assistant Professor of biochemistry who took a position at the university alongside her husband. For others, it doesn’t make that big of a difference. As a scientist anywhere, “you see the people in your lab,” says Voolstra. “You see the same number of people you would see in another place.” It’s just that if you want to extend your social circle, he adds, “you have to take an airplane.”
High Expectations Exciting as it is to set up one’s own lab, it’s also extremely time consuming. Being the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia means that Kaust has had to figure out everything — procurement processes, links with industry, administrative procedures — as it goes along. The university is still ironing out some kinks. The Red Sea research centre’s building will take another year to complete because the life-support system for its aquariums wasn’t built correctly. Obtaining permits from Saudi authorities for boat trips and
The university also offers overseas incentives, which in the first rounds of hiring have included a 50 per cent raise above basic salary and a start-up allowance of 25 per cent “When you’re good you don’t worry about tenure.” “More than 50 per cent of candidates, when they come to visit, commit. The big step is to get a candidate to visit,” says Shih. The campus, built by the international architecture and design firm HOK, is stunning. Faculty enjoy spacious offices with views of the sea and live in condos or beachfront villas. There are state-of-the art recreational facilities and international elementary and secondary schools. Yet for all the beachside charm of the campus, there are significant lifestyle adjustments. The university, like the rest of the country, is alcohol-free. The campus is a larger version of the diplomatic or company compounds that house Westerners across Saudi Arabia, with all living quarters and services within a secure zone that has guarded checkpoints. Opportunities for spouses to find employment are scarce. When faculty venture off campus, they have to respect the country’s religious conservatism and its authoritarian rules. But Kaust’s administrators argue that international, longdistance scientific collaborations are increasingly common, and, thanks to new communications technology, the university is part of a global network.
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to station underwater equipment has also been challenging. While procurement processes have improved dramatically, “compounds you’d expect overnight can take two weeks or a month,” says Chris Gehring, a Professor of Plant Science who was previously a Senior Professor of Plant Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape in the northern suburbs of greater Cape Town, South Africa. “You pay considerably more — by a factor of five or ten — for goods and services.” After organic samples he needed deteriorated while sitting in Saudi customs, Gehring now has samples sent by courier in cryoshippers, special plastic containers lined with nitrogen. Meanwhile, younger faculty members, who have spent the last two years helping to get the university up and running — dealing with significant teaching loads in addition to devising curricula and setting up labs — are eager to focus on their research and to start publishing. “I can’t put on my CV that I spent a year setting up a programme,” says Voolstra of the Red Sea research centre. “Publications are all that matter.” The university has also made every effort to attract a bright cohort of international students. Admission comes with free
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THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE housing, insurance and a yearly round-trip ticket home; students receive $20,000 to $30,000 stipends. Ali Moussawi, a mechanical-engineering student, was encouraged to come to Kaust by a former Cooper Union classmate who had enrolled there. “I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea,” he says, “but I decided to give it a shot.” He discovered, he says, that Kaust “is academically high quality. We are a tightknit community, and I think we get a greater amount of personal attention from our professors.” Students’ levels and backgrounds are quite mixed, and it is sometimes a challenge to “pitch” lectures correctly, say professors at the university. The institution is particularly concerned with attracting Saudi students since one of its main goals is to create a new scientific elite for the country. Saudi students make up between 15 and 20 per cent of about 300 students now at Kaust. The university plans to eventually enrol 2,000 graduate and 1,000 postdoctoral students. The number of Saudi students with the required English and science skills is limited, and Kaust must compete for them with international universities. And it must teach some of those skills itself. Many Saudi students are used to a theoretical, text-driven approach to science, says Merzaban. “Research culture and scientific method is what they’re lacking—and what we’re trying to instil.” “I actually had students complain that we weren’t using a textbook,” says Gehring. “But there is no textbook for this field.” Afnan Mashat, one of a few dozen young Saudi women attending the university, studied English in Britain for a year to prepare for Kaust, where she is working on creating new nanomaterials. Her parents are happy she is getting a strong education without having to leave the country, as her two sisters have done. Other young Saudi women regularly ask whether they should apply, worried that the programmes might be too difficult. She admits she’s found her studies challenging but tells them: “It’s my second year and I’m still alive.”
