CollegeToU.com Education Blog

Less than a year in the office as Union HRD minister in India, Mr. Kapil Sibal has gained significant attention from students, parents, politicians, education entrepreneurs and media alike. Some hail him as saviour of the Indian education system while others treat him to some foul language. But irrespective of one’s perspective, I believe he would have a lasting impact on the terribly broken Indian education system – good or bad.

So I predict that before the completion of his term as minister in this government, he would pronounce at least 10 major changes (10 commandments) to the education system. We begin this series of 10 commandments:

1 of 10: Thou All Schools in India shall follow common syllabus for Math & Science in 11 & 12 Grades

A bit about my personal background – My father was a central government employee and like many others was subjected to transfers between states every three years. My K12 schooling was spread across 7 schools in 6 different cities which is a lot of fun if you love traveling but not so great when you reach 11th grade because you begin to prepare for professional entrance exams. Each state in India has its own Engineering and Medical entrance exams with its own syllabus. So invariably, as a student you are forced to choose your state before beginning your 11th grade.

Well according to Mr. Kapil Sibal, that may be history as soon as 2011, beginning when all the states have agreed to follow a common syllabus for Math and Science. I believe this is a historic announcement which no other HRD minister has even attempted let alone fail. Come 2011, whether this becomes a reality or faces innumerable implementation hurdles remains to be seen. No longer students have to make career limiting decisions after 10th grade. Students across India will be on equal footing in terms of syllabus and shall be able to attempt any entrance exams across India (if eligible) with confidence.

So let’s all hope that this initiative sees the light of the day.

According to a Times of India post today (7 Feb 2010), there might be a possible fee hike for all Engineering College students in India. The representatives of private Engineering Colleges have collectively appealed to the AICTE (All India council for Technical Education), which regulates technical higher education in India, about two issues:

a) Uniform fee for students in all states to Rs 80,000 / year

The college management reasons that there is a huge disparity between fees charged in various states for example Colleges in AP charge Rs 30,200 per annum while in certain states colleges charge Rs 80,000 per annum. Because the fee is so low in AP, colleges are unable to afford quality faculty members.

b) Abolish M.Tech as basic qualification requirement for appointment as Assistant Professor.

The colleges feel that they are under immense pressure to provide quality education but due to lack of enough faculty member who have post graduate education, they are forced to fight for the same small pool of faculty. Since most of the private companies pay much higher salaries and perks compared to education institutions, it is very hard to retain talent without higher salaries, which they can ill afford without higher fees.

My Opinion

To a large extent, I personally agree with the education institutions that they need to charge higher fee to retain better faculty talent. Without quality faculty, better pedagogy techniques and quality infrastructure, India is just producing duds that are an absolute disgrace on Engineering standards. This can be partly learnt from western countries where universities are largely free market economies which means that students are ready to pay higher premiums for better quality education. Unfortunately this has negative consequences like increase in education costs which many parents cannot afford and hence low percentages of enrollments.

But in order to solve this issue, the government should promote many public universities that are referenced as benchmark in terms of quality. But there have to enough number of Public Universities to cater to a wide population. Private Universities can then compete with the public ones in quality, while their tuition fees can be at check relative to the public ones. The private Universities could be mandated to divert back at least a significant portion of revenues back into developing the infrastructure, facilities and hiring better faculty. This has to be closely audited and regulated since Indian colleges are master of disguise when it comes to accounting principles.

This also solves the other issue of being unable to hire M.Tech graduates as Assistant Professor. Higher pay scales attract better talented faculty who have incentive to pursue M.Tech and Ph.D when compensated as well as in other industries.

In summary, he government has to pump in significant percentage of GDP towards setting up higher education institutions against which private ones can compete in quality and costs.

This last week has left many Indian students jittery with their hopes dashed of studying abroad in United Kingdom or Australia. On 31st January, came the news that UK Tier-4 Visas were suspended for Indian students and later the official Indian Government travel advisory against Australia to students looking to pursue Higher Education in that country.

UK government has cracked down on hundreds of scrupulous higher-education providers in the country that were running sub-standard institutions and duping students that were desperate to study. On the other hand Australia has witnessed large mismanaged education groups shut down in the wake of slow down in the foreign student influx leaving thousands of students stranded in the middle of the academic year.

Equally responsible for the plight of many students are many foreign education consultants in India who tend to make quick bucks as commissions while sending students to de-recognized or blacklisted colleges in UK or Australia because they pay higher percentage commissions. Its not very surprising to students and parents alike that many consultants in India choose to sell their souls for money over basic ethical code of conduct.

It is our sincere advise to students and their parents to verify the list of Approved Education Providers (Authorized Colleges/Universities) in each country even before applying. No student or parent should have to find out that their Institution was blacklisted even before they applied and their consultant willingly conceived that truth from them. BE INFORMED.

