Beyond
Assembly Line Education
As
students demand quality learning with a wider choice of subjects and an
assurance of employability, private universities are promising that change
“Ruined
result, ruined career, ruined life” — Facebook status of Aman, a Delhi student
after the CBSE class 12 results a fortnight ago.
Aman (name changed on request) scored 90%. That evidently isn’t enough for the 17-year-old to dream of a career. And a life. The cut-off at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), University of Delhi’s (DU) bellwether for higher studies in commerce and economics, was 96.5% to 98.5% in 2012. At other perceived top colleges of India, it’s nothing less than 95%. If Aman thinks his life is ruined, it’s clearly because 90% isn’t going to get him admission to SRCC or any other of the country’s Tier I colleges.
While he will later learn in life that marks are not necessarily the most accurate barometer of success, unfortunately at the moment Aman may be right. And he’s not alone. There are tens of thousands of Indian students all over the country who aren’t assured of quality education not because they didn’t score top marks but simply because the Indian education system cannot accommodate so many overachievers. The bottom line: if you are not right up there at the top of the heap, you will miss out on quality
education. The other option is for parents to fork out a small fortune and send their children to universities abroad. It’s an option only for the elite.
If it’s not about cut-offs at universities it’s about those cut up with them. Ishita Batra, 18, is among the 7,231 students in India who have crossed the 95% threshold in their class XII results for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) this year. Batra, a student of Delhi Public School (DPS), RK Puram, scored a neat 95.6% in the science stream.
Lure of Foreign Lands
But it won’t be an Indian institute for her from hereon. After getting admission into half a dozen universities abroad, Batra has chosen to head to University of Pennsylvania to do a major in biology in a couple of months.
Given an option, she would have stayed back in India for her undergrad education. But Batra didn’t see any option. “Indian education is inflexible. And I don’t have much faith in how the four-year undergrad programme will be implemented by DU,” she says with a shrug. DU’s executive council has approved a shift from a three-year to a four-year undergraduate programme. At the time of writing, DU had begun the admission processes and sold over 90,000 forms, including all categories, in the first three days.
This shift in the cornerstone of undergraduate education is just one of the changes playing out on the landscape of Indian education. The DU move has polarised the country’s capital (more of that later), but less controversial — and arguably more promising — is a slow yet decisive shift that centres on the advent of quality education through private universities at the undergrad level. The shift is not without challenges, but if it comes through it promises to transform the education ecosystem in India.
Says TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education: “Students are now beginning to choose quality over lower fees, are looking for assured employability, have more choices than before and have more financial power to pay fees than before. We see the beginnings of a flight to quality. In engineering and management, many mediocre institutions are closing down and that is very good news.”
“Let’s face it,” adds Dhiraj Mathur, executive director at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consultancy, “Apart from the big universities like DU, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, etc, the standard of education in most government colleges is at best spotty. Private universities can play an important role in bridging the gap between demand and supply of quality education.” He adds that because of greater autonomy, the private brigade has more flexibility in designing innovative programmes, “including the semester system”.
For now, semesters are largely the privilege of the well-heeled, who can afford to step overseas for further learning. The cost of a year’s education at an Ivy League university is prohibitive at around $60,000, or upwards of 30 lakh. Batra was among the few lucky ones to get 60% financial aid at Penn. Still, with or without aid, more and more youngsters who are unable to get into the domestic top league are taking flight to the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and to some universities in Europe.
Sample these numbers from Princeton University, one of the Ivy League universities. The number of undergraduate students enrolled from India in the 2006-07 academic year was 14; that has gone up to 59 in 2012-13. At Yale University, too, there has been an increase in the number of undergraduates from India. “Our enrolment of undergraduate students from India has more than doubled from a decade ago,” says a university spokesperson.
Private Universities, Ahoy
For those who can’t afford lakhs of rupees, private universities are a sliver of hope. They won’t come cheap, either, compared to current fees in domestic universities of just 10,000 per year for some DU courses; but, at between 3 lakh and 5 lakh annually, they won’t be as exorbitant as the foreign ones, either.
