out of the shadows and into the sun

1December 2011 EduTEch

FOREWORD

Dr Pramath Raj [email protected]

Pulling Together for Progress

“It’s a fact that India needs quality institutions, and it needs collective effort and support to make these institutions successful”

While at college, I was staying in a hostel and had to take a train to and from home all the time. On these train journeys, I was struck by the gusto with which fellow passengers would talk about political and social issues and have a good time lamenting over the state of affairs in the

country. It was my first introduction to what I have come to realise is a national pastime — “country bashing”. After that, I would consciously try to look for positive conversations and spaces where individuals or government initiatives were praised. I must confess that I did not find many.

I was reminded of those conversations once again when EDU decided to do an in-depth story on the new IITs. All that we had heard was that everything had gone wrong with these new institutions — from shortage of faculty to abysmal infrastructure. Even as I write this piece, I can’t shake off an article I read this morning on how the new IITs are making slow progress.

I would have not known any better, except that our team got into the depth of the matter and came to the conclusion that things were not as bad as they sounded. While it is true that these new institutions are struggling with faculty shortage and infrastructure issues, it’s also true that they have a shot at doing things differently. Not having the stress of bureaucratic hassles and campus politics that usually plague the older IITs, the new institutions also have the advantage of lessons learnt in what not to do.

It’s a fact that India needs quality institutions, and it needs collective effort and support to make these institutions successful. If creating new IITs is the way that we have to go, so be it. For once, let’s look at their achievements and efforts at innovating. Even Damodar Acha-rya, the Director of the oldest IIT at Kharagpur, which also happens to be his alma mater, believes that the new IITs have moved away from the shadows of their mentors. As a com-munity of higher education leaders, let’s look at how we can support the new IITs and let’s see what constructive criticism we can send their way.

Let’s give them a chance.

2 EduTEch December 2011

Contentsdecember 2011EDU

update 04 merger06 moU08 VISIT OFFereD10 BIDS granT

Viewpoint12 rIShIkeSha T krIShnanDo we need an Indian model of higher education?

technology42 PrInT IT rIghTEDU’s guide to an efficient green printing strategy46 Tech TUTeSApps for annotating PDFs43 Tech SnIPPeTSTechnology News, Tips and Tricks profile56 rajan SaxenaThe Vice Chancellor of NMIMS cherishes the freedom of his academic life By Charu Bahri

Strategy26 ParTnerS In reSearchGreater synergy between industry and academia is resulting in more PhDsBy Shalini Gupta

academicS32 The lOOmIng PreDIcamenTVC, Chitkara University on engineering education

46 acaDemIc InTerVIewTan Moorthy on the initiatives by Infosys to raise competence of the Indian graduate population

global perSpectiVe Find out what’s currently happening in institutions around the world. The Chronicle of Higher Education shares its perspectives with EDU48 jaPan’S ShOrTage OF englISh-SPeakIng graDUaTeS By David McNeill50 FUlBrIghT keePS mOVIng FOrwarD DeSPITe BUDgeT UncerTaInTy By Ian Wilhelm52 US graD SchOOlS See SIgnIFIcanT IncreaSe In FOreIgn enrOlmenTS By Beth McMurtrie

42

“I will send my child to India for the first 12 years, because here they teach how to study in discipline”— Stephan Thieringer, Stephan Thieringer, Co-founder, CEO, AcrossWorld Education

36

63


53 englISh ParlIamenTary Panel crITIcISeS SPeeD OF eDUcaTIOn OVerhaUl By Aisha Labi

timeout62 BOOkS• CV Raman: A Biography63 gIzmOS & gaDgeTS

perSpectiVe64 InTernaTIOnalISe TO leaDBy Nunzio Quacquarelli, Managing Director at Quacquarelli Symonds

This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume

any liabilities for errors or omissions.

ADVERTISER INDEX benq IFc

bFe IndIa 9

dIgIsol 5

epson Ibc

marksman bc

merIT Trac 11

pearson 7

PROFILE Rajan Saxena, VC, NMIMS University,

on academic freedom Pg 56

TECHNOLOGY Printers with intelligent power

saving modes Pg 42

ACADEMICS

Chitkara University’s VC on engineering education Pg 32

Uday B DesaiDirector, IIT Hyderabad

Madhusudan Chakraborty Director, IIT Bhubaneswar

Sudhir K JainDirector, IIT Gandhinagar

MK SurappaDirector, IIT Ropar

OUT OF THE SHADOWS ANDOUT OF THE SHADOWS AND

INTO THE SUNThe coming of age of the new IITs Pg 14

F O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O NF O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O NF O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O NF O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O NF O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O NF O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O NF O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O NF O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N

VOLUME 02 ISSUE 12 150A 9.9 MEDIA PUBLICATION

DECEMBER 2011WWW.EDU-LEADERS.COM

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14 out of the Shadows and into the Sun the newly established IIts may have had little time to catch up with their predecessors, but they are determined to make a difference to the IIt brandby charu bahri

23 focusing on talent24 moving out of the Shadows

MaNaGING DIreCtor: pramath raj SinhapUBLISHING DIreCtor: anuradha Das MathurGroUp eDItor: r GiridharaSSoCIate eDItor: Smita politeCoNtrIBUtING eDItor: aniha BraraSSIStaNt FeatUreS eDItor: rohini Banerjee

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from the world of higher education


06 MoU 06 SySteM 08 viSit 08 offered 10 bidS

10 grant & More

merger: The Union Cabinet has decided to merge the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT) and National Knowledge Network (NKN) to leverage the potential of informa-tion and communication technology in teaching and learning processes in universities and research institutions.

While NMEICT is run by the Human Resource Development Ministry, NKN is part of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. An official statement, following a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, also said that the Cabinet has approved shifting technology from copper wire-based connectivity to optical fibre cable-based one, and raised the number of universities and institutions of national importance that are to be provided con-nectivity from 419 to 572. The ultimate target of the scheme is to provide last-mile connectivity in order to deliver high-quality e-content to universities. This will enhance learning and knowledge across the length and breadth of the country.

Govt to Leverage ICT for LearningThe merger move will help meet the Centre’s target of providing connectivity to all institutions, and help deliver e-content more effectively

connected: Kapil Sibal at the National Knowledge Network website and logo launch in the earlier part of 2011

AmEricAn nobEl lAurEATE joins AmriTA univErsiTyNobel Laureate Leland Harrison

(Lee) Hartwell has been appoint-

ed the Adjunct Professor at

Amrita University. He will teach

students of Amrita School of

Engineering and School of Bio-

technology at Coimbatore, run by

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham.

Professor Leland, currently Chief Scientist at

the Centre for Sustainable Health, Arizona

State University, was also the Director Emeri-

tus at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research

Centre in Seattle, Washington, USA.

Vice Chancellor of Amrita Vishwa Vidyap-

eetham, Dr Venkat Rangan, pointed out that

this was the first time in the academic history

of India, that a Nobel Laureate was slated to

join an institution as a faculty member.

Leland Harrison (Lee) Hartwell shared the

2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

with Paul Nurse and R Timothy Hunt, for their

discovery of protein molecules that control

the division or duplication of cells.

iim-b To orgAnisE mEET on rolE of icT for ThE disAblEdThe Indian Institute of Management, Banga-

lore (IIM-B), in cooperation with the Fourth

Wave Foundation, is organising a national con-

ference, titled — Enabling Access for Persons

with Disabilities to Higher Education and the

Workplace: Role of ICT and Assistive Technolo-

gies — at IIM Bangalore campus between

January 20 and 21, 2012. The conference aims

to identify and share best practices on

enabling access of persons with disabilities at

workspaces and educational institutions

through ICT and other interventions.

It will bring together the key players in this

field to deliberate on and showcase solutions

and enabling technologies. The conference

expects participation from over 400 stake-

holder representatives and key decision-mak-

ers in the field.

globalupdate

system: The education information specialist — QS — has announced the launch of QS

Stars: a new international system of rating for universities. Aimed at prospective students,

the system will rate universities against international standards, using 30 criteria. Univer-

sities will be given an overall rating of zero to five stars. They will also be rated in each of

eight key areas: research, employability, teaching, infrastructure, internationalisation,

innovation, engagement and strength in a specialist subject.

The Head of Research at QS, Ben Sowter, said: “The QS Stars

responds to a demand for more sophisticated comparative

information. Universities are evaluated solely on their own qualities, rather than in relation to

other institutions, and the system allows for an unlimited number of institutions to be includ-

ed.” The system will operate on an opt-in basis. A number of high-profile universities have

moved early to participate in QS Stars, including University of New South Wales, King’s

College London, Amity University, IE University, University College Cork, Tecnológico de

Monterrey and Nanyang Technological University.

QS Launches New University Rating System


update

mou: A Taiwan Education Centre is slated to start functioning on the Amity Univer-sity campus in Noida soon. Amity Univer-sity and National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Taiwan, have inked a memoran-dum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate exchange of expertise and boost develop-ment of students and staff in both the countries.

The Taiwan Education Centre (TEC) will promote traditional languages such as Mandarin Chinese among Indian stu-dents. It will facilitate a better under-standing of cultures and boost coopera-tion between higher educational institutions of India and Taiwan.

The MoU was signed in the presence of Tsong-Ming Lin, Political Deputy Min-ister of Ministry of Education, Republic

Taiwan Education Centre at AmityThe Centre will promote traditional Mandarin and facilitate better understa nding between Indian and Taiwanese institutions

yardsticks will be used to rate varsities against international standards30

stars will be awarded to varsities after being rated in eight key areas0-5

of China, and Ashok K Chauhan, Founder Presi-dent, Amity University. Also present were Major-General KJ Singh, Vice Chancellor, Amity University, and Pro-fessor Da-Hsuan Feng, Senior Vice President, National Tsing Hua Univer-sity, Taiwan.

The Political Deputy Min-ister Tsong-Ming Lin said that the Taiwanese centre will aim to develop Chinese languages in the host country through collaborative projects. At present, over 450 Indian stu-dents study in Taiwan. Minister Tsong-Ming Lin hoped to see more Indian stu-dents coming to Taiwan. Founder

President Dr Chauhan said the collabo-ration is going to be “rewarding” for both the universities. He added that the stu-dent exchange programmes will deepen the mutual understanding between the two countries.

launch: (Left to right) Wenchyi Ong, Ashok Chauhan and Tsong-Ming Lin

update


visit: Scottish Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning Michael Russell was in India recently along with a delegation that included vice chancellors of the top Scottish universities, such as Edinburgh Napier University, Glasgow University and Strathclyde Business School.

The delegation was in India to forge ties with Indian universities and institu-tions, besides attending the FICCI High-er Education Summit.

During his stay, Secretary Russell stressed that Scotland and India will con-tinue to develop their education and busi-ness ties that would make both the coun-tries stronger. “At this moment there are 20 Scottish universities working with their Indian partners. I recently inaugurated a new Scottish university campus here in

Scottish Delegation Visits IndiaA delegation of 16 representatives from across varsities in Scotland were in India recently to ink a string of collaborations and chalk out mutually beneficial tie-ups

this country and witnessed three new cooperation agreements being signed.”

In one of the collaborations, University of Strathclyde, a reputed Scottish business school inked an agreement with SKIL, an Indian infrastructure development com-pany. SKIL recently forayed into the educa-tion sector and opened its first campus in India in Greater Noida. Sikkim Manipal University and Scotland-based Edinburgh Napier University, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), as did Glasgow Caledonian University with the Chitkara University. According to the Manipal MoU, students pursuing MBA from Sikkim Manipal University will be eligible to get an

additional MBA degree from the Edin-burgh Napier University.

The Vice Chancellor and Principal of Edinburgh Napier University, Dame Joan Stringer, said, “This MoU will be a path-breaking one. We are targeting the 6,00,000 alumni of Sikkim Manipal University, who are also eligible for this course.” The dele-gation’s visit was facilitated by Scottish Development International, a joint venture between Scottish Government and its economic development agencies, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

collaboration: (Third from left) Michael Russell, Scottish Education Secretary, with vice chancellors from his country

industrialist Anil Ambani has been offered a key position

on the Board of Britian’s renowned University of Warwick. The

Indian business baron who is also the Chairman of the Reliance

Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, has been offered the key position

while also being offered a post as the member of its Warwick

Business School. The industrialist becomes the first Indian to

join Warwick’s board. The university is one of UK’s top academic

institutions. The business department is one of the largest in

the university. Sir George Cox, the Pro Chancellor of the Univer-

sity of Warwick and the Chair of the Council, confirmed that

Ambani has accepted the invitation.

Fifty-two year old Ambani is already a member of the Board of

Overseers at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania.

He completed his post-

graduation from the

same university. He is

also the member of the

Board of Governors at

the Indian Institute of

Technology, Kanpur,

the Indian Institute of

Management, Ahmed-

abad, and the Indian

School of Business. Students of various nationalities, including

several Indians, pursue their studies at Warwick Business

School, which offers undergraduate, masters, MBA and

PhD programmes.

Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group has interests in tele-

com, power and infrastructure and has assets of over Rs

1,80,000 crore and a net worth of about Rs 89,000 crore.

Ambani on Warwick Varsity Board

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update


“The issue of academia-industry collaborations is

complex and there are no simple answers to increasing

the interaction between the two” —Kapil Sibal, HRD and Telecom Minister

“Now in India, by law, private sector cannot build private

institutions. We’ve always talked about how important

education is. If you really want to build a not-for-profit education university, the framework doesn’t exist for that, the rules don’t exist for that and certainly the legislation doesn’t exist”— MuKeSH aMbani,industrialist

“Unfortunately vocational training is not getting the kind of

attention it deserves. We focus on formal education,

and want our children to have white collar jobs” — ananD SuDaRSHan,MD & CeOManipal education

bids: Premier engineering institute of the country, IIT Bombay, and privately-owned Amity University, are two of the 17 global institutions that have pitched in bids to set up a science and research campus in New York City (NYC). Seven qualifying proposals have been submitted to build an engineering and technology campus in NYC by 17 universities around the world. Other renowned contestants in the race include Stanford and Cornell University, along with Columbia University, New York University, Carnegie Mel-l o n U n i v e r s i t y a n d Rockefeller University.

Names of the winners will be announced in the first month of 2012.

The winner will get free land and as much as $100 mn for infrastructure.

NYC Mayor Michael R Bloomberg had invited pro-posals in July 2011 for the

grant: Former member of the Infosys Board of Direc-tors, TV Mohandas Pai, and the Vice Chancellor of Ban-galore University (BU), Dr Prabhu Dev, will be preparing the first draft of a new centre to be set up with a grant of Rs 100 crore, received from Jindal Aluminium Limited.

The new centre will be called Dr Sitaram Jindal School of Economics. It will be set up on BU’s Jnana Bharathi Campus. The institute is expected to come up in the next five years. The sum will also be used to develop world-class hostel and faculty at the centre. The Dr Sitaram Jindal School of Economics will be an autonomous centre on the models of the London School of Economics and the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.