Please click through this link to see the updated list of Registered Sponsor of Education (or Authorized list of Colleges) in United Kingdom.

Indian Education bureaucracy has always been a monster like octopus with many tentacles. The two major organizations that guided the Higher-education system in India are UGC and AICTE.

UGC was formed in 1945 to oversee the formation and functioning of Universities, allocation and distribution of public funds to these Universities and to manage matters of higher education policy. AICTE on the other hand was formed much later in 1987 to plan and co-ordinate the development of Technical education system in India.

Though setup for different purposes, they started to overlap in many areas of higher education planning, approval and accreditation. UGC has its accreditation system called NAAC which rates Universities while AICTE has its own rating mechanism for technical colleges and universities.

Like any other government organization in India, they too became heavily bureaucratic and corrupted to the extent that last year in 2009, the chairman of AICTE Mr. Yadav was suspended by the government and charges filed against him for misusing the powers to favour undeserving institutions during approval and accreditation process. It was a well know fact among citizens that AICTE approvals, ratings and accreditation could be purchased at a price.

For instance, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, which had less than 200 Engineering Colleges in 1999 ended up with more than 650 Engineering Colleges a decade later in 2009. The number in itself would not be very alarming provided all the approved colleges were of desired quality and maintained standards expected of professional institutions. But many even did not have basic classroom and laboratory infrastructure before getting approved by the AICTE. It was common for institutions to begin classes in make shift areas and collect funds from students by charging exorbitant fee and fines to build infrastructure later.

The latest HRD minister Mr. Kapil Sibal, under the recommendation of Yashpal Committee, promises to change all that by revoking powers from either of these organizations and merge them into a new organization called National Council for Higher Education and Research (NCHER). It now remains to be seen, if implemented, how this new organization with even greater power would yield its influence upon higher education in India. Given Indian history, most powerful government departments and key positions in them are often used for personal gains than doing any good.

In the present circumstances, change is essential. What remains to be seen is, whether the change is a lesser evil.

The UK Border Agency announced today that all new applications for Tier-4 Student visa shall be suspended beginning February 1, 2010 because of unprecedented developments in the last quarter. According to their press release, the last quarter ending December 2009, the UKBA office in New Delhi received more than 13,000 applications as opposed to less than 2000 applications during the same period in the year 2008.

The affected regions are as follows:

• North India: New Delhi, Jalandhar and Chandigarh
• Bangladesh
• Nepal

The unexpected mountain of applications in itself may not be so intimidating but the UKBA office suspects serious issues behind this rise. The official reasons vary from fraud documentation to suspected human trafficking. The countdown to the September 2009 intake season saw very high UK Tier-4 Student visa rejections primarily due to stricter documentation criteria. Now for the January 2010 intake season, the officials suspect extremely high volumes of documentation fraud in preparation for the visa application.

Second cause for suspicion is that January intake is not a major season compared to September intake which is when most of the major Universities and private Institutes begin their curriculum. Some private colleges and Universities however do take students in January but not to the extent seen in rise in applications.

Thirdly they have not seen similar rise in the number of application from other countries to explain a general trend.

The UKBA office still remains partially mum and doesn’t want to pre-judge such issues unless they fully complete their internal investigations of all the applications and verify the documentation provided to them from all authentic sources.

I personally believe that changes in documentation criteria which went into affect last year in 2009 could partly be the reason. Under the new rules, a student could show sufficient funds in his/her bank accounts for only 28 days unlike earlier when the funds had to be in the bank for longer duration. It easier to manipulate the bank documents for 28 days only as opposed to 90 days or more. Secondly the downfall of Australia as a preferred destination for students left only UK and USA as alternatives. Since USA has its own share of economic and employment related issues, UK remains a reasonably viable choice.

Let’s wait to hear from the officials about the real reasons for the mind-boggling 6-fold increase in the applications.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few months, by now you would have already heard about the latest Apple Gizmo called “iPad” which was officially launched yesterday with much media coverage and fanfare.

One could easily brush this gizmo as another hyped up geeky product but in reality this could be more than what meets the eye. iPad could well help kick start an entirely new category of devices just like what iPhone did in the smartphone industry.

Apart from being a swiss army knife that can play music, photos, videos, games, edit your spreadsheets and documents, it could also be an eBook reader. This last category is what we are primarily interested here @ CollegeToU because we are focussed on the education industry and all the things that interest the student community. But this is just the beginning with only two major companies that have created compelling products, wait until Google driven open sourced Android based gadgets show up on the market by end of 2010. Then you might see companies like Dell, HP, HTC and others creating a plethora of gadgets which apart from being eBook readers could also launch missile (just kidding).

As you might have already seen other high profile companies like Amazon also launched their own eBook reader about a year ago. Visibly this market is getting hotter by the day with more high-tech companies betting their future by creating an entirely new product line focussed on digital reading. Amazon claims that their eBook catalog now consists of about 400,000 books, journals and magazines. On similar lines Apple announced yesterday that they would open up a catalog store similar to iTunes called iBooks which will allow you to download eBooks onto the iPad and read electronically. No more hassles of buying a paper book or magazine and waste paper.