“Private universities will play a significant role in meeting the demand and supply gap. Those who enrol students in thousands will make a big impact,” says Nikhil Sinha, vice-chancellor of Shiv Nadar University (SNU), which is in the third year of its maiden four-year undergrad degree programme.
But it’s not just about soaking in more students; as Sinha points out, the new age universities are better placed to provide “broad-based education, a combination of liberal arts and professional education”. Agrees PwC’s Mathur: “There is a growing awareness about the merits of a broad-based liberal arts programme. High-quality institutions like SNU are taking the lead in adopting this important innovation.”
“Private universities will lead the change over the next 10 years. They are more focused; being fee-based, they know they have to attract students and deliver value; [but] they need to have a good management to survive and grow,” adds Pai.
Ashoka University, which has not yet come into existence, has more than 1,00,000 likes on its Facebook page. The university will be a fullfledged liberal arts institute and begins session in June 2014. “At Ashoka University, we are talking about liberal education, which is the notion of combining specialisation and general education,” says Pramath Sinha, one of the founders.
Sweet Spot
Perhaps there is a certain inevitability about private universities in higher education simply because of the sheer scale of investment required and the challenges that abound. As RK Pandey, president of NIIT University, puts it: “India’s higher education system faces challenges on three fronts: expansion, equity and excellence.” He adds there are other challenges, ranging from a low gross enrolment ratio (GER, or total enrolment at specific levels of education as a percentage of the population), inequitable access to education, and lack of quality research.
The government has set a target of 30% GER in higher education by 2020. Pandey says achieving that target — the GER currently is 18.8% — calls for an estimated investment of $190 billion. “Given the size of the investment required, the private sector needs to play a much larger role,” adds the NIIT University president.
Sinha of Ashoka University has a clear idea of his potential market — not those who want to study medicine, engineering, and commerce. “Some will go to Xavier’s and Stephen’s, they won’t come to us. But after this level, quality [of institutions] goes downhill. That’s the sweet spot we have,” adds Sinha, a former partner at McKinsey and founding dean of the Indian School of Business.
Four-year vs Three
The four-year undergraduate system is one of the decisive shifts being witnessed in the Indian higher education system. Although the intent and objective is to address some lacunae in the existing system, its success and failure will purely depend on its implementation.
One reason DPS’ Batra has chosen to look overseas for further education is that she feels she and her mates have become the guinea pig batch of the CBSE — the new system of CCE (continuous and comprehensive evaluation) started with them, class X boards were scrapped; and, now as the batch is entering college, DU is replacing the three-year system with a four-year undergrad programme. “In principle, the four-year programme is nice, but then we know that the first batch of every new system faces chaos. I don’t want that instability,” says Batra.
“It would have been ideal if considerable public debate had happened before implementing the system to avoid the present controversy,” says KR Sekar, partner at consultants Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
Amity University, Noida, a private university that admits 7,000 undergrads annually, is averse to the change. “The three-year degree is more than sufficient. One year of a student’s life is very valuable. Plus, there are additional costs: residential, and opportunity cost of not working among others, says Atul Chauhan, chancellor of Amity University.
The newer universities seem more open to accepting the fouryear system. Ashoka University, for instance, is looking at a four-year undergrad degree, with two years of general education and the other two for specialised education — just like the way it is in the US. “To be able to provide breadth through general education, you need time. In three years you cannot do what you want to do,” says Pramath Sinha.
SNU, too, feels four years is the right timeframe for a degree. It gives students adequate time to build a basic foundation in a range of subjects, and even have the opportunity to change their minds about subjects. “The four-year programme was not pre-conceived; it was the outcome of wanting to meet these objectives,” says SNU’s Nikhil Sinha.
Building a Base
DU vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh avers that “education needs a totally different approach”, and hence the four-year degree. “Indian universities and institutes of higher education are not in tune with Indian society,” he had said a few weeks ago.
The four-year degree has its advantages. “It will enhance quality of education and create better graduates. A four-year course gives students enough time to learn and grow. As there is a choice of opting out in two or three or four years, students can change course and ensure that they study what interests them too. Over time this will make a qualitative difference to graduates,” reckons Pai.