IIT, Amity in NYC Campus RaceNames of winners will be announced by January 2012 after considering all 17 applicants

For a new centre to be set up with the help of former Infosys Board member TV Mohandas Pai and Vice Chancellor Prabhu Dev

right to open a world-class campus for engineering and applied sciences. In November 2011, he stressed that the city may award multiple winners. The project may generate $6 bn in economic activity with as many as 400 new companies and 22,000 permanent jobs in its first 30 years, Bloomberg said.

“Clearly this has the potential to be a real game changer for this city,” Bloomberg said. “All of the submissions were stronger than anything we could have possibly

imagined.” He has said that all the proposals will be eval-uated and for now there was no frontrunner. NYC has formed a committee to evalu-ate the proposals, which will consider the project’s ability to create permanent jobs, develop a financially self-sus-taining campus and its pro-posed community relations and partnerships.

17 universities

contending for the NYC

science and research campus

Jindal Aluminium Grants Rs 100 cr to Bangalore Varsity


Viewpoint Rishikesha T Krishnan

Do We Need an IndianModel of Higher Education?

our priority: world Class, indian ethos or Scale?How important is it for us to have top-ranked or ‘world class’ universities anyway? Would they just give us bragging rights, another data point to sup-port the argument that India has arrived? Or should we have other priorities?

India’s challenges in higher education are well known. We have a low gross enrollment ratio. The quality of instruction in our existing institutions is highly variable. Faculty shortages abound. Employability of our graduates is poor. Syllabi are often outdated. Learning is by rote rather than practical or application-oriented. This last problem is summed up well by engineering education veteran, Professor Vijay Gupta, who told EDU’s VC conclave recently that India should award BAs rather than BEs in engineering because most engineering exams are descriptive in nature!

Another stream of criticism is that Indian high-er education lacks an Indian ethos, a mooring to India’s rich culture and civilization. It fails to address issues of values and ethics, or to develop more integrated and rounded young graduates. A small number of institutions like Viswabharati, Banasthali and Dayalbagh, all set up in more ide-alistic times, have been successful in providing alternatives addressing this criticism, but few institutions seek to emulate them.

Perhaps the culture issue is not critical at this point. Students have developed a strong social sensitivity, thanks to the recent emphasis on inclusive growth, social entrepreneurship and bottom-of-the pyramid business models. I recent-ly attended student-organised technical festivals at two of our leading engineering institutions — IIT Madras and NIT Surathkal — and the mes-sage that the students have embraced this ideal rang out loud and clear.

Scaling up is another challenge. It is well known that existing models of higher education are capi-tal intensive. Scaling up to the level we desire is not feasible because of resource constraints. But the more important question is whether scaling up the existing model is the right way to go.

In my last column, I made a reference to the declining global ranks of India’s top universities. While it’s probably unrealistic to expect to see major improvements in our institutions in just a year or two, the fact that not a single top Indian institution

had in 2011 a better rank than in 2010, could be a cause for concern. But I will argue that there are bigger challenges we should take on.

Rishikesha T Krishnan Viewpoint


Do We Need an IndianModel of Higher Education?

Indian higher education lacks an Indian ethos, a mooring to India’s rich culture and civilisation

Bridging trade-offsA little over a decade ago, the way we live changed forever with the advent of the internet. While much of today’s internet excitement is focussed on the power of social media, the internet was heralded because it promised to overcome an important trade-off between richness and reach. This potential has been realised in some domains like financial services and consumer retail, but not in a sector like education where it could have the greatest impact.

Why is this important? Because the main con-flict we see in Indian higher education today is between quality and scale, i.e., richness and reach. After independence, we started off by focussing on quality (the IITs, IIMs, RECs, etc.), and then attention shifted to scale as manifested in the breathtaking expansion of privately-provided tech-nical education in the last two decades. Today, the pendulum has swung back to quality as we set up new central universities, IITs and IISERs.

For a country that accounts for one-sixth of the world’s population, is heralded as one of the emerging poles of the new economic order, and has global geopolitical ambitions, we have to find a way of bridging the quality vs scale trade-off.

In management, there is often a debate about whether you should adopt established ‘best prac-tices’ or try to innovate. The consensus is that if you are below the current productivity frontier, adoption of best practices helps you reach that frontier quickly. That’s what most firms in manu-facturing have done by adopting world class qual-ity and manufacturing practices. But, it’s also clear that disruptive models offer the option to leapfrog ahead (create new productivity frontiers) even though they may start by being inferior to existing ways of doing things.

New technology seems to offer India the poten-tial to leapfrog. But, are we leveraging such tech-nology? What we have done so far — like putting up the videos of IIT professors’ classes on the net, or making IGNOU study material freely down-loadable — are good steps but they fail to use the potential of the internet and communications technologies for interactive and collaborative learning. After some false starts, the govern-ment’s efforts to make a low-cost computing device available to students have finally worked out with the launch of Akash tablet. That’s a good development. But where is the content that can seamlessly integrate with curricula to give stu-dents a high quality, integrated learning experi-ence? How do we harness social media to enhance the quality of higher education?

our ChallengeToday, technologies like telepresence offer high resolution video transmission but use consider-able amounts of bandwidth. Innovation that cuts down the bandwidth requirements and blends video with internet-based learning is what is needed. Entrepreneurial efforts like the Khan Academy have shown us the potential of new technology. With broadband penetration increas-ing, there is a possibility of driving a new model of higher education that transcends existing boundaries and limitations.

The use of new technology has to be accompa-nied by two other investigations. One pertains to how children learn. Kids who have grown up in the internet era have a different way of learning compared to people who grew up learning from books and people. We need to understand these new learning processes better if we want to har-ness contemporary technologies effectively, rather than just replicating current teaching practices over the internet or video. The second pertains to the role of the teacher. Some earlier attempts to beam lectures of highly regarded professors into the classrooms of small engineering colleges floundered because teachers in these colleges felt threatened. The role of the teacher has to be re-crafted for a technology-driven new higher educa-tion model to work.

We should create a distinctive Indian model of higher education, but not by harking back to Nalanda or Takshashila. We shouldn’t be content with enhancing research output and thereby com-peting for world rankings. Instead, in addition, we should take on the challenge of bridging the quality-scale trade-off in higher education. This is what the Indian model of higher education should come to be known for and become our most enduring contribution.

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Rishikesha T kRishnanDr Krishnan is a Professor of Corporate Strategy at IIM Bangalore. He has an MSc in Physics from IIT Kanpur, MS in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University, and a PhD from IIM Ahmedabad. He can be reached at [email protected]

COVER STORY New IITs


From Left to Right: Sudhir K Jain, Director IIT

Gandhinagar, MK Surappa, Director IIT Ropar,

Madhusudan Chakraborty, Director IIT Bhubaneswar

and Uday B Desai, Director IIT Hyderabad

By

pe

Te

rs

oN

New IITs COVER STORY


The new IITs have little time on their hands to catch up with their predecessors. But they are determined to live up to the IIT brandbY ChaRu bahRi

Out of the Shadows and

into theSun

COVER STORY New IITsCOVER STORY New IITs New IITs


aakash — the sky — is liter-ally the limit for the new IITs. Aakash may be the poor man’s Tablet, but it is symbolic of paradigmatic

changes that the new institutions of high-er learning are capable of bringing about in engineering education. It is not just a coincidence that IIT Rajasthan was a chief collaborator along with UK-based Datawind to launch this revolutionary Tablet that is aimed at revolutionising education across India.

Launched amid criticism and surround-ed with scepticism, the eight new IITs had before them a tough task. They had to measure up to the existing IITs and, at the same time, be a step ahead. The older IITs had their share of problems, and there were lessons to be learnt from them. The newer IITs could do it, and do it better. There was no complacency, only a will to do. They are fast shrugging off the bad publicity they were receiving since com-ing into existence three years ago — delays in allocation of land, faculty defi-ciency, inadequate infrastructure and so on. They had first made headlines for all the wrong reasons. But that’s all history.

Innovative Approaches

The new IITs are making waves, turning around so-called disadvantage — their late

Enhancing Brand

iiT’s ValueThey have the hindsight of their mentors and a foresight of their own…the new IITs take wings into a new dawn

entry to the club — into a plus point. They are jumpstarting their learning curve — distilling lessons from half-a-century of operations of the older IITs, as a base to grow from, all the more faster. Talking about this subtle edge, Prof Sudhir K Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, says “A new IIT has more opportunities to do things right, if you think about it. It can impro-vise on the model of the older institutes,” he adds.

For Prof Madhusudan Chakraborty, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar, newness comes from not being compelled to follow in the footsteps of the mentor. “Rather,” he says, “we are trying to be different.”

In a radical departure from the model followed by its mentor institute, IIT Kharagpur, it has worked innovation into the very structure of the academic set-up. It has done away with the concept of departments. A number of interdisciplin-ary schools have been introduced instead. For instance, the School of Basic Sciences includes physics, chemistry, mathematics, bioscience, etc.

“This different classification is driven by our desire to bring together faculty and students from various disciplines and facilitate their working in interdisciplinary areas. The emphasis is on product cre-ation and product design,” continues the director. And with this, the institute has raised the bar for inter-departmental coop-eration. This has also created an environ-

ment in which departments don’t compete with each other at the cost of research or where project funding is stalled because of an unhealthy atmosphere.

Prof VR Peddireddi, Head, School of Basic Sciences at the IIT Bhubanewar, shedding light on the relevance of this alternate set-up says, “We grouped clus-ters of departments under the umbrella of a school. This approach helps foster an environment for research.

Research is interdisciplinary in nature and borders between different fields either overlap or are slowly disappearing .” For instance, nanotechnology is primarily a subject dealing with chemistry. But in research, it’s mostly applied to biology, taking it beyond the traditional.

Conceptualising Newness

Prior to joining IIT Bhubaneswar, Prof Pedireddi worked at the National Chemi-cal Laboratory in Pune, which is also well known for interdisciplinary research. In his opinion, this approach is preferable as it gives uniform importance to all the sci-ences. So, in a twist of sorts, IIT Bhu-baneswar is setting a benchmark in the field of interdisciplinary research, which the older IITs can benefit by adopting.

Prof Pedireddi believes that the initial skepticism towards the new approach is fast-dying as dissenting voices observe



how well the new set-up is being man-aged. “We appoint faculty as professors in their respective field of specialisation, such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. This simplifies administrative pur-poses and also allows faculty to retain an identity representative of their speciality. But they are part of a school and not a single department.”

“The future of technology education lies in creating a new ecosystem and culture and introducing innovations in the aca-demic system,” says Prof Uday Desai, Director, IIT Hyderabad. A new fractional credit course system introduced by IIT Hyderabad exemplifies such innovation. The initiative is aimed at furthering facul-ty interactions and collaborations with the industry; promoting hiring avenues for graduates and postgraduates from the institute; and keeping the course content relevant to fast-changing industry needs.

The endeavour aims to take the institute to the next level of competitiveness as seen from the perspective of the industry. Two such early courses launched are on Trends in Storage Systems and on Cloud Computing. Next year, the alumni of IIM Bangalore based in Hyderabad will be offering more fractional credit courses.

To take up another example, IIT Gandhinagar, also offers short-term cours-es conducted by guests faculty, each of which earns students one credit. This approach has allowed students to take up diverse courses: Indian Democracy, Entre-preneurship, Energy Efficiency, Literature and Cosmology. Whoever said that the IITs are only about technology education? Going a step further, the institute has opened these courses to students and fac-ulty of other colleges in the city, so as to develop better academic links and contrib-ute to the community.

Industry Linkages

Innovations in the curriculum and aca-demic set-up are not the only good things happening in the new IITs. Research is another focus area for them. In fact, aware that linkages with industries and reputed universities or institutions abroad is the key to collaborative research, Prof Chakraborty of IIT Bhubaneswar is reach-ing out to industries through continuing education and collaborative research pro-grammes. “Our faculty members are working on short courses or workshops for the benefit of practicing engineers or professionals. We propose to set up Col-laborative Research Laboratories (CRLs) in our Science Park that would be acces-sible to our faculty and students as well as scientists and engineers from industries attached to the laboratories.”

IIT Ropar emphasises collaborative research ventures with other research labs as well. It provides faculty members an initiation grant and basic facilities to start research work and also encourages them to continue their existing industry linkag-es. Building international relations is also a top priority. This is vital to launch joint multidisciplinary research work. For instance, a faculty member in the Depart-ment of Electrical Engineering was previ-ously engaged with Optical Network industries near Delhi. Prof Surappa, Director, IIT Ropar, permitted him to con-tinue as a consultant with the industry even after he joined as a faculty, aware that the pay-off would be beneficial. True enough, he says, “It has proved to be win-win situation. Industry contacts of faculty members help us further such linkages.”

Research is an area wherein the newer institutes are not only holding their own, but are also making waves across the globe. Aakash, the world’s cheapest Tablet developed over 18 months by a 170-mem-ber team of professors and students at IIT Jodhpur, was just the beginning.

At IIT Hyderabad, a sizeable number of faculty members are presently engaged in research projects. Professor and Head of the Electrical Engineering Department and Director Prof Desai is the Principal Investi-gator of Pervasive Sensor Environment, a Rs 41-lakh project sponsored by the Depart-

—Sudhir Kumar Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar

“The (erroneous) mindset that we lag

behind the older IITs has proved a handicap

in recruiting outstanding faculty. A new IIT

has several more opportunities to do things

right, if you think about it, it can improvise

on the model of the older institutes”

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Timeline: history of the indian institutes of Technology

ment of Science Technology and the India-UK Advanced Technology Centre (IU-ATC). Dr Mohammed Zafar Ali Khan, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, is leading a mega project with an outlay of Rs 167.7 lakh on High Performance Cognitive Radio Net-works. This is being sponsored by the Min-istry of Communications and Information Technology. There is another major project on Information Networks for Disaster Mit-igation and Recovery led by IITH involving several Indian Institutes and research labs (IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, NGRI, IMD, and IIIT Hyderabad), and Keio University, Japan. This is part of the IITH Japan col-laboration. And the list goes on.

According to Prof Uday B Desai, “There are plenty of research opportunities wait-ing to be tapped. It is just a question of submitting good research proposals and defending these well during the presenta-tion-evaluation rounds.

“Most of our 76-strong faculty are keen on research. They actively pursue opportu-nities and present proposals before us all the time. While a majority of these propos-als are presently being made to govern-ment agencies, such as the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Information Technology and Ministry of

New and Renewable Energy, the institute is also working on research and collaboration with private companies. KDDI Corporation of Japan, Infotech and Dr Reddy’s Labs are a few companies with whom we are sign-ing agreements.”

Research Matters

At IIT Gandhinagar about 15 projects with a total sanctioned budget of about Rs three crore, are on. The projects are funded by agencies like the Department of Biotech-nology, Department of Science and Tech-nology, Atomic Energy Regulation Board, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Under-writers Laboratory, Ricoh Innovations Inc. Focus areas for research are Biotechnolo-gy, Biomedical Instrumentation, and Drug Delivery, Earthquake Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering and Mate-rials Science and Engineering.