A King’s Vision and Protection Kaust is more than a research university, however. It is also a key component of the king’s plan to reform higher education broadly. Unlike other Saudi universities, Kaust doesn’t answer to the Ministry of Higher Education, and it is steered by an international board of directors composed of academic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders. Kaust needs to be autonomous so it can “raise the bar,” says Shih. “But we also need to be relevant to the kingdom’s aspirations. It’s a balancing act.” After studying Kaust’s strategy, other Saudi universities have begun creating international advisory boards and forming search committees for faculty. Some have also started pressing the Ministry of Higher Education to be allowed to operate as independently as Kaust does. As the country’s only co-ed institution of learning, home to such anomalies as a movie theatre and a co-ed beach, the uni-
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Being the first of its kind in Saudi Arabia meant that Kaust had to figure out everything — procurement processes, links with industry, administrative procedures versity is also a liberal enclave within the extremely conservative kingdom. Fawziya Al-Bakr, a professor at King Saud University, says she and her colleagues were stunned when they realised upon visiting that they would all be entering the campus through one gate, instead of by the usual gender-segregated entrances. “For us this is unheard of,” says Al-Bakr, who has never met the head of her own department, a man, despite having worked with him for 15 years. To be sure, conservatives have lashed out at the university. Security there is high, and Kaust keeps a very low media profile. And while the king’s determination and largesse is what enabled such an ambitious institution to be created in so short a span of time, royal patronage has its risks. Several Saudi observers expressed doubts about the university’s future, saying there is no guarantee that whoever succeeds the 87-year-old King Abdullah will share his vision for it. President Shih dismisses such concerns. “We are contributing to the development of the kingdom, and we are a source of pride,” he says. “I think we will have more and more support, I think they [Saudis] will see Kaust is the right thing for the kingdom, and it will gain acceptance and recognition.”
Subscribe to a free weekly electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter
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In Egypt, History for the People Group hopes to encourage inquiry with an open archive of the revolution By Ursula Lindsey
creative commons
T
he Egyptians who poured into the streets of their cities early this year were well aware that they were making history. “In 10 years, when I see my children studying Egyptian history, I want to say: ‘I was there,’” Ahmad, a young demonstrator on his way into Tahrir Square, told me on February 4, a week before President Hosni Mubarak was driven from office. Egypt is still living through its revolution, and still wondering what the outcome will be. What’s certain is that the popular insurrection that toppled Mubarak will be remembered as a pivotal moment of the 21st century, one with many puzzles for historians to solve. How were the protests planned? What led to the disintegration of President Mubarak’s seemingly unshakeable security apparatus? How did the Egyptian military reach the decision not to fire on protesters? To allow Egyptians to dig for the answers to those questions, a group of historians, university professors, and activists is collaborating with Egypt’s National Archives to document the uprising for posterity. Khaled Fahmy, Chair of the American University in Cairo’s history department, heads the group, called the Committee to Document the 25th of January Revolution.