Manish Sabharwal, chairman of staffing firm TeamLease Services and founder of one of India’s first vocational education universities, also sees good coming out of this change. “DU is a lighthouse for Indian education and these changes should spark changes nationally. And frankly the fourth year is an option that I don’t anticipate most students will take. Few realise that half of US college enrolment is in twoyear associate degree programmes. Only 30% of these students go onto their four-year degrees,” he says.
Massification of higher education requires diversity; multiple on and off ramps will create flexibility that makes the current one size fits all redundant, Sabharwal adds.
However, the four-year degree is hardly the panacea for all ills of the education system. “There is nothing that prescribes that the US or the UK model is the best for India,” says George Joseph, assistant secretary at Yale University. The issues Indian education faces have to be sorted out in a unique and indigenous manner because the systems of governance, regulation and education are different in India, adds Joseph.
The New World
Last year in August, Indranjan Banerjee, 19, a BA English student at Shiv Nadar University, did what 54,000 students will attempt to do this year at DU — be a part of the fouryear undergrad degree. A student of ICSE board from Kolkata, Banerjee chose the university primarily because it offers a four-year degree.
“A four-year degree gives a lot of opportunity to research. In every course you do research and present papers. I would get to do an undergraduate thesis. No other university gives you that opportunity,” he says.
Nipun Thakurele, 20, a batch senior to Banerjee and doing his second year of BS, mathematics with a minor in economics, had got an 88.6% in class XII. A recipient of tuition-fee and hostel-fee waiver, he says: “The research work from day one has done wonders to my learning.”
In most undergraduate programmes in India, students do not do research. “However, private institutes can be progressive and more innovative because they are not burdened with having to follow the same set of regulations,” says Joseph, who is keenly watching the shift in the Indian education system. He hopes to see experimentation, competing models, three-year and four-year programmes along with non-rigid or set curriculum.
Money Matters
If fees for the new age universities run into lakhs, that’s because running high-quality institutes require resources. It’s not inexpensive to maintain world-class labs and hire world-class faculty. “We cannot apologise for the fact that highquality institutes require resources,” avers Joseph. Yale does not derive the majority of operating income from students. It has an endowment of $20-billion plus. A new university in India does not have that option, he says.
Anurag Behar, vice-chancellor of Azim Premji University (APU), a Bangalore-based private university, acknowledges that education is an enterprise that is hard to sustain financially. But trying to recoup operating costs from fees is not feasible, he says. “One has to recognise that the enterprise of
education cannot be sustained
from those who benefit from it. Over a period of time, you have to have a fund-raising engine. The new age universities are smart enough to do that,” explains Behar. He adds that one has to have a “degree of patience and you need around 10 years to see shoots of success”.
Established by the Azim Premji Foundation, APU is one of the few new institutes that is not in it for the money. “We should distinguish between two types of universities: one is philanthropic and the other has commercial intent,” says Behar. “The fact is nowhere in the world is a robust education sustainable with for-profit capital,” he claims.
For the moment, though, the new age private universities have other things to worry about. Pai lists out the three biggest challenges: autonomy, freedom from bad regulation and government control, and freedom to decide their own destiny. “All regulators seem bent on ensuring low-quality similar education all over India. They intend to cater to mediocre institutions that toe the line. Even the accreditation is inputbased not output-based,” says Pai.
Global Network
To understand the damage caused by bad regulations and centralised control he cites an example. At the time of Independence in 1947, Madras University, Bombay University, Calcutta University, Mysore University would have been among the top 200 universities of the world. Today after 50 years of the University Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education and government control through the Ministry of Human Resource Development, none of them figure in the top 200 and have only gone down, some into oblivion. “This is what centralised control and lack of autonomy have done to our universities,” laments Pai.
SNU’s Nikhil Sinha says the paucity of faculty has the potential to derail the best-laid plans of universities, new and old. “Like most institutes, we have fewer faculties than we want. We will not fill positions unless we have quality faculty,” he says.