The institute is also fostering ties with Indian and overseas institutes so that undergraduate students can take up short research stints in summer, with the pos-sibility of being engaged in them for long-term as well. Some of these prestigious institutes abroad are California Institute

The idea of forming institutions of higher technical

learning, similar to Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, was first mooted by Sir Ardeshir Dalal, the then

Member of National Development Council, in 1942.

In 1956, the Indian Parliament passed the

Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act, declaring it as an “Institute of

National Importance” and paving the way for further

additions.

Sir Jogendra Singh of the Viceroy’s Executive Council set up a committee to consider the creation of Higher Technical Institutions for post-war industrial development in India. In response, a 22-member committee led by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar recommended the establishment of the Indian Institutes of Technology at locations scattered across India to allow ‘even regional development’. The first of the IITs was founded on August 18, 1951, at Kharagpur in West Bengal.

1942

1951

1956

of Technology (Caltech), Washington Uni-versity, University of Notre Dame, Nan-yang Technological University, University of Houston, University of Rhode Island, Johns Hopkins University, and École Poly-technique Fédérale de Lausanne.

IIT Ropar has been quick to start cut-ting-edge research and launch PhD pro-grammes in a variety of areas. According to Professor Surappa, “Being exposed to ongoing research helps students familiar-ise themselves with the latest develop-ments in different fields and encourages them to pursue their own research inter-ests. Research also tends to result in a con-stant revision of the course content.”

A faculty member in the Chemistry Department at IIT Ropar is already in the process of filing for a patent-based on research work done in the institute

Challenging Times

Apart from teething troubles, challenges were bound to surface given the speed at which the brand is being expanded. As Director of IIT Kharagpur Prof Damodar Acharya observes, “Although the demand for high-quality technical education has been steadily rising in the last decades,



Four more campuses were established at

Mumbai (1958), Chennai (1959), Kanpur

(1959), and Delhi (1961), and the Indian

Institutes of Technology Act was amended

to reflect these new IITs.

Fast forward half-a-century to the year 2008, when a motion is passed to include eight new

Indian Institutes of Technology in the coveted circle. Establishing

more institutes on the lines of the existing IITs, was the need of the

hour, it was said. If seven institutes, collectively, could tutor over 27,500 students and research scholars, 15

centres would open doors for thousands more. Bhubaneswar,

Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Indore, Jodhpur, Mandi, Patna and Ropar,

were chosen as locations for the fledgling institutes.

there have not been many quality institutes coming up after the 1960s (with the excep-tion of IIT Guwahati in 1994, and the last of the IITs, the University of Roorkee which was conferred IIT status in 2001). Even the 14 old NITs were all established before the mid 60s. Many institutes came up in the 1980s and thereafter, but they are no substi-tute for the IITs and NITs. The new IITs aim to partially fulfil the vacuum. While it would have been a good strategy to expand the new IITs at a slower pace, perhaps by adding one institute every third year, 50 years of no action necessitated the sudden expansion. Of course, this brought associ-ated problems.”

While the new institutes have half a cen-tury of learning to jump-start their jour-ney, the general perception is that they are no match for their older siblings. Though directors of the new institutes are ada-mant that this is not true, it will take some time for positive perception to take root in the minds of academicians and the public.

Recruitment is one of the biggest chal-lenges for the new IITs given the less than positive impression. The significance of this is best brought out by Prof Chakraborty’s description of what makes the IITs special: “These are teacher-based institutes”; meaning that the brand is built by its outstanding faculty.

1958 - 1959 - 19612008

—uday b Desai, Director, IIT Hyderabad

“There are plenty of research

opportunities waiting to be tapped.

Most of our 76-strong faculty are keen

on research. They actively pursue

opportunities and present proposals

before us all the time”

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Recruitment Strategies

IIT Gandhinagar is facing a huge shortage of regular faculty, particularly for subjects such as electrical and mechanical engi-neering and computer science. According to Prof Jain, “The (erroneous) mindset that we lag behind the older IITs has proved a handicap in recruiting outstand-ing faculty.” IIT Gandhinagar is working on overcoming this challenge by launch-ing an aggressive campaign to attract the right people. For instance, the quarterly newsletter of the institute elucidates excit-ing things happening at IIT Gandhinagar and is circulated to over 10,000 academics. Jain adds, “We also visit top universities and engage with the graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. For the time being, we are offering temporary appointments such as part-time or visiting faculty to tide over the crisis.”

Prof Surappa adds, “There are few tak-ers for administrative, engineering and estate management support staff jobs at Ropar, perhaps because it is not a metro. Finding senior faculty willing to relocate here is also a challenge, as people of the right calibre and experience are older and hence settled with their families in cities.”

It is hard to attract a strong faculty to nondescript towns. But this difficulty is compounded now since the country’s booming economy is creating plentiful

New iiTs: Where they stand today

Ropar Jodhpur Patna Gandhinagar

—MK Surappa, Director, IIT ropar

MK SurappaAcademic session started in

2008-2009Campus: Currently running from the temporary campus at Nangal

road, rupnagar. The punjab government has provided 500

acres for IIT ropar, near sutlej river. Appointment of consultants and

architects for building the new campus has begun.

Programmes: BTech in computer science and engineering, electrical and mechanical engineering. phD

candidates are also taken in.Mentor: IIT Delhi

Prem K KalraAcademic session started in

2008-2009 Campus: Working out of MBM

engineering College in Jodhpur. permanent campus to come up 22 kms from Jodhpur city on National

Highway 65. phase-II of new campus plan submitted.

Programmes: Four-year BTech in computer science and engineering,

electrical and mechanical engineering.

Mentor: IIT Kanpur

anil K bhowmickAcademic session started in

2008-2009 Campus: Transit campus at Navin

Government polytechnic campus in patna. permanent campus to come up at a 600 acre site at Bihta on the

outskirts of patna.Schools: Three schools are

hosting seven academic departments — school of engi-

neering; school of sciences; and school of Humanities and

social sciences (BTech and phD).Mentor: IIT Guwahati

Sudhir K JainAcademic session started in

2008-2009 Campus: Temporary campus at

Vishwakarma Government engineering College. Gujarat

government has allotted land on the banks of sabarmati near palej.

Programmes: Four-year BTech programme in chemical, electrical

and mechanical engineering. MTech in chemical and civil

engineering. Minor in computer science or management along with

BTech and phD.Mentor: IIT Bombay

“There can be no doubt about the need for the

newer IITs to conform to the same guidelines

defining faculty, eligibility criteria for faculty,

etc. Changing guidelines will amount to

diluting the IIT brand. That would partially

defeat the purpose of expanding the IITs”

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employment opportunities in cities. For these reasons, Prof Surappa feels that some leeway could be made for new IITs which have nothing much to offer in terms of life-style and convenience, “Campuses located in such areas need to be better developed and offer more amenities.”

As it is, the residential education which is arguably the only model suited to creat-ing institutes in smaller places brings with it the responsibility of maintaining a prop-er campus and support facilities, more like a college town. In contrast, reputed insti-tutes the world over only concentrate on academic infrastructure and facilities with the rest being taken care of by an adjacent township built by private initiative. That might be an idea to consider when the next round of expansion of brand IIT is taken up. Faculty members joining an institute that is still in the process of establishing itself are expected to go beyond the call of duty. Prof Chakraborty cites the need for them to devote considerable time to build-ing systems, designing laboratories and classrooms in association with design con-sultants, and developing the library and other amenities for students, in addition to their regular teaching and research. Facul-ty members at IIT Bhubaneswar are help-ing the purchase section and hired consul-tants procure appropriate equipment/instruments and other accessories/materi-als for the laboratories.

Incubators for the ‘Next Best Thing’

It will take time for the new IITs to build their reputation. Until then, the magic seems to be happening through word-of-mouth of the faculty members. Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar, Dr Sameer Dalvi believes working at a new IIT is more rewarding. Prior to joining the institute last year, this postgraduate and doctorate from IIT Bombay was pursuing post-doctoral research at Columbia Univer-sity, USA. Dr Dalvi could have joined any of the IITs, but is happy to be at Gandhinagar. “I reckoned that a newer establishment would offer more growth avenues. The older IITs are set in their systems, whereas faculty members in a new institute have greater opportunities to contribute to shap-ing the organisation,” he elucidates.

Despite the fact that IIT Gandhinagar does not even have its own campus, Dr Dalvi is satisfied. “I have set up a state-of-the-art research facility since I joined. I also have ample professional opportunities and sufficient funding for research in nano-technology applied to the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields. The institute has set aside some seed money for this research,” he continues. When asked about his future plans, the recipient of the Young Engineers

Award 2010, given by the Institution of Engineers (India), says he is committed to growing his association with the institute. “I will never leave this place,” he states.

Building Infrastructure

“Operating out of temporary premises is a handicap,” observes Prof Jain. “We don’t have enough space for offices, laboratories and classrooms. We have constructed a handful of temporary buildings and this is helpful. However, it’s not a permanent solution.”

Like the older IITs that boast of big sprawling campuses, the new IITs are coming up on large tracts of land, on an average spreading across 500 acres. But the All India Council for Technical Educa-tion, the governing authority regulating the benchmarks, processes and mecha-nisms defining the minimum physical, academic and other support infrastruc-ture needed by technical institutes for get-ting its approval, only mandates land in the range of a few acres.

There is also a view that the newer IITs could have been established on smaller plots.

Prof Acharya does not think so. IITs offer residential education, to which model he partly attributes the high-quality of gradu-ates, postgraduates and doctorates.

Mandi Indore Hyderabad Bhubaneswar

Timothy a GonsalvesAcademic session started in

2009-2010 Campus: Transit campus at

Vallabh Degree College located in Mandi town. operations are sup-

posed to shift to the 531 acre main campus in Kamand, Mandi on the

banks of Uhl.Schools: schools of Computing and electrical engineering; engi-neering; process Technologies;

Basic sciences; Humanities and social sciences.

Mentor: IIT roorkee

Pradeep MathurAcademic session started in

2009-2010 Campus: Currently functioning

from the Institute of engineering and Technology, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyala. permanent campus of 525 acres to come up

at simrol, Indore. Programmes: Four-year BTech

programme in computer science and engineering electrical and

mechanical engineering.Mentor: IIT Bombay

uday b Desai Academic session started in

2008-2009 Campus: on February 27, 2009,

The foundation stone of the main campus was laid in Kandi. The

campus is currently functioning from a temporary location in ordinance Factory, Medak.

Master plan for the main campus is ready and panel of architects

has been selected.Programmes: BTech, MTech, phD

Mentor: IIT Madras

Madhusudan Chakraborty

Academic session started in 2008-2009

Campus: A 935-acre campus is slated to come up in Arugul in the

next three years at a cost of rs 780 crore. The temporary

campus is in samantapuri Schools: Basic sciences, earth,

ocean and Climate sciences, electrical sciences, Humanities, social sciences, Management,

InfrastructureMentor: IIT Kharagpur


“Residential education provides an ideal learning environment and opportunities to develop. Unlike the IITs, AICTE-approved institutions, most of which are in the private sector, are often not residen-tial in nature. Only a few AICTE-approved institutions have sprawling campuses offering residential education, such as the SSN College of Engineering.

“Also, AICTE-approved institutions have almost zero focus on research and quality postgraduate education. Research and postgraduate education requires extensive laboratory support, along with research space, equipment, faculty and technical manpower support,” adds Prof Acharya.

The Director of India’s oldest IIT, IIT Kharagpur, also points out that at 2,000 acres, it is the largest in terms of land area among the older institutes — including an Agriculture and Food Engineering Department with an associated farm, and Science and Technology Entrepreneur-ship Park). So, it is not as though the land is unutilised. And some land, be it in the old or the new IITs, must be preserved for

future expansion and to create the right ambience. After all, a concrete structure alone does not form an institution — it needs people and infrastructure.

Standing on Their Own Feet

Mentor institutes have played an invaluable role in establishing the new IITs, both by way of supporting them with faculty and administrative staff and also by helping them understand the set of guidelines applying to the older institutes, which the new ones are mandated to follow as well. But the mentors began to back off as soon as the new IIT had appropriate stewardship, that is, a director, and rightly so.

Director of IIT Guwahati, Prof Gautam Barua, says this was vital to help the new IITs learn how to walk alone at the earliest. For IIT Guwahati, it was time to bid fare-well to the new set-up in IIT Patna once the director joined. According to him, “An early withdrawal helped the fledgling

institute take shape more rapidly. We are really pleased with the way they are pro-gressing — we would have done the same as they are, if we had been in their place.”

Prof Barua does not see the new insti-tute as a rival to the older establishment. “There is a strong need for both,” is his firm answer.

Full Steam ahead

Fortunately, contrasts between the old and the new — be it in the available infrastruc-ture, faculty strength, course curriculum, academic set-up, or research-related mat-ters — are not detracting the new IITs from doing their job, and well.

Prof Desai says, “Sure, we occasionally face comparisons with the older IITs. After all, we are only three years old, whereas the older IITs are between 50 and 60 years of age. But I don’t worry about such irrelevant things. Everyone has to grow.”

These positive sentiments spill over into other new institutes.

Concludes Prof Jain: “IIT Gandhinagar is no longer in the shadow of the older IITs. In fact, the innovations we have made in teaching and curriculum, faculty management, and governance puts us far ahead of many existing institutes.”

Directors of the new establishments are not only game for comparisons but are ready to rise to meet the challenges head on. While some circles have debat-ed the appropriateness of fledgling insti-tutes complying with stringent guide-lines governing existing IITs, Prof Surappa sums up the directors’ resolve to grow brand IIT, “There can be no doubt about the need for the newer IITs to conform to the same guidelines defin-ing faculty, eligibility criteria for faculty, etc. Changing the guidelines would amount to diluting the IIT brand, and that would partially defeat the purpose of expanding the IIT set-up.”

And that is something the directors are determined to never let happen. It seems that the fledglings are ready to take wing and come out of the shadows and be their own sun. That dawn is not far if their progress is any indication.

—Madhusudan Chakraborty, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar

“We want to bring together faculty and students

from various disciplines and facilitate their

working in interdisciplinary areas. The emphasis

is on product creation and product design”

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This year, IIT Gandhinagar has enhanced the one-week orientation programme for fresh undergraduate stu-dents by introducing a five-

week Foundation Programme aiming at developing their life skills and helping them make a smooth transition from the time when they were solely focussed on studies (JEE preparations) to a broader phase in life. Be it workshops on com-munication, theatre, appreciation of architecture, or games that help inculcate team spirit, students get a wholesome exposure. We have also introduced a brand new curriculum that stands apart from any other in the country. By focus-sing on humanities, social sciences, life sciences, design and creativity, to name a

Prof Sudhir Jain, Director of iiT Gandhinagar, aspires to make it a trendsetter in education. In conversation with EDU, he describes some of the innovative initiatives

Focussing on Talent

few subjects, the new curriculum pre-pares students for more than merely entry-level jobs. Another first for the IIT system is the liberal policy we follow for branch changes after the first year. IIT Gandhinagar has achieved the unique distinction of being able to accommodate all requests from our students for a change of branch in July 2010.