Tahrir Square: University Professors, and activists are collaborating with Egypt’s National Archives to document the uprising for posterity
By making all the materials available online, he and his collaborators also hope to offer a new model of an official historical archive, one that emphasises public access rather than government control. Currently, says Fahmy, “archives do not belong to the people. They belong to the state.” Not just in Egypt but across
the Arab world, national archives and official documents are jealously guarded, and scholars face endless security clearances and bureaucratic hassles to get access to them. Non-specialists have virtually no right to use them. Even when researchers do gain admittance to Egypt’s National Archives, they August 2011 EduTech
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THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE may discover that the documents they are looking for—especially if they are 20thcentury or newer ones—aren’t there. The country’s modern rulers have created a near-total information vacuum about their decision-making. By law, documents are supposed to be stored in the relevant ministries for 15 years, then held at the National Archives for another 15 years before being made public. In practice, however, only the most mundane administrative papers are ever deposited in the archives. Official documents dealing with wars or policy decisions of any import are simply never made available. “At this point,” says Fahmy, “we don’t even know if they exist.” Egyptians are rarely if ever afforded a glimpse into the deliberations of their presidents, ministers, and military commanders. And that is the case across the autocratic regimes of the Arab world. The Arab-Israeli wars, for example, have been documented almost entirely on the basis of Israeli archives. That’s one reason the committee will “try to gather as much as possible for future generations,” says Fahmy, “to make available to them what hasn’t been available to us.” The archive will include oral histories; testimonies of activists and planners; newspapers and documentation of their editorial process; reports from humanrights groups and religious groups; and, of course, photographs, jokes, slogans, and songs from the protests. The archive could also include intelligence documents. During the revolution, Egypt’s State Security Investigations (a dreaded domestic intelligence service that has been accused of routinely spying on, kidnapping, and torturing citizens) began destroying files at its offices across the country. After Mubarak stepped down, protesters broke into some intelligence offices and salvaged piles of documents, which were handed over to the army and the public prosecutor. Today the intelligence service is being restructured, and the interim government has said the agency’s archives, going back to 1910, could be made accessible. The challenge in assembling all this, says Fahmy, “isn’t money or manpower,
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What distinguishes the National Archives Project is its scope and its determination to be as accessible as possible it’s technical know-how.” His team is figuring out how to gather materials in a digital format that will be long-lasting, how to find a safe and stable storage system, and how to make the archive open to all and easy to search. The committee is training volunteers to record and catalog oral testimonies, and plans to start conducting interviews across the country this month. The goal is to gather high-quality digital recordings that will be tagged with a list of searchable terms. And the entire archive will be available online. “I’ve insisted,” says Fahmy, that using the archive “will not require going to the National Archives or getting a security clearance. It has to be open and accessible from home.”
Abundant Material The Egyptian revolution was documented in real time by television crews, Twitter feeds, and the cellphone cameras of millions of Egyptians, producing an enormous reservoir of audio-visual material. That’s one reason Fahmy and his colleagues are proceeding deliberately. “I’m being cautious,” says the historian. “Tomorrow I can put an ad in the paper and I’ll be flooded with material.” Many other efforts to document the revolution are already under way. The Web site Tahrir Documents collects underground newspapers, signs, and fliers that have been distributed in the famous square. The American University in Cairo has asked students, faculty, and employees to share stories and photographs and donate memorabilia as part of a documentation project it’s call-
ing University on the Square. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Egypt’s Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage are also collecting materials and documents related to the revolution. Every day brings the announcement of new books, photography exhibitions, and symposia on the subject. What distinguishes the National Archives project is its scope and its determination to be as accessible as possible. Fahmy, who earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the American University in Cairo, returned to his alma mater in 2010, leaving a position at New York University. He has extensive experience doing archival research in Egypt. He first set foot in Egypt’s National Archives in 1989, while a doctoral student at the University of Oxford. It took him six months to obtain the necessary security clearance. “There was no orientation, no proper catalogs, no people equipped to deal with researchers,” he remembers. “I was very intimidated.” Eventually, he says, he found his “treasure trove”: 63 boxes of documents from the time of Muhammad Ali, Egypt’s early-19th-century ruler, documenting a military campaign in Syria. The documents informed Fahmy’s book All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1997) as well as his continuing interest in the history of law and medicine. Tellingly, he notes, this archive from nearly two centuries ago—including letters between Muhammad Ali and his son and military commander, Ibrahim— has no modern equivalent.