But I believe there could be more to this device than just novelty reading while lying on your couch. What if the entire K12 and Higher-Education publishers got together and created eBooks in an open format compatible with

any eBook reader such as Kindle or iPad. You could potentially save millions of trees every year from destruction and also save money because eBooks are cheaper than paper books. The publishers can offer upto 50-75% discount on books because of reduced cost of raw material, printing, logistics and distribution. Though there needs to be a sophisticated electronic book store akin to iTunes store for music which has its own cost of infrastructure and maintenance but I believe it is significantly lower than publishing a paper book.

Finally we can do something for a greener earth rather than just talk about it.

What is (one of the) most hated thing about going to school as a child? For me it was always carrying at least 8-10Kgs school bag on my back and walk to school about 3 kms away. I always dreamt of one day when kids wouldn’t have to carry such a burden every day. Looks like those days are not far…

So over time there have been various solutions to solve this weight problem and one of the easiest was to allow students to keep their books at school in lockers. But the primary issue in India is kids never learnt a thing at school so there was always a need for tutor at home or if nothing else worked, just rote learning at home. So having books at home was always essential.

Since 2000, there has been lot of buzz about e-book readers and many electronics giants like Sony and Panasonic tried their hand at creating a affordable and useful device. There were couple of issues with them: a) Expensive devices (b) No supply of e-books and easy to browse catalog. As proved by Apple Computers with their iPod and Itunes library, a comprehensive catalog is critical for success of a product.

Learning from other failed companies, the worlds largest book retailer, Amazon.com, has tried its luck with a new e-book reader called Kindle which is making waves in North America.

Few reasons why this is revolutionary:

• Amazon.com was/is the worlds largest book retailer (Market cap = USD $54 Billion) without ever establishing a physical store.
• Beginning 2009, it introduced Kindle e-book reader so people could download digital books instead of buying physical books.
• Amazon.com created the largest e-book catalog with 400,000 books, journals, newspapers and magazines.
• During December 2009 holiday season, Amazon.com sold more e-books compared to physical books.

The above number suggest that people have started accepting ebooks as a replacement to regular paper books and are comfortable in using them. But I believe there is more to this story that just magical numbers, its just the beginning of a new industry. It is revolutionizing the entire book industry.

Unlike other countries, in India the schools text book printing and supply is still mismanaged and is full of inefficiencies. Imagine if schools books were made digital and you could download these books over Internet (come’on who doesn’t have Internet these days). Students who could afford these e-book readers (not every one can), could buy these readers at about Rs 3000-4000/- and then download digital versions of their school books at half or one-third the cost of physical books. The reason the digital books are cheaper is because no paper, printing and distribution costs are involved.

Imagine the benefits:

• No wastage of Paper
• Save the Environment – not just plain talking about environment, but doing something about it.
• Save 60-70% of the costs compared to physical books.
• Never have to worry that the books are out of stock.

Some things to worry about:

• Book publishers might worry that buy one book and students will share with entire class. (But my argument is that this is no different from buy a music CD and share with the rest of the world)
• Since the e-reader are expensive, someone might steal them in your class (But my argument is that students now own cell phones which cost more than Rs 20,000. Just be careful).
• What if all the books are not available in digital format. (But my argument is, its not the end of the world, just buy a paper book if digital version is not available).
• Not all the students will be able to afford it. (Just like mobile phones, who ever can afford it, would buy).

Let’s hope that Indian HRD ministry pushes towards digitization of school text books by end of 2011.

To learn more about this, please visit http://collegetou.com/india-news/ebooks-into-schools

Recently the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan announced that 960 KV schools in India will soon adopt weight restrictions on kids school bags. Next step is digital books. eReaders are the way to go.

Read more about it on http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Kendriya-Vidyalayas-set-weight-limits-on-schoolbags/articleshow/5446807.cms

Today, yet again for the innumerable time, our Government, was rendered as a horn-less bull or a toothless tiger as they say, by the Supreme Court. The HRD ministry declared early last week that a total of 44 deemed Universities would be stripped off their status because they were found to be grossly incapable of upholding themselves to the standards expected of them. No one expected the affected universities to just sit quietly and accept the decision and not fight back.

So today, the Supreme Court, while hearing on a public interest litigation filed against the Government, ordered a status-quo on the HRD ministry’s decision until March 3rd when both sides or the argument would be heard. The Universities claim that the ministry’s decision would play havoc on the student community and effect the graduating students very badly and also jeopardizing their careers.

To get an understanding of how the rich and famous can influence the governments, read through http://collegetou.com/india-news/sc-stays-governments-decision-to-strip-44-universities-of-their-status