Another of our endeavours focusses on instilling in students a strong sense of values and integrity. We successfully conducted several examinations without invigilation last year. We may expand this initiative to more courses we offer. Our Earn-While-You-Learn Programme allows undergraduate students to help in the library, computer centre, and in grad-ing assignments, and provides financial

help in return. With the aim of develop-ing strong links with other engineering colleges, we have introduced the Sum-mer Research Fellowships. This facili-tates faculty members of other engineer-ing colleges to spend their summer vacations at IIT Gandhinagar and col-laborate on research with our teachers. A Non-Degree Programme enables stu-dents of other colleges (and industry per-sonnel for the part-time courses) to take up credit courses at IIT Gandhinagar on a full-time or part-time basis for a semes-ter. We have also introduced a compul-sory viva-voce to identify the talents and weaknesses of undergraduate students soon after they join, and encourage them to hone their skills and address areas of concern.

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The general perception is that the new IITs are working under the shadow of the older institutions, and therefore, are not as good as

the latter. This is not true. They are standing on their own feet, albeit func-tioning from transit campuses and facili-ties but with their own senate and administrative set-up. They are free to offer programmes of their choice. The director of the mentor IIT is now simply an invited member. Certainly, the new institutes are facing a host of challenges, but these are temporary, and will be overcome in a decade, which is consid-ered the maturity period for any new institution. The focus of educational pro-grammes and course content at the

Moving out of the ShadowsProf Damodar acharya, Director of iiT Kharagpur, also his alma mater, quells the myth that the new crop of IITs is in any way inferior to the ‘august’ group of seven

undergraduate level in the new IITs is at par with the older institutes. On the pos-itive side, the new IITs have the opportu-nity to learn from the mistakes of their mentors. For instance, academic depart-ments in the older IITs hamper interdis-ciplinary research. IIT Bhubaneswar has not followed this model, and created schools instead. Its School of Electrical Sciences can offer several degree pro-grammes such as Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Communication Engi-neering, and Instrumentation Engineer-ing. This alternate set-up promotes interdisciplinary education and research. The newer IITs are also constructing multi storeyed structures at the outset, even as the older institutions face severe space crunch and are demolishing and

rebuilding various single storey struc-tures that are beyond repair.

One common factor to both new and old IITs is the paucity of funds and infrastruc-ture available for research and postgradu-ate education. Funds for core teaching and research activities per student are grossly inadequate to meet the national aspiration of producing 10,000 PhDs (compared to the little over 1,000 of the old IITs) and hav-ing about 12,000 students on each cam-pus, of which half should be postgraduate and research students (as recommended by the Kakodkar Committee). Available grants must be spent on both core and non-core activities, of which the latter com-prise a substantial part. Hopefully, things will improve in future and help take brand IIT to the next level.

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strategY Partners in research


Partnersin research

research labs across India are buzzing, thanks to a greater synergy between universities and companies bY shalini gupta


IIndustry and academia can no longer oper-ate in seclusion, especially when it comes to research. A report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) titled, Science Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2011, clearly elucidates

that “The production of scientific knowledge is shifting from individuals to groups, from single to multiple institutions, and from a national to an inter-national scope, suggesting that a positive relationship exists between mea-sures of research collaboration and scientific impact.” High on talent, but with the lowest researcher base globally, and a meagre number of people employed in Science and Technology (S&T), India is inching towards bridg-ing this gap. R&D companies, universities and research institutions abroad are coming together to groom, hire and motivate students to pursue a career in research.

supporting talent at universitiesUma Sawant was working as a research engineer with Yahoo! Labs, Banga-lore, till mid 2011. Today, this postgraduate from IIT Bombay is pursuing a full time PhD at her alma mater. She was among the two employees selected as part of the Yahoo! Coop programme (launched in 2010) to pursue research in the internet sphere. For talented researchers like her, there is a beeline of

companies who want to groom them further. Says Manish Gupta, Director, IBM Research, India, “We aim to expose students to challenging research problems and get them interested so that they are motivated to pursue a fulfilling career in the field.” IBM Research gives grants to universi-ties as part of its Shared University Research (SUR) programme, to support research in high computing and networks, and has over 100 uni-versities, including NITs and IITs, in its Univer-sity Relations programme. HP Labs India has been offering PhD fellow-ships in collaboration with BITS Pilani since 2009 to those interested in pursuing research in infor-mation and communication technologies (ICT). For its 2011 PhD fellowships for doctoral research in computer science and related areas, Microsoft Research India (established in 2006), received a record 70 applications, the highest ever, and insti-tuted an additional sixth fellowship. Even at Yahoo!, the competition was tough between the final two candidates. There is a growing number of research aspirants, more so with fellowships that take care of the monetary aspects, given the fact that research is time intensive. Yahoo! Labs offers a stipend of Rs 1 lakh per month for the Yahoo! Coop programme, an incentive to attract the best talent. “We offer five times what students would get if they pursue research at an IIT or IISc,” says Rajeev Rastogi, Vice President and Head, Yahoo! Labs.

Companies rev up hiring phDs Ten years ago there were only a handful of compa-nies operating in the R&D space such as Texas Instruments and GE Research. However, today there are 705 MNCs in the R&D space in India with 35 per cent of them in the software sector followed by telecom, semiconductor, industrial automation and biotechnology, informs Chaitan-

“We aim to expose students to challenging research problems and get them interested so that they are motivated to pursue a fulfilling career”—Manish guptaDirector, IBm research, India


Partners in research strategY

What is your view on university-academia collaboration in India?

The level of interaction between Tier I academic institutes and industry is not as high as in universities abroad. It is when industry plays a strong role in shaping the contours of applied research taken up within universities, that the potential of coming up with industry-relevant research output is higher.

What is the current state of research in India?

India spends 0.8 per cent of its GDP on R&D out of which 80 per cent comes from the government and the rest from the private sector. Even within the private sector more patents are being filed by MNCs as compared to Indian companies with more investment in R&D (both money and resources).are research parks a better collaborative model?

University Research Parks have proven to be successful models for collaborative research and creation of IP. They create the ecosystem required for a more intensive engagement between industry and academia. Over 1,000 examples exist of such collaborations in the Silicon Valley, MIT, North Carolina Research Triangle, etc., with 200 in China alone.

university research park: a Collaborative Model

“What really excites PhDs is working on cutting-edge research and technology, rather than regular design and coding oriented projects”—sandhya shekharCeO, IIT madras research Park

ya Ramalingegowda, Director, Zinnov Management Consulting. And a lot of these companies are no longer doing only transactional work out of India, but moving up the value chain, and working to build sites in India as research cen-tres. Hence, attracting technically quali-fied staff is imperative. Applied Materi-als, which works in the solar and semiconductor space in India, has been hiring PhDs for the last two years. “What really excites PhDs is working on cutting-edge research and technology, rather than regular design and coding oriented projects. They bring specific technical competencies to the table and we pay special attention to aligning their PhD thesis with the needs of our ongo-ing projects during the hiring process,” says Abhay Singh, Director, HR, Applied Materials, India. Increasing employabil-ity along with competitive pay packages, opportunities to work on pioneering research projects along with greater exposure to the research community (in terms of conference attendance and papers published) are some of the rea-sons why students opt for jobs with MNCs. The proof lies in the fact that there was a 27 per cent increase in the number of students who opted for jobs in the R&D sector at IIT Bombay. And it is not just PhDs from IITs and IISc who are getting hired. “Companies are going beyond Tier I universities in search of talent which can be groomed further,” echoes Ramalingegowda.

needed: a proactive approachIt is not only companies that are gearing up to tap scientific talent directly. Aca-

demic institutions too are realising the need to up the ante. These include for-eign university tie-ups, exchange pro-grammes and even dual degree pro-grammes like the IIT Bombay Monash Research Academy. Set up in 2008, a part of the programme sees PhD students visit Monash University, Australia, for a fully funded stay of six months to a year. Mohan Krishnamurthy, CEO of the Academy, makes a point when he says, “Collaborations should be exploring mechanisms for students to stay.” IIT Madras, on the other hand is trying out a new model. It has set up the first univer-sity-based research park in the country with the support of the state govern-ment, the Union Ministry of HRD, and IIT alumni. “The primary motivation for the research park was to focus on devel-oping a strong portfolio of products, technologies and capabilities to address

—sandhya shekharCeO, IIT madras research Park


strategY Partners in research

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real problems through collaborative research between industry and aca-demia. Doing real life projects with com-panies on campus, students will be exposed early on to challenging prob-

lems”, says Sandhya Shekhar, Chief Executive Officer of the park. With such developments on the horizon, the future certainly looks promising for scientific research, but a cautionary

approach is advisable. Many feel that it will take time and investment for Indian researchers to be exposed to different ways of thinking, communicating better and developing new ideas. More post-doctoral fellowships would serve as an incentive to pursue PhDs, feels Prof Shiva Prasad, Dean Academic Affairs, IIT Bombay. And of course, compari-sons are inevitable. “Although there is a greater visibility of papers by IITs and IISc in international journals as well as increased citations and representation at international conferences, we still lag behind other countries, notably China”, says Prof Soumen Chakrabarti of IIT Bombay. Perhaps the picture will change over the next few years.

“We offer five times what students would get if they pursue research at an IIT or IISc”

—rajeev rastogivP & Head, yahoo! Labs


academics Engineering Education in India

TEngineering Education in India

The Looming Predicament

When the time comes to provide manpower for knowledge economy, the academia would be found wanting again

by brig (dr) rs grewal, Vsm (retd), Vc, chitkara UniVersity (hP)


Engineering Education in India academics

TT here has been exponential growth in the engineering education sector in India during the past two decades. The number of engineer-ing colleges has grown to more than 3,500 with a capacity to admit

almost 1.1 million students annually. This skewed demand and supply situation, where the number of institutions far exceeds the requirement, has resulted in a large number of seats in various colleges remaining vacant.

real concernsHowever, the main concern should not be the number of seats for Bachelor-level programmes going unfilled. Rather, the real challenges that should be bothering the policy planners are the fact that Masters and doctorate-level programmes are not the preferred choice of the students. Further, there are

very few takers for programmes dealing with basic sciences. The problem gets aggravated due to the average or below par quality of technical institutions in the country. The acute shortage of faculty also compounds this dismal scenario. Recent reports indicate that some of the elite tech-nical institutions are facing faculty shortage to the extent of 30 to 40 per cent. A study published in the AIU Journal (January 06-12, 2003) had esti-mated that the shortage of faculty with doctorate level qualifications is likely to persist for the next 20 years or so. But if we consider the pace of expansion in the engineering education sector during the past decade, the shortfall may not be made up in the next 30 years. The study had also

Fig. 1: Number of graduate engineers in India per million population

250

200

150

100

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1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Graduate Engineers


academics Engineering Education in India

predicted that the country would not be in a position to produce 75,000 to 80,000 MTech degree holders by the year 2006-07. Obviously, the situation has wors-ened in the past few years.

As per a study carried out by Rangan Banerjee and Vinayak Muley on behalf of IIT Bombay, the number of students in India graduating with a Bachelor degree per year in 2006 was about 2.37 lakh. It would now have gone up to 3.5 lakh. When compared with the size of the population, the number of graduate engineers per million population in India had grown from one in 1947 to about 213 in 2006 (See Figure 1).

Thus, in India, as against almost 350,000 students who completed their Bachelor’s degree in engineering in 2008, only about 23,000 students obtained their Masters degree. A major-ity of these 23,000 were not fresh gradu-ates but university or college teachers who acquired postgraduate qualifica-tions for career progression.

The problem is much more acute when we consider the number of stu-dents who go on to get their doctorate in

engineering. Table 1 gives the compara-tive details of students acquiring post-graduate and doctoral level degrees in engineering in India and in the USA.

The irony is further compounded by the fact that a postgraduate degree in engineering has come to be seen as more of a ‘disqualification’ than an asset. It is borne out by the fact that the average salary offered to a Bachelor’s degree holder from the IITs is annually almost Rs 1 lakh more than that offered to a Masters degree holder from the same institution. It does not reflect on the quality of teaching in the IITs but on the quality of input of students who opt for postgraduate studies there. The problem with the PhDs produced is equally acute.

Though India produced approximately 1,100 PhDs in engineering disciplines in 2008, the quality of the research work leaves much to be desired. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most of these are ‘sympathy’ PhDs given away to help career progression of the awardees.

low-tech needsThe reason for the above state of affairs

is not very difficult to find. The quality of manpower produced by academic insti-tutions in a country is directly dependent on the requirements of society. India is basically a low-tech society that is largely dependent on import of technological innovations. Thus, R&D activities invari-ably take a backseat. Since the liberalisa-tion process that was ushered in the 1990s, India’s economy has been expanding at a very fast pace. The indus-try needs engineers to keep the process-es operative. Even the Indian IT industry is known more for the repetitive nature of its work, rather than any original innovations. Such jobs do not require problem solvers or creative thinkers. The examination-centric education system, therefore, though not desirable can still meet the demands of the industry.

Thus, the students are enticed away by the industry immediately after they com-plete their Bachelor’s degree. As a matter of fact, short-term profit motive inhibits R&D investments by the industry. Another crucial factor is the motivation level of the students. Role model technol-ogists and scientists are conspicuous by

Fig. 2: Comparison of output — Bachelor vs Masters in India

250000

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100000

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1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Bachelor1947 - 2006

Masters1947 - 2006


Engineering Education in India academics

their absence from the Indian scenario, unlike the large number of managerial experts in India who have won accolades globally for their pioneering work.

Poor academic infrastructure and lack of suitable intellectual capital has had its impact on the type of engineers being produced by technical institutions. The-ory-based curricula with hardly any emphasis on application-oriented teach-ing fails to meet the intellectual aspira-tions of the students. The pedagogy does not encourage creativity and there is no effort made to produce problem solvers.

Finding the right Faculty Even if the curricula are somehow rede-signed, the faculty, which is a product of the examination-oriented system in majority of the institutions, may not be able to deliver it. Thus, first of all there is a need to train the faculty.

Another factor that has had an adverse effect on the availability of quality faculty is the wide fluctuation in the demands of the industry. During the late 1990s, there was a huge demand for IT professionals which died down when the dotcom bub-ble burst. Thereafter, there was a mad scramble for electronics and communi-cations disciplines. And, now with the infrastructure sector expanding fast the students are making a beeline for civil engineering programmes. Since such fluctuating demands could not be fore-

seen, the academia has not been able to produce faculty in adequate numbers. There is a lead time of at least 10 to 12 years required to produce qualified and experienced faculty. Wide disparity in compensation packages offered by the industry and the academic institutions is another inhibiting factor.

time for life sciencesIndian universities have so far neglected knowledge creation and technical insti-tutions are not producing problem solv-ers. There is an acute famine of faculty. As brought out earlier, the applied sci-ences disciplines are not attracting many students and very soon the academia would also not be able to find faculty in these disciplines either.