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THE GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE The Production of Knowledge Today, says Fahmy, in part thanks to a proactive director, the National Archives are much improved, with a better reading room, extended hours, and an electronic database created in partnership with IBM. But “the mentality has not changed,” he says. “The concept of the production of knowledge is not yet clear to people working in the archives. The mentality is geared not to the production of knowledge but to the preservation, the recirculation of knowledge.” That is the attitude toward information that a police state generally produces in its public institutions, Fahmy suggests. But it’s also part of a misunderstanding of what constitutes historical knowledge, which is seen as static and finite. “People think of production of knowledge when it comes to physics,” he says.
“But people are not aware that historical knowledge can be produced—that what we need is new arguments, new ideas, new hypotheses, and to push the frontier of historic knowledge.” Egypt’s academic historians tend to keep their distance from recent history—leaving it to journalists and political scientists—for fear of appearing unobjective or getting drawn into perilous political debates. Universities, scholars, and the general public all have a role to play in “turning the National Archives from a reservoir to a research centre that generates new questions,” says Fahmy. “The time is ripe for this,” he argues. But “it will still be a serious battle.” “National security can only be protected by more openness, more transparency,” he says. “But when people get anxious, they are for more security, not less.”
With the country under military rule, unsure about its political future, and suffering from a security vacuum and sectarian tensions, there is much to be anxious about. It is highly unlikely that the army will become more open about its actions and decisions, and it remains to be seen how forthcoming the new government will be. Still, says Fahmy, who is also establishing a new degree in archival research at his university, “I couldn’t have picked a better time to come back. I’m very hopeful and very excited by things happening at AUC and in the archives and in the country at large. Things are still precarious, but this is just an amazing opportunity.” Subscribe to a free weekly electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter
4 Globally-oriented Tips on Using Social Media Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and video blogs can be leveraged to reach out to international students and even help in crisis management By David Wheeler
O
ver the past year, I’ve given talks or moderated sessions on social media in a strange set of cities: Adelaide, Sydney, and Doha. Preparation for those events was often done in the margins of my professional life: In my favourite airplane seat (aisle, exit row), on my laptop at home as I tried to multitask with family time (bad idea), or early in the morning. I’ve scanned more “Ten Tips for Twitter” than I care to think about, read my Chronicle colleagues’ excellent stories, and talked to communications and marketing administrators at universities, including many outside the United States. Now I’d like to take revenge on all those other tip writers with my own, globally oriented version of four social media do’s and don’ts. Think of these as collected wisdom, not advice. 1. Don’t have a social media strategy. Have an institutional strategy. Or an international strategy. Or a combination of both. Then let planning for social media be a servant of those goals.
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2. Figure out where your target audience lives. This is global social media 101, but I feel obligated to mention it because I have watched US academics give speeches at international conferences and appear to be oblivious to the basic geopolitical facts of social media. Facebook and Twitter are regularly blocked in China, for instance. So they are probably not such great platforms to recruit Chinese students. One source of country-by-country information about the popularity of various social media is comScore. Twitter, perhaps because it works well on mobile phones, is popular in developing countries like Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines and not just industrialised countries like the Netherlands and Japan. (All five countries just mentioned are in the top 10 countries for Twitter usage.) 3. Add social media to your crisis-communications plan. Most universities have communications plans for when bad things happen, from natural disasters to presidents getting charged
Global.Chronicle.Com
When campus servers are down and email and phones are out of service, institutional representatives can get to “the cloud” with sexual harassment. Having covered events like the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the floods in Queensland, Australia, I can tell you that Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and video blogs by presidents helped institutions to reach journalists in a timely manner in these situations. When campus servers are down and email and phones are out of service, institutional representatives can still usually get to “the cloud.” And they can use social media to communicate over the heads of journalists and directly to the public when the disaster is negative headlines.