However, Indian industry has come of age and very soon the knowledge econo-my would demand personnel with skills to fill the slots in R&D.

Similarly, it is said that the 21st centu-ry is going to be the century of life sci-ences. However, Indian universities have not done any serious work to meet these challenges. Thus, when the time comes to provide manpower for knowledge economy and for disciplines in life sci-ences, the academia would be found wanting again. Therefore, the time to act is now, before it is too late.

There is a need for a multi-pronged strategy involving all stakeholders. Soci-

ety needs to change its mindset. The stu-dents and parents need to be educated on the advantages that would accrue with careers that demand application of knowledge and creative thinking. It basi-cally boils down to a debate between job-security and career growth.

Academia needs to indulge in more forward thinking. Employment of men-tor-professors who could train the faculty is the need of the hour. Faculty develop-ment progammes on the lines of those being conducted by Indo-US Collabora-tion for Engineering Education (IUCEE) and WIPRO’s mission 10X would go a long way to help in improving the quality of the faculty.

The industry can help in this direction by demanding problem solvers and lay-ing emphasis on creative work. It is only through joint effort by society, academia and industry that India can become a major power at the global level in the 21st century. It is time to take out our engineering education from the morass of mediocrity.

Brigadier (Dr) RS Grewal, VSM (Retired),Vice Chancellor, Chitkara University (HP)


India

Students in Engineering (Masters)

Students in Engineering (PhDs)

Percentage of students in Engineering (Bachelor)

23000 (2008)

6.5%

Approx 1100

35000 (2003)

50%

3125

USA

Table 1: Students graduating at Master and Doctoral levels


academics Interview

Srikantan Moorthy, Senior Vice President and Group head, Education and research,

infosys technologies, shares information on the various initiatives of the company to engage

with academia

“We want to raise the competence of the

graduate population in India”

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Interview academics

infosys is actively involved with academia in various fields. what generated your interest in indian higher education?

The founders of Infosys have been very clear that competence is a key dif-ferentiator for our industry. In the early days, they themselves used to conduct classes. Let me tell you about what we do to raise competence and who we do it for. To begin with, our focus is on com-petence for people across three stages. First is engaging with students to help them become industry ready even before they graduate. We do this by working with engineering colleges, sharing with the faculty some of the work that we do and getting them to conduct pro-grammes for students in their institu-tions. For instance, the campus connect programme has been running for the last six years in 400 colleges, about 5,000 faculty have been engaged, more than 100,000 students have been trained; not necessarily to join Infosys but to make a difference to the graduate population in India in general. The second aspect of competence building is for fresh gradu-ates who join Infosys and the third aspect of competence development is about continuous education.

what is the campus connect Pro g ra m m e a n d h ow c a n institutions participate in it?

This is an industry -academy programme. It is about making students industry relevant. The programme primarily works with the faculty and reaches the students through them and that is how we believe it can become sustainable. It is for the institutions to decide whether they want to be part of the programme, bur then there are certain criteria at our end also.

Every year we conduct conclaves in various regions all over India where we invite institutions to participate and interact with us to help them decide whether they want to join the pro-gramme. If they feel it is relevant for them, they can sign up for free.

So that is the starting point. Once they become campus connect partners, they get access to our content and the faculty

gets an exposure to the methods that we use in our classrooms. They can then take those methods further when they conduct programmes for their students.

None of this is about the students opt-ing to join Infosys. It is about helping institutions speed up to reach industry requirements and raise the employability of their students.

Most often the institution’s faculty comes to one of our development centres to go through the programme. The other aspect of the programme is that the fac-ulty also has the opportunity to join us for a sabbatical. Every year, we create a score card for the institution to see how well it is doing and what it is doing. Based on that score-card, both the institution and we can take a decision on whether it makes sense to continue our association.

Please tell us more about how sabbaticals for the faculty work. do they start working for infosys or is it some other arrangement?

Not necessarily, but they can look at projects that may interest them at Info-sys. It is more about getting exposure to the industry. We also have a sort of reser-voir of resources for faculty of partner institutions, to help them track trends and changes in technology. We involve the institutions in creating their own electives which they can roll-out in their institutions for the students. A lot depends on the level of engage-ment that the institution, management and the faculty want to have within their institution. This also determines how far our relationship grows. We also provide students access to content on our portal.

do the faculty get paid during this sabbatical?

This programme is open to both private and government institutions and the fac-ulty could also get paid.

so what kind of participation do you see? is there a pattern in terms of how many government and private institutions join?

I have not looked at it from that seg-mentation perspective. I think we have a good mix. There is a lot of interest and

participation from different segments.

the programme also got you an award this year. could you tell us about it?

Yes, it won the 12th Annual Corporate University (CorpU) Xchange Awards 2011 in the Excellence and Innovation category. The CorpU awards were pre-sented at the Global Leadership Confer-ence, a three-day executive education conference by the University of Pennsyl-vania and CorpU in May this year.

you also have a programme called spark. is it also similar to campus connect?

Spark is slightly different. While Cam-pus Connect is a long-term engagement, Spark is a one-day engagement where students from a neighbouring institu-tion visit Infosys. Volunteers from Info-sys run this programme and take them around our campus. Spark is not an acronym, it is literally about igniting a spark. It is about raising aspirations for today’s students and igniting their inter-est in engineering.

what other plans do you have to connect with students?

We have started a new initiative, Aspira-tions2020 — involving engineering and MCA students — to enable students from India to participate in global programming contests held by the Association for Com-puting Machinery. This way, we will get students to develop problem solving skills. Aspirations2020 will also help students to benchmark themselves against their peers.

do you also have any programmes for the non-engineering colleges?

Yes, we have Project Genesis for gradu-ate schools, to help students become more employable. This initiative focusses on cre-ating awareness in Tier II and III towns about career options in the BPO sector. Language enhancement and analytical skill classes are held free of cost by facilita-tors trained and certified by the British Council. This raises the confidence of grad-uates and prepares them for joining the industry.


dialogue Stephan Thieringer

Stephan thieringerCurrent enGAGeMent: President and CEO, AcrossWorld

MeMber Global Advisory Board, Open Knowledge Initiative

exeCutive Committee Member, Open Educational Resources for Cancer

Previous enGAGeMent: COO, Giunti Labs

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Stephan Thieringer dialogue

Stephan Thieringer, Co-founder & CEo of acrossWorld Education — the company that is creating an ecosystem for both creators and users of open content, explains why global access to education resources is critical

OpenCOntentWOrld’s a ClassrOOm:

Where the

edu: Please explain the concept of open education? Stephan Thieringer: It is global access to resources which is available to anybody who wants to use it for educational consumption. These resources have been made available by leading institutions and educators across the world. Based on proper licensing and release of those licences, they can be used by anyone, as long as the original source is quoted.

Why did you think there was need for a company like acrossWorld to help access open resources?

While people are generally aware of what open resources and open education is all about, there’s no good way of using and filtering open content. We wanted to empower institutions to harness this technology. Rather than just building the technology to facilitate the use of open content, my vision is to create an ecosystem and a global marketplace for open content, where to a user it’s just technology that’s useful. Who cares how it works? It’s like turning on the light switch. You get into a room and switch on the light — you don’t need to know the principle of light to be

By SmiTa PoliTe


dialogue Stephan Thieringer

able to switch on the light and use it. I want to make it that simple and ubiquitous. AcrossWorld, from an infrastructural point of view, and delivery platform, is agnostic. We are, at the end of the day, a delivery platform. Think of us as ‘Intel Inside’. We don’t intend to reinvent the wheel. Our name doesn’t need to be on the front door, but we need to be driving the engine (read the open content, access, educational resources).

Aren’t the people who were at the forefront of the Open Educa-tion Movement against the idea of commercialising it?

Well, they are and then they are not. We are one of the few commercial com-panies who are a member of Open-CourseWareConsortium. One of our board members is Mike (Marshall) Smith, who is the former US Education Under Secretary. He was also the found-ing and funding director at Johns Hop-kins, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT — where the open courseware movement kind of began 10 years ago. So, histori-cally we have a very good understanding of what open courseware entails, along with what open content, access and edu-cational resources are. It’s important to understand that open access and content does not mean free; it is a common mis-take that people make. However, open educational resources, by definition and as far as it relates to licensing, means free. So there’s a distinct difference. If you look at sustainability of open content and you look at the business models which need to support them then I think it makes complete sense.

What brings you to india? We are not a company that’s exploring

India. We are not AcrossWorld (US) who comes to India and delivers a parachute. We are AcrossWorld Education Private Limited: a Delhi-based Indian infrastruc-ture delivery platform with offices in Mangalore, Kolkata and Chennai. We commercially launched in April this year. We took long to commercially launch. But when we did, it was clear to me that education in India had become a

teachers and educators a platform of delivery and infrastructure. Our inten-tion is to give students a sense of owner-ship over their education. Curriculum for AcrossWorld stands for two things — knowledge or informa-tion (which goes back to a book or the digital media) and pedagogy (which involves a teacher and one-on-one inter-action and the question of how would I relate to you a piece of content so that you walk away and still retain it). Our concentration is on content. I want to build a company which is a mixture of amazon.com and redhat which is the linux model. I would like to employ the crowd to make the content viral while we process some of the con-tent which comes off the open space into our repository while we are searching the federation of all the other open con-tent repositories, and it doesn’t mean US-based, it means globally-based.I think a lot of people in the US have an imperialist view of education in India. They think US-based education is the best.

you don’t agree with them? No. If you ask me where I would edu-

cate my child today, I would say that I will send my child to India for the first 12 years, because they learn the rigour and how to study in discipline; under-graduate probably Europe; and graduate probably in the US. They are good with graduate degrees in the US because they apply critical thinking. What students learn in 11th and 12th grade here is what US kids learn in the IInd and IIIrd years of college. When you look at the quality and rep-utation of teachers in India, I think what teachers deserve is better empowerment. At a national level, there’s nothing much being done to support teachers to be bet-ter prepared for the classroom.

is there an opportunity in this challenge?

Yes we are looking at the community teaching model to help apply better teaching and learning resources for the teacher. We are working, for example, with the California State University and

hot spot. Secondly, there were a lot of people in education who have done a great job. And that there was a place for their products in the market.

How did the idea of acrossWorld come about?

Some 12-13 years ago, I was one of the few people to start a ‘learning management systems company’ on the premise of an application service provider (ASP) model, and then nobody wanted ASP. They said what’s that? Now it’s called software as a service (SaaS) and suddenly it’s acceptable, everyone wants it and it’s really in. Between 2005 and 2006, I sold-off the venture to a very traditional Italian publishing firm. As the firm’s COO, over a period of time, I learnt that as a company you need to make a decision to focus. You can either be a platform or content. You can’t be both. When you look at learning and the space of learning content, strategy is important. In 2007, I started a group called Open Educational Resources for Cancer (OERC), a non-profit organisation, with Anil Srivastava, who’s one of the co-founders of this company as well. Srivas-tava who was with NASSCOM, said to me, “Why don’t we think of a model for cancer and build around it?” We hit upon the idea of a contributory member model, where institutes contribute con-tent and also access it by paying a con-tributory fee. We knew we had a sustain-able business model. In 2009, he introduced me to Sam Pitroda. I met him in Chicago. We spoke about building a sustainable company based on the principles of open content, which we believed would work especially well in developing countries.

How is the acrossWorld technol-ogy different from an lmS ?

I believe that LMSes are transitional, while content is where the action is. It needs to be engineered properly. If engi-neered properly, one can do whatever one wants with it: put it in on the PC, Mac , Tab le t o r the ub iqui tous mobile phone.Our objective is to provide students,


Stephan Thieringer dialogue

conceptualising projects at the Univer-sity of Lucknow. Quality of teaching — how can we affect it? That’s the latest question.According to a UNESCO report, globally eight million teachers are needed. While the attrition of teachers is six million over the next five years. So you techni-cally need 14 million teachers, while India alone will require one million. So teachers’ training will be imperative. Recently, AcrossWorld went to a school in rural India. I was carrying my iPad and the school principal felt that he needed a 100 of those. It led us to put our heads together and come up with an Android app which helps a teacher upload content onto our platform and then, at the same time, open educational resources and search what we have on our system (more than 20,000 assets) and also any of the repositories (MER-LOT, Rice University, UK Open, the Netherlands, University of Delft, MIT). The Android apps allows one to choose, pick, drag and drop information, put it in buckets or playlists, and find interest-based recommendations. A teacher can take these items to a classroom or print them out or assign it to students on to a Tablet.

What are the partnerships that acrossWorld has recently built?

We have partnerships with six compa-nies who manufacture Tablets. We are working with universities such as NIIT University. Dr Shorey of NIIT is looking at ways we work and giving us his feed-back. Like open source, the more people participate the more powerful it becomes. In a country the size of India, there’s a need to work locally. Even if AcrossWorld creates content in Delhi it needs to be created in 30 languages, because that knowledge has to be rele-vant across the country: in every region, state or city. Today we only do English, but just last week I was in Chennai where there’s a foundation that has 40,000 schools and a million students and follows Rabindranath Tagore’s methodology of teaching.What these teachers need is local support. So what we are now talking about is 400 centres of excellence all over the country, supply-ing content from a central point in Chennai into those centres where teach-ers once every month come together and get the information and go back to use it. Then in the centre we need people to translate all that into local languages and make it relevant across every area where we are supplying it — that’s what infra-structure delivery platform is all about.

How do you validate content? There are a couple of ways of doing it.

Stephan Thieringer dialogue dialogueStephan Thieringer

Firstly we look into repositories which have a period of usage system in place already, say MERLOT of California State University. We also use technology which allows rating, recommendation and review. And every transaction shows the user affiliated results. We have an algorithm underneath every content pro-gramme and the ‘most crowdsourced’ content shows up in a rating. People using it rate it, so you have access to all the user experiences.

do you have to train the faculty to adopt the system?

The biggest challenge is indeed the adoption strategy. An example I often quote is that in India, parking garages have attendants and valets to facilitate parking, and who hand parking tickets to you. In the US and Europe and else-where, you not only park your car but also take the parking ticket yourself. An education leader wishing to be a catalyst for change must find the right person to train people to adopt the system. We have the right guys — our learning (helps put the procedure, systems in place), and academic leaders (who regu-late the content), to help us train people. And it’s always important for us to estab-lish that we are, at the end of the day, an Indian entity. That helps people trust us better.

Open educational resources, by definition, and as far as it relates to licensing, means free

Print it Right

EDU brings to you the issues to consider

for an efficient green printing strategy

by TushaR KanwaR

Even as the wheels of our education system turn slowly in the direction of an all-digital paperless future, the reality and

importance of printing in the day-to-day activities of the administrator and the stu-dent’s life cannot be understated. Reports, certificates, marketing material, teaching collateral, memos and circulars, official records — the list is seemingly endless. Without the right printing strategy in place, an institution’s printing invest-ments and running costs can threaten to spiral, not to mention the yet unforeseen (for most) ecological impact. How do you, as heads of institutions, make the right choices that safeguard not only your

46 Tech TuTeS: iPad apps for annotating PDFs

43-47 Tech SniPPeT: Tehnology news and Tips and Tricks

TECHNOLOGY

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future investments into the printing domain but regularise and course-correct existing investments? We spoke to lead-ing solution providers to look at the important considerations and choices you have to make when formalising your own efficient and green printing strategy.

should we worry? If we take a moment to draw a parallel with the corporate sector, the results are startling. An InfoTrends study in 2006 found that organisations perceived that they spend an average of three per cent of their annual revenues on printing, copying and fax-related costs, whereas the actual figure for overall document expenditures (including hardware, sup-plies and ‘people’ costs) averaged six per cent of annual revenues across all indus-tries. Reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) is critical — institutions need to factor not just the initial cost of docu-ment management solu-tion but also the associa-tive operational cost over t h e l i f e o f t h e sys tem. Even more recently, a 2011 survey of Public CIOs and IT pro-fessionals from govern-ment technology sector showed that 79 per cent of survey participants are currently unable to iden-tify their total printing

costs. While it’s true that these results may be specific to a select audience, the trend is key here, and lessons apply equal-ly to the education sector as any other. In fact, as Nitin Hiranandani, Director, LaserJet Enterprise Solutions, Imaging and Printing Group, HP India, points out, many of the largest cost components of document output are often hidden and grow over time. These include costs asso-ciated with device proliferation, device underutilisation, multiple disparate print architectures (which do not interact or mesh well with each other), multiple print drivers and of course, energy drain. Hiranandani recommends each institu-tion conduct a careful analysis with these factors in mind, since management of these components can produce dramatic savings in imaging and printing costs for institutions of all sizes.

how to Go about It It’s clear that printing costs are real, and while it’s easy to call in the experts like folks from HP, Canon or Samsung to rethink your printing strategy, due diligence and internal analysis of your demands from the printing infrastructure is critical before the first consultant comes on board. Best practices sug-

gest that device consolidation should be considered whenever an organisation’s user-to-device ratios fall below 10:1, towards avoiding excessive expenditures associated with equipment redundancy, such as IT support (networking, help desk), consumables (acquisition, stor-age) and real estate (footprint). A direct effect of device proliferation is tremen-dous underutilisation. For example many heavy-duty copiers available in the market typically are capable of produc-ing 15,000 to 45,000 pages per month, but data (collected by HP) suggested that the average copier in the US actually pro-duces fewer than 8,000 pages per month! Consider this — is your institute cater-ing for much more copying and printing capacity than you actually need?

Adequate thought also needs to be given to future-proofing your investment, and large vendors today offer printers that have update capabilities for new features that will be available in the future. For example, HP FutureSmart equipped enterprise devices are designed to evolve with the technologies of the future, which is, in a sense, an assurance for your insti-tute that your devices would not become obsolete with the next technology wave, and will instead adapt and evolve.

MFDs vs Desktop Printers? Multifunction devices (MFDs), as the name suggests, combine features of two

79%CIOs and IT

professionals in government

sector in a 2011 survey unable to

identify total printing costs

at the end of October, Apple launched its iCloud service that offered Apple users the opportunity to sync pictures, e-mail and documents across all Apple devices. The service is free for subscribers up till 5 GB of storage. The people at Apple pointed out that this was sufficient since mail, documents, camera roll, account information, settings and other such apps don’t use that much space. Customers who need more storage can purchase a storage upgrade straight from the device. The iCloud also includes a programme that allows users to locate iPhones and iPod Touch music players remotely. In November users reported ‘disruptions’ in the services.

TECH SNippET | iCloud

a hard Drive in the sky

Printing in higher Education TEChnOLOGy



TEChnOLOGy Printing in higher Education

a good news for music students and teachers — Google launched its ‘music service’ called ‘These Go to Eleven’, end of November, 2011, at Los Angeles, US. The Google Music Store has features such as an MP3 music store with a direct connection to its social network Google+. The online service store features licenced tracks from major music labels — for now it’s mostly international labels. In a similar launch, Google had started its Google Music Beta in May 2011.

Similar to Amazon’s Cloud Player, Google Music allows users to

upload their favourite music and store it online. The music can also be streamed to the user’s PC or Android devices. Google’s Music service also

comes with an offline functionality, by making

recently played tracks available offline. The service provider will also

offer free licenced tracks to users and offer a weekly newsletter with downloads of new tracks that can be added to the store.

TECH SNippET | Music

Google Online store shot in the arm for Music students’ style

or more devices, typically a scanner and a printer, possibly even a fax machine, into a single device. Not only do they make optimal utilisation of space, but also are ideal for departments or smaller locations where the volume of imaging tasks (scanning/copying) is low, and can replace the proliferation of several print-ers on individual’s desktops. Quite natu-rally, you should expect resistance from the users — many will complain that they will have to walk and collect docu-ments, that security levels would not be as good, etc. Many of these concerns can be addressed via technology and coach-ing correct printing habits by showing the direct linkage in cost control and profits, especially in senior members of the staff and administration. Bear in mind, it is still very rare to find printing implementations that are completely on MFDs alone, and clever application of technology can help mitigate the per-page costs of desktop printers in situa-tions where an MFD is not acceptable.

are we secure? Centralising your print infrastructure naturally brings up security concerns — if left unmanaged, these can compro-mise security and confidentiality of the print documents. If any of the following stacks of unclaimed print jobs, sensitive documents left unattended, print jobs routed to an inappropriate device or a device in another location — sound

familiar to you, you should strongly con-sider a vendor that factors in elements of a secure printing approach. For example, vendors offer a feature like secure pull printing that allows users to dynamically print to the network and ‘pull’ jobs to any enabled device. What it achieves is a vir-tual elimination of unclaimed docu-ments while simultaneously reduces IT administrative burdens. Combined with features like authentication at the print terminal via a swipe card or a user pass-code, you can ensure that nothing is

printed (or wasted) until the owner authenticates the job on the printer.

Managed Print Services (associated dia-gram at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Target_diagram.png )

Another key consideration can be whether your institute would like to ‘out-source’ the printing capabilities to the vendor via what vendors refer to as their Managed Print Services(MPS). Whether you speak to a Canon or an HP or a Sam-sung, each of them can offer an MPS strategy that consolidates on-site printers,



bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has collaborated with Bharat Berry Technologies to provide ‘push email services’ for all its GSM mobile subscribers across India. Push e-mail provides an ‘always-on capability’ helping e-mails to be actively transferred. The mobile communication service Bharat Berry works with most of the mobile phones and provides an advanced push e-mail with over the air backup of the user’s contacts, tasks, calendar and notes. BSNL is targeting this service for all range of handsets carrying BlackBerry, Symbian, Android, Windows

TECH SNippET | E-mail

E-mails Just Got Faster, Thanks to bsnL

MFPs, copiers and fax fleet management with a variety of flexible options, from basic cost-per-page contracts to compre-hensive service engagements. As a deci-sion-maker, you get complete visibility on device usage across your campus via con-venient metrics based dashboards, so you can accurately monitor, measure and con-trol excesses at the point of origin. In addition, institutions get the added bene-fits of a consolidated billing statement, proactive fleet maintenance and automat-ic software upgrades and environment optimisation throughout the contract period. Some vendors even conduct peri-od assessments to make recommenda-tions about changes you can effect in the print infrastructure to meet growing demands like, for instance, if you’re regu-larly exceeding the initial estimates of print pages. Depending on your imple-mentation scale, the savings in TCO through an MPS solution range from anywhere between 10 to 30 per cent.

user sensitisation Careless or thoughtless printing places heavy budgetary burden on educational institutions, and there are many ways that administrators and IT staff can make users sensitive to the costs. Apart from initiatives like pull printing and factoring in print usage in measuring department efficiency (via MPS solu-tions), technology can help define rules for each user. For example, HP’s Access

Control Intelligent Print Management (IPM) solution allows institutes to cap-ture users’ print behaviour and provide them with notifications regarding their usage, or place page limits per user — small initiatives that make users think before they print. In the background, user access can be controlled and direct-ed to specific printers, so that marketing departments have access to rich colour prints for collateral, while others have access to the high-volume capabilities and speed they need. Vendor managed solutions also let you specify duplex or two-sided printing in draft mode as the default mode for printing, leading to sav-ings on paper and consumables costs.

Going Green Our responsibility to the environment and to the world we leave to our children is non-negotiable, and one of the key ways of going green for your institute is via the implementation of a green print-ing strategy. What’s more, a green print-ing strategy is not a financial burden — far from it, in fact as you will realise during roll-out. You can keep the follow-ing steps in mind when planning to go green with the printer infrastructure.lReduce Paper Usage: set your printers to print two-sided by default, cutting your paper consumption by as high as 50 per cent.lRecycle wasted paper, and if possible, purchase paper from vendors which use

sustainable materials in the paper they sell.lBuy printers and MFDs with intelli-gent power saving modes or those that come with the Energy Star certification. EnergyStar equipment is sometimes made from renewable resources and also uses less energy than your conventional equipment.lAsk your vendor for a recycling pro-gramme for consumables. Samsung, for example, runs a programme in select countries called STAR (Samsung Take-back and Recycling). Essentially a free service, Samsung collects empty print cartridges, safely recycles them, convert-ing them into useful materials and there-by ensuring they are not incinerated or sent to landfills.lEschew printing in favour of online marketing, wherever possible.

Further Reading1. Liverpool John Moores University’s Print Strategy - http://bit.ly/sgg6dM2. Los Angeles Trade-Technical College’s Print Strategy - http://bit.ly/sJ04eU3. Case Studies from the Education Sec-tor (HP) - http://bit.ly/tIJLoW and Eco Solutions - http://bit.ly/tO8vzd


Mobile and J2ME that will cover major mobile handsets. It would also work with Microsoft Outlook on user’s computer. BSNL is offering one-month free trial of Bharat Berry services to its subscribers. As the mobile data connectivity is improving and data usage is growing, customers are looking for push e-mail solution on their mobile handsets as a productivity tool.


TEChnOLOGy Printing in higher Education

iPad apps for annotating PDFs

If you’ve given in and bought your-self an iPad over the past couple of months — and we know many of you have — isn’t it time that you start moving some of your

work to it so you can leave the laptop behind? Let’s start with a common request — annotating PDFs or Word.docs or correcting documents that stu-dents or faculty send for your review. Traditionally PDFs are read-only or print-only media, so annotating them requires specific software on the iPad as well. Let’s look at some of the alternatives that exist.

iAnnotate ($9.99/http://bit.ly/tyEDMy): Apart from its PDF reader capabilities, iAnnotate lets you work on your PDFs in a variety of ways. You can open docu-ments emailed to you, open them via cloud services such as Dropbox, or even download them from the web with the built in browser. Once in the app, the editing options are proba-bly one of the most varied — you can leave a sticky note, or use a pencil to scribble across the docu-ment, use a highlighter to highlight text, underline words or add typewritten text — you name it, it’s there! In addition, there’s the ability to take screen-shots of the open page, share the PDF via email,

set a photo on the docu-ment or record an audio note along with the docu-ment. And unlike a lot of other applications that only let you draw on top of a PDF, iAnnotate fully inte-grates its annotations directly into the PDF so that they will be available to any standard PDF reader like Adobe Reader later.

GoodReader for iPad ($4.99/http://bit.ly/uJsKUS): Call it the jack-of-all-trades for document management, because that is what GoodReader is. Not only can you access the documents from your cloud accounts or the web, GoodReader even goes one step better by allowing you to add your email account, giving you access to attachments embedded deep in your mail archives. Once your document is loaded into GoodReader,

you get the same capable tools to markup or edit your document such as lines, arrows, boxes, circles, highlight, underline, or strikethrough text, along with comments and type-writer functions to embed text into the PDF docu-ment. But as strong as GoodReader’s PDF capa-bilities are, the real reason you should consider this

REaDER ROI Traditionally PDFs are read-only or print-only media and require special software on the iPad as well

Several apps for annotating PDFs are available

annotating PDFs has been made easy with these apps that you can download on your iPad

Tech TuTeSApps For iPad

app is its support for a large number of formats — MS Office (.doc, .ppt, .xls), high resolution images and audio/video. Even compressed zip files can be opened within the application for you to edit the contents within. In addition, it comes with a WiFi file-sharing capability to transfer documents to your computer.

PDF Expert ($9.99/http://bit.ly/rSZ-6vR): It covers all the usual bases with PDF files, but brings two unique fea-tures to the table that may just seal the deal for you. First, the app supports inserting your hand-signed signature into forms and documents, very handy if you regularly need to sign off on docu-ments or paperwork. And the second feature is a trouble area for both iAnno-tate and GoodReader — forms with fields. While the other two struggle with filling in form fields, say for a visa form or an event registration form, PDF Expert recognises this format and imme-diately allows you to fill in the data and check the necessary boxes before saving.

Microsoft Office Documents: If PDFs



are not the document format of choice for your institution and you prefer the Microsoft file formats instead to submit documents and reports, you can either choose to go with GoodReader or pick a document management suite specifical-


GoodReader is the most versatile PDF alternative. It allows you to add your e-mail account, giving you access to attachments

iannotate lets you work with your PDFs in a variety of ways. You can use a sticky note, use a pencil to underline text, use a highlighter to highlight text or add typewritten text

you to add your e-mail

The social networking site, Facebook, has allowed Hyderabad-based entrepreneurs to become change catalysts. The city’s first-generation entrepreneurs, engaged in different business activities, has come together to float Hyderabad Director cum CEO Forum (HDCF), which will be used to exchange best practices and mentor budding business students. The group which

began with 40 business people has grown close to 700, with more people joining every day. The forum will also act as a parallel pressure group and educate upcoming entrepreneurs on roles and procedures that should be followed in setting up businesses.

The HDCF will also act as an incubation centre for students who

wish to enter the business field but hold back due to the lack of adequate knowledge and expertise.

TECH SNippET | Facebook

Facebook becomes Catalyst for Change Makers in hyderabad

ly suited to Microsoft Office formats. The office suite candidates are Apple’s iWork suite with Pages ($9.99), Num-bers ($9.99), and Keynote ($9.99) for Word, Excel, Powerpoint. Or you can pick up Quickoffice’s Quickoffice Pro

HD ($19.99) and DavaViz’s Documents to Go Premium ($16.99). Quickoffice has a word processor, spreadsheet editor, and a slideshow editor whereas DocsTo-Go has a word processor, a spreadsheet editor, and a tool to edit text and add notes to a presentation. All the programs read and write the Microsoft Office file formats.