4. Let faculty members and students be your ambassadors. Don’t speak Mandarin or Urdu or Arabic? Guess what, you may have a student or faculty member who does. And many of them may actually like the university they attend or are employed by. At many institutions, savvy marketing administrators are overcoming their fears of “loose cannons” and instead encouraging faculty members to get their ideas out in the social media marketplace. International offices are encouraging international students to go out and describe their experience. Two examples: Griffith University, in Australia, has used its students to advocate for it in the multi-lingual social media world. Duke University has both supported and mined the expertise of faculty members who blog. If this content is canned and controlled, it’s awful. If it is genuine, it builds an audience. One major impression I am left with after spending a fair amount of time learning about social media is that there are an awful lot of “experts” with very thin expertise. I’ve tried not to be one of them. I was going to make this five tips, but I ran out of what felt like fresh or important points to make at four. And I promise that, at least in this space, I will stay quiet on this topic until I learn something else I think is worth saying. Subscribe to a free weekly electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter
“The notion of student experience is a sinister threat to the function of the university”
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For The University A higher education institution cannot be treated as a mere service provider, even if its role changes in a changing world Thomas docherty, Professor of English and Comparative Literature has come out with a book in defense of the university — or at least the ideas behind the purpose and its functioning. With specific references to policies on higher education in Britain (but with worldwide relevance), he asserts “The university today is in need of friends.” It is “increasingly besieged and beleaguered”, as “there has been a sure and steadily generated encouragement of a culture of mistrust around the institution and its activities for some time”. He claims that the current policies have caved in to the dogmatism of market individualism and makes a compelling case for the public provision of collective goods that are not reducible to economic prosperity. Docherty fears that the university is now being treated as a “menial service-provider for this vague world of business”. The whole agenda of “transferable skills”,
Thomas Docherty
for instance, “diverts attention away from the specifics of academic or intellectual content” towards capabilities thought to appeal to employers. On the flip side his criticism of the modern approach to universities, Docherty puts down his idea of what a university should be. “A university is that institution which, by taking teaching and research together, allows for education at a level higher than the standards required for everyday and also for the participation of already well-educated in our societies and our world.” This timely and topical book has many original ideas and interesting connections. There is a thorough engagement with the topic, broken down in novel ways, with chapters on first principles, the student experience, space, leadership, assessment and finance. In places, the author can be accused of being rigid in his assertions but in essence, this book focuses on the question of the university in relation to the current and emerging models of democracy. However, the question of what the university will be — rather than what it is, was, or might be — is at the heart of this book. Author: Thomas Docherty Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic Price: £19.99
New releases for your BOOKSHELF How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans At a time when there are raging debates on global warming, this book is an important entrant into the fray. It is not another depressing lamentation on the eco-doom but a clear-eyed assessment of the ecological challenges. Author: Mark Lynas Publisher: Fourth Estate Price: £7.69
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Time Management for Department Chairs Christian Hansen draws on his years of
research on time management for department chairs in this book. The book aims at making the job of department chairs easier and help them manage stress and avoid burnout. Author: Christian K Hansen Publisher: Jossey-Bass Price: $30
timeout
gADGETS Tech Insider | Mala Bhargava
Eyez are Watching A video from Business Insider shows a young man attempting “in real life” things we only do online. And the results were understandably amusing. He goes up to a group and asks if he can be their friend. Then he goes to another lot and asks if he can write on their wall. He stops someone to tell them how he Likes their jacket. And finally, he asks a group of girls if he can follow them. He apparently raised some eyebrows. The video is a humorous comment on how different our lives online are from reality. Neither would you do any of these things for real nor would you reveal in real life and to almost-strangers things that freely do on Facebook and other social networks. The very definition of privacy has changed. People don’t still seem to have any hesitation putting up all bizarre things online, which makes us wonder what sort of a culture we’ve created through technology. Well, be that as it may, things are about to get worse. Or better, if you want to look at it that way. With tech innovators building social networking into the DNA of every product now, we will see stranger things still. And one of them is a pair of glasses from a Seattle-based company, ZionEyez. These cool shades don’t look very different from others and have more than just brand value and looks to offer: a hidden camera, which though small, records 1280x720p HD video, a microphone, Wi-Fi, and bluetooth. So if someone in dark glasses is looking at you for too long, it could be a nice video of you going right out to Facebook or YouTube. And with three hours of battery life, there’s quite enough time to do it too! I’m all for technological innovation, but this makes me uncomfortable. With Eyez that not only see but record and upload, can we ever feel private again? Yes, there are great uses possible. So, in the end, it’s not about this product in particular. More will come. It’s up to us to handle it. Technology is not to be blamed for what human beings do with it.