Verdict: If there’s one application for PDF annotation you must pick, and frequent form filling isn’t a requirement, our vote goes to GoodReader, the hands down most versatile alternative. If it is just Microsoft Office compatibility you need, pick up the Quickoffice suite.


perspectiveINSIDE

F r o m o F h I g h E r E D u c a t I o N

the global 50 | Fulbright Keeps Moving Forward Despite Budget Uncertainty

52 | US Grad Schools See Significant Increase in Foreign Enrollments

Local varsity graduates not fluent enough in English, while studying abroad gets costlier and problematic By DavID mcNEIll

Japan’s shortage of english-speaking graduates

In Japan’s business world, they call it the “Rakuten English shock”. The country’s largest online retailer has told its 6,000 employees that they must be fluent enough in English to converse with one another by next year. Executives who aren’t up to speed will be fired; rank-and-

file workers will find their path to promotion blocked.The dramatic move by Rakuten’s Harvard Business School-

educated founder, Hiroshi Mikitani, is the latest sign that some Japanese companies are accepting a long-held truism: English is the language of global business. It is also, however, exposing a long-term shortage of local university graduates fluent in the world’s lingua franca.

Japanese children learn English starting in elementary school and throughout high school, and many go on to study it at col-lege. By the time they’re ready for work, hundreds of thousands of graduates have spent nearly 10 years struggling with the lan-guage, but few can do more than speak a handful of wobbly phrases: Japan ranks lower than North Korea, Mongolia and Myanmar in the much-watched “Test of English” as a Foreign Language or TOEFL.

The problem is compounded by a sharp cooling among Japa-nese for study abroad, a trend that has rung alarm bells at the highest levels of government. The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently joined a growing list of officials expressing concern that Japanese university students are increasingly stay-ing at home.

“As recently as 1997, Japan sent more students than any other

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language Barrier: The number of Japanese students studying in the US has dropped by 50 per cent in 14 years

gloBal.chroNIclE.com


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Chronicle of Higher Education at Chronicle.Com/Globalnewsletter

The Chronicle of Higher Education is a US-based company with a weekly newspaper and a website updated daily, at Global.Chronicle.com, that cover all aspects of university life. With over 90 writers, editors, and correspondents stationed around the globe, The Chronicle provides

timely news and analysis of academ-ic ideas, developments and trends.

country in the world to study in America,” Sec-retary Clinton told the US-Japan Council in Washington last month. Today Japan ranks sixth. She pointed out that the number of Japa-nese students studying in America has dropped by almost 50 per cent over the past 14 years.

While cost is certainly a factor, experts in Japan also noted structural barriers at home, including the lack of credit reciprocity, the tra-ditionally low-value attached by Japanese employers to foreign degrees, and the reluc-tance of most Japanese universities to waive fees for students who decide to study outside the country.

John Belcher, President and Co-chief Execu-tive of the Study Abroad Foundation, a non-profit that provides study-abroad opportuni-ties, cites another key factor — “the sheer force” of Japan’s lopsided, aging demographic. “With a shortfall of some 20 mn people in 50 years, this does mean significantly fewer young people today.”

The fear that Japanese graduates are unprepared to work in

international companies has become more urgent since Japan’s currency began to surge against the dollar this year. Now at a record high, the Yen’s strength will push more Japa-nese corporations to shift production offshore, warned Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan in October, increasing the demand for workers who are fluent in foreign languages.

Japan’s largest business federation, the Nip-pon Keidanren, takes that demand seriously enough to have organised a summer confer-ence bringing together the country’s top uni-versities and corporate bosses. Among the problems discussed by a university-business forum held by Global 30, a group that aims to internationalise 30 Japanese universities, was how to bring Japan’s traditionally aloof institu-tions closer to the corporate table.

In a striking acknowledgment that the decline in foreign study must be halted, the

Keidanren used the forum to announce a scholarship plan that will, from next year, give 1 mn Yen, or $12,835, each to 30 stu-dents from the 13 universities now designated Global 30 insti-tutions. Every little bit helps, says William Saito, a venture capi-talist and adviser to Japan’s ministry of education who himself finances up to four scholarships a year to the United States out of his own pocket.

“Awareness of the problem is growing, I think. I’m seeing a lot more companies this year using English as a hiring criteria, and a lot more discussion at the university level.”

Saito says that Japanese universities are slowly dealing with some of the key barriers to study abroad, including harmonis-ing the amount of credit awarded to students who study at other universities. He is encouraged by news that the University of Tokyo, Japan’s leading education institution, is mulling enroll-ing Japanese students in study-abroad programmes in the Fall, a move that would help harmonise the nation’s higher-educa-tion system with the west.

Will that be enough? Belcher points out that the number of students going abroad would rise quickly if more colleges dropped their insistence that they pay fees at home. “The big-gest obstacle to studying abroad is the universities,” he says. His organisation has been very successful in brokering deals with colleges that they drop this requirement. “We get more students per university in Japan than anywhere else.”

It remains to be seen, however, if the lumbering universities will move fast enough for Japan’s companies, some of which are now hiring abroad rather than trying to find fluent English speakers at home. Mikitani is one of an ambitious new breed of foreign-educated entrepreneurs who acknowledges that his companywide edict wants was a “desperate measure.” It may not be the last.

“University of Tokyo, Japan’s leading education institution, is mulling enrolling Japanese students in study abroad programmes in the Fall, a move that would help harmonise the nation’s higher education system with the west” Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter from the Chronicle of Higher

Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter

thE gloBal PErSPEctIvE


As lawmakers seek to make deep cuts in federal spending, the US State Department’s Fulbright P r o g r a m m e — t h e

nation’s flagship academic exchange —faces an uncertain future.

Members of Congress have yet to set the 2012 fiscal-year budget, and propos-als vary on how much the department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which oversees Fulbright, will receive. The Senate has approved a 2.2 per cent increase in the bureau’s 2011 allocation, while the House of Represen-tatives has proposed a 10.1 per cent reduction. For its budget request for 2012, the Obama administration sought an increase in spending for the bureau, but also asked for an almost $1 mn decrease in Fulbright.

As the fiscal battle wears on, Marianne Craven, Managing Director of the Bureau’s Office of Academic Pro-grammes, says she is “cautiously posi-tive” that Fulbright will survive relatively unscathed.

“We hope we can maintain as close to our current level as possible, and, depending on the budget outcome, we’ll be looking at any inefficiencies we can

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While US government’s funding commitment to Fulbright programme, 2012, is still uncertain, other countries have been raising their financial commitment to it By IaN WIlhElm

Fulbright Keeps Moving Forward Despite budget Uncertainty

Fountain of hope: The peace fountain at the Fulbright College which is dedicated to the legacy of J William Fulbright



find or working within our priorities to establish where we would have to reduce,” says Craven, who until recently was the department’s acting deputy assistant secretary for academic pro-grams. Meghann Curtis was appointed to the position this month.

For 2011, the Fulbright’s budget fell by $16.4 to $237.4 mn. Craven says the change led to modest cuts, including decreases in its foreign-language awards and in the number of fellowships it pro-vides for international students to enrol in doctoral studies in science and tech-nology at American institutions.

“When the budget decreases, obvious-ly we have to make choices,” she says. “We want to keep the core programmes strong. We want to keep them innovative and diverse.”

With the budget scrutiny, Craven says, the bureau has been more systematic in offering briefings on Capitol Hill about its work, including Fulbright activities.

While it’s unclear how much the US government will spend on the Fulbright Programme in 2012, other countries have been steadily raising their financial commitment to it — a sign of interna-tional interest in academic ties despite the tough economic times.

Foreign-government contributions to Fulbright rose $10 to $89 mn in 2010, the latest year for which data are avail-able. The money helps pay for foreign scholars and students to study at Ameri-can colleges, among other exchanges.

Chile led the way, providing almost $8.2 mn. Other major contributors include Brazil, Germany, and Spain.

“The strength of the foreign-govern-ment contributions really tells us how much the programmes are valued,” says Craven.

She says the bureau also benefits from partnerships with the private sector.

For example, this year the bureau is marking its five-year anniversary of working with mtvU, the educational arm of the cable-TV music channel, to provide a few fellowships to American graduates to

study music and cultures overseas. “It really brings to life the international experience through music,” she says.

While companies and other private donors provided $17 mn for Fulbright programmes in 2010, Craven says the bureau remains cautious about relying too much on outside dollars, even with a potentially shrinking budget.

“We learnt that you really need to look at sustainability and not just going after the funds for the sake of the funds,” she says.

As for its programmes, the bureau continues to want to use Fulbright as a

way to develop ideas that contr ibute to meeting global chal-lenges, like developing r e n e w a b l e - e n e r g y sources or fighting HIV/AIDS.

As part of its new Fulbright Nexus Pro-gramme, for instance, the bureau provided awards to 20 scholars, non-profit leaders, and

“For 2011, the Fulbright’s budget fell by $16.4 to $237.4 mn. Craven says the change led to modest cuts, including decreases in its foreign language awards and in the number of fellowships it provides for international students to enrol in doctoral studies in science and technology at American institutions”

businesspeople in the Western Hemi-sphere who are doing work in three areas: science, technology, and innova-t i o n ; s u s t a i n a b l e e n e r g y ; and entrepreneurship.

The bureau has also organised meet-ings focussed on global issues for Ful-bright participants. Last year it worked with the University of Nebraska at Lin-coln to bring together students from 46 developing countries and a broad variety of disciplines to discuss ways to improve food security.

Malnutrition around the world and similar problems are “being addressed by governments and other entities, but the role of scholars and institutions in addressing those issues is really impor-tant, especially since they need to be solved on the global level,” says Craven.

“It can’t just be one country solving them.”

$17 mn was donated by corporates and

private donors to the Fulbright

programmes in 2010 Subscribe to the daily electronic newsletter

from the Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/globalnewsletter



the growth in enrolments is driven by china which surpassed India last year in sending students to the US By BEth mcmurtrIE

Us grad schools see Significant Increase in Foreign enrolments

Enrolments of new international students at American graduate schools grew by 8 per cent this fall, the strongest showing since 2006, according to a report released Tuesday by the Council of Graduate Schools. While the news is clearly good for

American higher education, much of that growth came from a single country: China.

“Its been some time since we’ve seen gains of this magni-tude,” said Nathan E Bell, Director of Research and Policy anal-ysis at the council. Yet, he cautions, “If the growth is all being driven by one country, that’s probably not a healthy thing for US graduate schools.”

Each year the council surveys its 494 member institutions to determine what the international student market looks like,

measuring applications, admissions, and enroll-ments at various points throughout the year. This year, 237 of its member institutions responded to the fall survey on enrolments.

The findings this year make clear China’s con-tinued dominance in the United States. Last year China surpassed India as the top country sending students, with more than 127,600 Chinese enrolled in colleges and universities in the Unit-ed States. Of those, about 66,000 were enrolled in graduate programmes. This fall, according to the council’s survey, enrolments of new Chinese graduate students grew 21 per cent, continuing several years of double digit growth.

The number of students from the Middle East and Turkey rose 14 per cent, reflecting steady growth from the region — though the overall numbers are relatively small.

Indian enrolments grew only 2 per cent, but that was an improvement over several years of shrinking numbers. Similarly, enrolments from South Korea, the third-largest sending country,

were flat, which was relatively good news as they follow several years of decline.

Total international student enrolments grew by just 2 per cent over last year, reflecting the

New majority: When it came to sending its students to the US, China surpassed India in 2011 as the top country

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slower or flat growth of recent years.A variety of factors affect international enrolments, including

home country capacity to absorb students, quality of the home country’s institutions, and families’ ability to pay. Such figures are also closely watched in the United States as foreign students account for about 15 per cent of all enrolments in graduate programmes.

While China’s enrolment growth closely mirrored an earlier council survey measuring admissions offers, enrollments of Indian students grew much less than their offers of admission, which rose eight per cent.

Bell saw as a positive sign that in two parts of the world where families have both the demand and the means for an interna-tional education, China and the Middle East, they continued to turn to the United States in great numbers. “International stu-dents have always recognised and continue to recognise the quality of US graduate schools,” he said. Still, he added, “we can’t rest on our laurels. If we want to continue to attract the

best and the brightest, it takes work.”The 8 per cent growth in first-year students is a marked

improvement for American graduate schools, which have been fighting against a sluggish US economy and a global economic downturn. In the fall of 2010, first-time enrolments grew only three per cent over the previous year, while in 2009, when the recession’s impact was first felt, there was no increase over 2008. This year’s growth marks the highest rate of increase since the fall of 2006, when graduate schools experienced a 12 per cent rise over the previous year.

The institutions enrolling the largest number of graduate students saw greater rates of increase than other schools, fur-thering a concentration of international students. Bell noted that just 100 institutions enrol 60 per cent of all international graduate students.

“While China’s enrolment growth closely mirrored an earlier council survey measuring admissions offers, enrolments of Indian students grew much less than their offers of admission, which rose eight per cent”

thousands of students march through London to protest rise in university tuition and cuts in public spending on higher education By aISha laBI

english parliamentary panel criticises speed of education overhaul

A r e p o r t r e l e a s e d o n November 10 by a British parliamentary committee that oversees higher education is highly critical

of the government’s reform plans, and it

highlights the widespread confusion and discontent surrounding the sweeping changes taking place across England.

The report, from the House of Com-mons Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills, criticises the speed

with which the government has under-taken what it calls “a radical overhaul of the sector” and warns that the plans risk channelling some students into “a low-cost model of higher education”. The gov-ernment is introducing steep tuition

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Protest Path: Students in London demand a relaxation of rules and a reduction in Government slash in higher education funding

“The report from the House of Commons’ Select Committee on Business Innovation and Skills warns that the plans risk channelling students into a low-cost model of education”

increases, changes in the student-loan and student-support systems, a new uni-versity financing model, and a new regu-latory framework for higher education.

The committee concluded that enact-ing such wide-ranging changes on a “rigid timetable” could undermine “effective policy development”.

The report comes out a day after stu-dents once again took to the streets of London to protest tuition increases to as much as £9,000, or around $14,500, set to go into effect next Fall. Several of the reforms were laid out in a government white paper this year, which promoted more competition among institutions and an expanded ro le fo r the private sector.

The committee’s scepticism comes on the heels of months of debate and pro-test among the general public, and with-in higher education itself.

Throughout the debate, the govern-ment has sought to emphasise that the new financing system does not demand that students pay anything up front. Instead, they will be given government-backed loans that they are not required to begin repaying until their income after graduation tops £21,000, or just under $34,000.

But with less than a year to go until the increased rates take effect, a perception gap seems to still be shaping much of the oppos i t i on to the govern -ment’s policies.

The committee noted that “the need for a clear communications strategy could have been more efficiently

realised” and points out that “for the next three to four years at least, young people will be expected to act as informed con-sumers in an unfamiliar marketplace.”

The government white paper proposed setting aside financing for some 20,000 extra places at universities with tuition below £7,500, which earlier this week prompted dozens of universities to make late reductions to their announced rates for next year. The committee warns of the risk that the higher education sector could become polarised as a result, into traditional universities and cut-rate alter-natives, with “undesirable consequences for social mobility if able candidates from lower socio-economic backgrounds felt constrained to choose lower- cost provision”.

The committee also questioned wheth-er the government’s plans to widen the pipeline for disadvantaged students into higher education by using money gener-ated by the tuition increase would be successful. It recommends the adoption of a “pupil premium” that would be paid to institutions for each disadvantaged student they enrol.