Mala Bhargava is Editorial Director at 9.9 Media and a technology writer. She is also the author of That’s IT, a regular column on personal computers in the Business World.
Affordable Attraction Tablets are raining left, right and centre, rainy season or not. Well-known for its audio equipment, Creative recently jumped into the tablet fray with its very own 7-inch creation, the Ziio. The tablet is one of the most inexpensive Android tablets available in India. Encased in white plastic, the Creative Ziio 7-inch has a metallic sheen on the back that makes it pleasing on the eye. Its own travel case is a convenient addition. Price: 18,000
Fluoroscent and Fiesty Let’s face it, when it comes to a portable hard drive, no one really gives a hoot about the looks; its capacity and performance are of a higher significance. But it never hurts to add a bit of jazz to an otherwise boring looking product. The Silicon Power Stream series S10 is a 750 GB portable HDD which resembles a car. The fluoroscent body is made of plastic and has a flat base but a convex top. Price: 4,750
February August 2011 EduTech
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Perspective Slipping Ranks, Sinking Pride
C Raj Kumar
VC,OPJindal Global University,Sonipat
India has yet again failed to find a berth in the World University Rankings. To reach the top, its universities must undergo a complete transformation
T
he recently released Times Higher Education World University Rankings, 2010, does not feature a single Indian university in the top 200. While such listings have their own limitations for they emphasise only certain aspects of education, it is not possible to ignore them entirely. The Times rankings are based on methodologically sound criteria. Indian universities must undergo a dramatic transformation to develop a culture of excellence and catch up with the best in the world. While the current scenario may not be desirable, it is possible for India to play a leadership role in transforming higher education. Indian higher education sector needs to recognise that the two critical pillars fundamental for challenging the status quo are faculty and research. Universities should be knowledgecreating institutions. Knowledge is generated only if there are scholars and thinkers who are passionately committed to innovations in science and technology on the one hand, while on the other hand, solving the problems of society through empirical and theoretical research. Academia should be made attractive for the Indian youth as a profession worth being pursued. The existing framework of university governance system in India does not allow for extraordinarily talented individuals to grow to their full potential. While this is a
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less discussed issue, it needs to be recognised that performance-based appraisal and career development initiatives have to be implemented in universities to make Indian intellectuals consider academia as an attractive career option. We need to incentivise academia, not only in terms of financial rewards, but also by creating a vibrant intellectual environment; providing chances for scholars to be involved in public policy and advisory capacities within the government; offering opportunities to engage in research so that Indian scholars have the resources and funding to collaborate domestically and internationally with their peers; and most importantly, generating academic freedom, functional autonomy and operational independence to pursue ideas and experiments within a conducive environment that is liberal and inspiring. Establishing a knowledge-based society is central to India’s efforts to achieve growth and development. At
Academia should be made attractive for the Indian youth as a profession worth being pursued
present, Indian universities face numerous institutional challenges: a major one being their indifference to engage in rigorous research and scholarship. While teaching is essential and should be given all attention, one cannot underestimate the importance of research in universities. Our higher education policies need to recognise that the emphasis on research goes hand in hand with the challenges of faculty quality in universities across India. It is not possible to undertake critical research, if a faculty member is overloaded with teaching. The faculty-student ratio of top universities of the world is in the range of 1:10, but most Indian varsities are facing dealing with large student bodies and disproportionately smaller faculty support. While this problem is connected to the funding that is available for higher education, also concerns policy. The Government of India has taken a number of decisions in the recent past that can help in the larger framework of reforms in higher education. But for these reforms to take shape and have an impact, public and private higher education strategies must zero in on faculty and research development initiatives. These can then propel Indian representation among the world’s best universities. The author is also a Rhodes Scholar. He can be contacted @ vc@jgu.edu.in
COLLABORATION DRIVES INNOVATION SunGard Higher Education believes that working collaboratively with customers is the most direct way to find better ways to teach, learn, manage, and connect. That spirit of open collaboration is captured in what we call the Open Digital Campus, our strategy for delivering the solutions our customers need to serve students, manage institutions, and connect with every constituent. The Open Digital Campus is driven by the power of our worldwide user community, whose members actively participate in the design and development of our solutions. Customers benefit from the best ideas of their peers; we deliver better solutions faster. In a dynamic world, it’s the best way we know to help you shape the future of your institution. Together, over the last year, SunGard Higher Education and our customers have launched three innovative initiatives: The Community Source Initiative, a customer-led community for bringing new solutions into our baseline solutions faster, the Shared Code Repository, to help institutions more easily share their technology innovations, and Mobile Connection, an open, flexible platform designed to support multiple mobile devices. MOBILE CONNECTION The SunGard Higher Education Mobile Connection was launched just three short months ago, but already more than 900 customers have joined the mobile connection community on the SunGard Higher Education Commons, and there have been more than 120 downloads of the mobile framework. Developed with 33 customer development partners, Mobile Connection provides a framework that customers can use to design a multi-device mobile strategy. Within a day and a half, William Paterson University had downloaded the framework and had live working apps on test devices, pulling data from their Banner system to deliver grades, schedules and other data to mobile devices. COMMUNITY SOURCE INITIATIVE The Community Source Initiative is a software development model that harnesses the power of SunGard Higher Education’s user community to bring solutions to market faster, ensure the quality of those solutions through structured review, and ease the burden of upgrading custom code as the enhancements our customers need and want become an established part of our baseline solutions. In the spirit of open-source communities elsewhere, customers can submit enhancements, add-on modules, and defect corrections for peer review. A customer-led board considers all submissions and makes recommendations for their potential inclusion into SunGard Higher Education’s baseline products. THE SHARED CODE REPOSITORY The Shared Code Repository is a new capability within SunGard’s Community Source Initiative, which is designed to bring together the insights and experience of SunGard Higher Education’s user community to gives customers a secure way to contribute their improvements to the community if they choose, and to find work contributed by others. The result is cross-institutional efficiencies for developing new innovations, quicker development and lower development costs than institutions would realize independently. SunGard participates in the Shared Code Repository as a member of the community. It uses the repository as a vehicle to provide customers with scripts, tools and other targeted solutions that can be used “as is” or enhanced through collaboration. “In my opinion, the Community Source Initiative and Shared Code Repository help elevate SunGard Higher Education above its competition,” said Bill Thirsk, vice president of Information Technology and chief information officer at Marist College. “The company’s early recognition of community-sourcing solutions as a powerful way to partner with customers for shared success will continue to make them a leader in our industry for some time to come. SunGard has shown, through its commitment to the community and to the repository, that it is serious about putting customer success first.”
ABOUT SUNGARD HIGHER EDUCATION SunGard Higher Education serves colleges, universities and foundations in 40 countries worldwide. Through its Open Digital Campus strategy, SunGard collaborates with the higher education community and provides software and services to help institutions find better ways to teach, learn, manage and connect. To learn more, please visit www.sungardhe.com.
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