The committee said that the govern-ment’s plan to increase the role of pri-vate providers in higher education need-ed further clarification, a conclusion w e l c o m e d b y s e v e r a l h i g h e r-education groups.

Britain’s main faculty union, which has campaigned against allowing for-profit providers a greater role in British higher education, said Wednesday that more regulatory standards are needed before for-profits should be allowed access to public funds. And the Russell Group, which represents Britain’s lead-ing research-intensive universities, agreed that “the often overheated debate around university finance has resulted in misinformation among some young people,” especially those from disadvan-taged backgrounds who “do not have access to accurate information about the costs and benefits of higher education.”

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All Advts.indd 33 2/1/2010 10:38:44 AM


It is hard to imagine Dr Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor of NMIMS University, in any other avatar, least of all that of a policeman. It’s surprising then that this don, at one point in his childhood, aspired to be a superintendent of police. Saxena’s mother hailed from a family of bureaucrats, and it was her heart’s desire that her son follow the family tradition. She played a pivotal role in his life. She impressed upon him early the benefits of a secure government job. Visits to his maternal family showed Saxena just how cushy and respectable the life of an

Indian civil servant can be.But Saxena’s mother ended up influencing him more profoundly than even she thought. She was a teacher at the prestigious Cambridge School in Delhi, where Sax-ena studied. The final call that Saxena took on his career choice had this subtle stimu-lus working upon it.

Firefly with Free WillDr Rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor of NMIMS

University, chose to break free and

become the free flame of higher education

By charu Bahri

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Dr Rajan Saxena PrOFiLE

a Free Spirited EducationistGrowing up in the national capital, Sax-ena had access to fine educationists who shaped his thinking and influenced his choice of career. Foremost among these figures was Professor Devdutt, Saxena’s coach for the civil services examinations. While preparing the young man, he put forth a question that forced Saxena to introspect and changed his life plan.

“What would you like to be known as?” was the query, and the professor listed a few possible answers to set Saxena thinking: “You could become known for your thought leadership, for influencing the actions of others, or for being a per-son who functions according to the whims and fancies of another.”

The last of these options gripped

young Saxena’s attention. His teacher went on to elucidate: “On the one hand, you could be a firefly, free to fly about in the forest yet boasting of merely a speck of light. On the other hand, you could be a blinding 1000W bulb that switches on (and off) at the behest of a controller,” he explained. No message could have been more timely or relevant. In a moment of awakening, Saxena realised his true call-ing lay in education and not in the bureaucracy. “Nothing can replace the f r e e d o m t o m a k e y o u r o w n decisions,” he says, reflecting on that momentous choice.

Another strong influence was the Cambridge School Principal who was also Saxena’s English teacher. “The way he taught left a huge impact; he encour-aged a spirit of enquiry and instilled in me the value of respect. The fact that he was not overly concerned with marks but wanted students to grow into good human beings also went a long way in endearing him to me,” shares the vice chancellor.

This wisdom helped Saxena learn to see the bigger picture. When as a forlorn teenager he approached the principal for advice after scoring low in the mathe-matics examination in his school leaving year, he was asked, “Why bother about it? Is mathematics going to make your life?” An incredulous Saxena could not believe what he had heard.

“I thought he was kidding.” But no, the principal had meant every word he had said and advised his protégé to drop the one subject he had not fared well in and play to his strengths in his future studies. That is precisely what Saxena ended up doing.

Politics and More“College life was a lark,” says Saxena, “I enjoyed every moment of it and avidly participated in campus politics.” During those busy years at the Shri Ram College of Commerce he met his first mentor, Professor YK Bhushan, a gentleman who continues to inspire Saxena. When as a student leader he lost the coveted presidency of the students union after holding the position for some time, it was Professor Bhushan who stepped in,

playing the role of Speaker of the House, and taught him the importance of get-ting along with his opponents.

For all the interest in politics during his student life Saxena was quick to con-clude that he would not teach for long in Delhi University, where he picked up his first assignment after his masters. “There was too much politics in the Uni-versity,” is his frank observation.

Pursuing a doctorate at the Delhi School of Economics was his next prior-ity. Saxena thoroughly enjoyed the sub-jects, to add to which, the facilities were excellent and he had the opportunity to interact with “luminaries like Dr Man-mohan Singh”, he says.

Around this time, his life took a turn on the personal front. Saxena got mar-ried to Preeti, a doctor from a family of educators. Their daughter Shruti teaches at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in the USA, and son Shishir, is studying Indian philosophy and religion in Benaras.

Getting the Word OutSaxena headed to XLRI Jamshedpur in 1980, and was offered temporary assign-ments at IIM Calcutta and the Adminis-trative Staff College of India (ASCI) in addition to the regular teaching position at XLRI. At the ASCI, he came in close contact with Dr Dharni Prasad Sinha, then Director of the Management Devel-opment Division. Sinha had been select-ed Director Designate of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s fledgling SP Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), one of the first few private management schools to be affiliated to Bombay Uni-versity. In 1982, he invited Saxena to relocate to Mumbai to help shape the new institute.

“The idea seemed exciting. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatch-er had laid the foundation stone of the institute, which suggested the board had big things planned for SPJIMR. Also, by then I had realised there was no opportu-nity for me to grow in Jamshedpur, which was primarily an industrial base. Major brands were headquartered in Kolkata or Mumbai, and the latter was undisputedly the Mecca of marketing in

fact file

Name: Dr Rajan Saxena

CurreNt eNgagemeNt: Vice Chancellor, NMIMS University, Mumbai

thiNgs he likes:BOOKS: The Post America World, The World Is FlatMOVIE: Three Idiots, Chak De! IndiaMUSIC: Ghazals, Sufi music, Indian instrumental (especially flute)CUISINE: Anything my wife preparesPASTIME: Listening to musicHOLIDAY DESTINATION: In India, Goa; overseas, Athens


PrOFiLE Dr Rajan Saxena

the country,” Saxena reminisces.This invitation marked a turnaround

in Saxena’s career as an academician. He no longer needed to look out for better prospects. Golden opportunities came to him on a platter and he was sought out by boards of leading management schools to add value to their education programmes. Word had got around that he was committed to upholding excel-lent teaching standards. Word of mouth publicity is the best sort, as they say, and who would know that better than a sea-soned professor and consultant and researcher of marketing.

So Saxena moved West, only to find that Sinha had changed his mind about joining SPJIMR, not that it made any dif-ference to his rising career trajectory. Dr Ram Tarneja, managing director of Ben-nett Coleman & Co. Ltd and chairman of the Managing Committee of SPJIMR at this time and he went on to play a sig-nificant role in his life. In 1984, when his book in International Marketing was published, Bombay University offered Saxena the position of Professor of Mar-keting at the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies. In the summer of that year, Professor Bhushan, now direc-tor of the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) invited Saxena to be dean and the first and youngest occupant of the Parle-spon-sored Thums Up Chair in Marketing at NMIMS.

Saxena was excited to accept this offer, because he saw the opportunity to work with the brand. Remembering some exciting projects he steered, he says, “Parle had just launched Thumbs Up and Maaza Mango. I had done a lot of brand positioning and brand-building work for the company, and those cam-paigns had gone down very well.”

Shifting GearsSaxena’s prospects continued to bright-en. In the late eighties, he had received feelers from one of the IIMs but rejected the idea of joining outright. “My view was that the best management minds in the country do not need to be part of the IIMs. I believed that nothing can hold back a man with the passion to excel.”

The suggestion came up again at a meeting of heads of management educa-tion in Bhutan in 1998. This time, it was followed by some action — a nomina-tion committee proposed his name for the directorship of one of the IIMs. Sax-ena learnt of this the day he received a surprise call for his CV.

He went along with things but some-one else was selected instead after the interview. The matter did not end there. Two months later, the Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Human Resources called and asked him to consider taking up the directorship of IIM Indore.

Saxena weighed his options and finally asked to see the campus condition in Indore before making a final decision, “I was in two minds about joining until an industrialist friend said, ‘Sometimes in life you should do things for the nation, not yourself’,” he recounts. So Saxena took up the new assignment and gave it his best shot, but things didn’t match up with his expectations. “I left after serving one term.”

In September 2003, Saxena joined the ICFAI Business School in Gurgaon, as Director and Senior Professor. Two years on, he was back at the SPJIMR, this time as Director, and in 2007, he rejoined NMIMS, now a deemed university, as Distinguished Professor and Senior Advisor to the Chancellor. It was a mat-ter of time before he was invited to take over the top job. It happened in 2009.

Futuristic MovesThe NMIMS campus was a beehive of activity when Saxena returned. Students were studying architecture, engineering, and pharmacy besides management, and an expanded undergraduate pro-gramme added to the numbers as well. “The multidisciplinary set-up gave us enough student strength and opportu-nity to play with the education model,” recollects the vice chancellor. But some things had changed in his absence. The board was concerned about the quality of education and also the ranking of the business school.

Saxena’s first priority after rejoining NMIMS was to revamp the MBA curric-ulum. “We introduced courses aiming to

“Dr Saxena is a true scholar who

understands, and is passionate about, education. he is a

leader who gives his faculty the freedom to grow and gives

them direction to get started. I believe this

openness comes from his genuine respect for,

and desire to know others’ viewpoint and

his faith in their capabilities. For a

younger colleague, having a boss who is

easily approachable is a huge support ”

Prof Seema MahajanDirector, Centre for excellence

in Family business and entrepreneurship Management,

NMIMS University

“he was an award winning orator as a

student and has made conscious efforts to grow his skills and

perspective over the years. The ability to

connect with people has substantially contributed to his

growth over the years”

Prof YK BhushanSr advisor and head, IbS,

Mumbai. Prof bhushan was Dr Saxena’s teacher and

mentor, and later, the Director of NMIMS, when Dr Saxena was a member of faculty and Dean of

academics

comments


Dr Rajan Saxena PrOFiLE

help students specialise in interpersonal skills, Indian values and managing fam-ily businesses, and taking an integrative view of business. We also adopted an experiential mode of delivery.”

Futuristic innovations were introduced as well. “We were the first private sector institute and management learning cen-tre after the IIMs, to adopt computer-based testing. Another innovation was to launch a five-year cross-discipline inte-grated programme so that our engineer-ing students could learn management skills side-by-side. This syllabus focusses more on engineering in the earlier years and on management in the later years. We left no stone unturned to find the right faculty, canvassing across the coun-try and overseas,” continues Saxena. A triple star Crisil rating followed soon

thereafter. Next, the vice chancellor would like to obtain international recog-nition for the school of business.

Borrowing a leaf from his own learn-ing during a year-long teaching stint at the University of Calgary in 1994, and visits to Pace University’s Lubin Busi-ness School in New York a decade later, Saxena says he would also like to bring a multicultural experience to Indian stu-dents while offering foreign students the opportunity to study management in India, “So much learning happens mere-ly from being a part of a multicultural environment. We are aiming at a student mix of three overseas students for every 10 students on the campus.”

Unlike many luminaries of the educa-tion sector who have studied abroad, financial constraints did not allow Saxe-

na to pursue a masters or doctorate pro-gramme overseas. Hearing him talk so convincingly about the benefits of study-ing in a multicultural environment, you wonder if he has ever regretted missing out on this opportunity. “No regrets whatsoever,” he replies, “Destiny has been kind to me and I have been fortu-nate to pick roles of my choice in the education sector. I’ve also had the who’s who of the corporate world as my clients. I wanted to be a firefly, to be free to do my own thing.”

Touchwood! But that’s how life turned out for Saxena, who would not have it any other way.

(clockwise) 1. ramesh chauhan, Chairman, Parle Exports and Rajan Saxena presenting awards at the NMIMS Marketing Fair

2. Taking a session in the Corporate Management Training Programme in the 1990s

3. rajan Saxena, Vice Chancellor NMIMS, Amrish Patel, Chancellor, NMIMS and President of SVKM, and GN Bajpai at the Annual Convocation 2011


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PersPective

internationalise to Lead

top-ranked indian business schools report non-indian representation of class-size at below 5 per cent

India needs to throw off its local image to emerge as a global MBA education destination

The landscape of business education in India is set to change considerably. Union Minister Kapil Sibal’s proposal

of the Foreign Educational Institution Bill can open the gates for top-ranking international business schools to set up shop in the country.

For over 150,000 successful MBA applicants out of the 500,000 or so that apply to India’s MBA programmes each year, the ensuing competition is good news. The influx of international busi-ness schools looking to create a base here shows the demand for MBA educa-tion in the country is phenomenal. How-ever, it remains to be seen how this will affect existing local institutions.

For years, Indian business schools have struggled to attract international students to enroll in their MBA pro-grammes. While greater competition should bring in greater educational offerings for both students and their employers, there is a worry that interna-tional students looking at India as a potential MBA destination, may opt to apply for a business school ‘brand’ that they are more familiar with, perhaps a foreign school based in India, but origi-nally from their home region that both they and their future employers will know and trust.

Greater internationalisation is the big-gest issue that Indian business schools need to work on in order to compete on a global scale. Top-ranked Indian busi-

ness schools regularly report non-Indian representation of their class-size at below five per cent. In some institutions, there is not a single student from out-s i d e I n d i a e n r o l l e d i n t h e i r MBA programmes.

In a rapidly evolving international world of business, where India is becom-ing a dominant global financial force, it is worrying that those trained locally to be the country’s future business leaders are receiving little international manage-ment exposure during their MBA educa-tion. Employers are also concerned.

In the QS Global 200 Business School Report, released at the end of November and compiled entirely on employer opin-ion of MBA graduates from worldwide institutions, Indian business schools have performed extremely well. Howev-er, when rated by 10 different industry specialisations, international manage-ment is the only area where an Indian business school does not appear in the top 25 — a telling result that while

employers recognise the skill sets and ability of MBA graduates from India’s well-respected business schools; their lack of international exposure during the study course results in an inability to operate on an international scale.

In its mission to improve the interna-tionalisation of its MBA intake, the Indi-an School of Business (ISB) in Hyder-abad, recently joined forces with three other Asian business schools in order to pool their international student recruit-ment resources. Named the Asia4, the group consists of China Europe Interna-tional Business School, based in Shang-hai, China; HKUST Business School in Hong Kong; Nanyang Business School in Singapore; and ISB.

As financial dominance gradually shifts from the West to the East, spurred on by the ongoing economic events in Europe, it is initiatives such as this that will place Indian business schools on the world map, as MBA applicants from around the globe begin to see India’s business schools as an alternative to the traditional MBA hubs of Europe and North America.

In this scenario, encouraging greater class diversity is of utmost importance to India’s institutes, if the country is to become an international education desti-nation, rather than what is currently an area dominated by local consumers.

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NuNzio QuacQuarelli Managing Director at Quacquarelli Symonds Limited

out of the shadows and into the sun

Documents

new institutions

new iits

quality institutions

institutions successfulwhile

older iits

shortage of faculty

faculty shortage

higher education leaders