His wish list for dealing with this scarcity is rather ambitious. He cites the example of China that has a programme for sending students abroad to do PhDs and come back and teach. They also send faculty abroad. “We need our government to think on those lines,” says Sinha. Partnerships too can help. “Institutes like Yale can work in India. Research collaborations are important as are faculty-exchange programmes,” adds the SNU vice-chancellor.
Ashish Dhawan, one of the cofounders of Ashoka University and founder and CEO of Central Square Foundation, an education-focused philanthropy fund, says building credibility by recruiting high-quality faculty and attracting talented students is the way to go. “We have access to world-class faculty and strong partnerships with globally renowned schools. For Ashoka, we will recruit from all over the world.” At last count, Ashoka University had sent out two offers to “very renowned faculty in the US for English literature”.
Faculty, however, can be a differentiator up to a point. After all, as Sabharwal says, just like war is too important to be left to generals, education is too important to be left only to teachers. The onus is on the new age universities to create a comprehensive experience that will convince students that — to paraphrase Einstein — their education is no longer interfering with their learning.
• :: Saumya Bhattacharya ETM130309
Aman (name changed on request) scored 90%. That evidently isn’t enough for the 17-year-old to dream of a career. And a life. The cut-off at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), University of Delhi’s (DU) bellwether for higher studies in commerce and economics, was 96.5% to 98.5% in 2012. At other perceived top colleges of India, it’s nothing less than 95%. If Aman thinks his life is ruined, it’s clearly because 90% isn’t going to get him admission to SRCC or any other of the country’s Tier I colleges.
While he will later learn in life that marks are not necessarily the most accurate barometer of success, unfortunately at the moment Aman may be right. And he’s not alone. There are tens of thousands of Indian students all over the country who aren’t assured of quality education not because they didn’t score top marks but simply because the Indian education system cannot accommodate so many overachievers. The bottom line: if you are not right up there at the top of the heap, you will miss out on quality
education. The other option is for parents to fork out a small fortune and send their children to universities abroad. It’s an option only for the elite.
If it’s not about cut-offs at universities it’s about those cut up with them. Ishita Batra, 18, is among the 7,231 students in India who have crossed the 95% threshold in their class XII results for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) this year. Batra, a student of Delhi Public School (DPS), RK Puram, scored a neat 95.6% in the science stream.
Lure of Foreign Lands
But it won’t be an Indian institute for her from hereon. After getting admission into half a dozen universities abroad, Batra has chosen to head to University of Pennsylvania to do a major in biology in a couple of months.
Given an option, she would have stayed back in India for her undergrad education. But Batra didn’t see any option. “Indian education is inflexible. And I don’t have much faith in how the four-year undergrad programme will be implemented by DU,” she says with a shrug. DU’s executive council has approved a shift from a three-year to a four-year undergraduate programme. At the time of writing, DU had begun the admission processes and sold over 90,000 forms, including all categories, in the first three days.
This shift in the cornerstone of undergraduate education is just one of the changes playing out on the landscape of Indian education. The DU move has polarised the country’s capital (more of that later), but less controversial — and arguably more promising — is a slow yet decisive shift that centres on the advent of quality education through private universities at the undergrad level. The shift is not without challenges, but if it comes through it promises to transform the education ecosystem in India.
Says TV Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education: “Students are now beginning to choose quality over lower fees, are looking for assured employability, have more choices than before and have more financial power to pay fees than before. We see the beginnings of a flight to quality. In engineering and management, many mediocre institutions are closing down and that is very good news.”
“Let’s face it,” adds Dhiraj Mathur, executive director at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consultancy, “Apart from the big universities like DU, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, etc, the standard of education in most government colleges is at best spotty. Private universities can play an important role in bridging the gap between demand and supply of quality education.” He adds that because of greater autonomy, the private brigade has more flexibility in designing innovative programmes, “including the semester system”.
For now, semesters are largely the privilege of the well-heeled, who can afford to step overseas for further learning. The cost of a year’s education at an Ivy League university is prohibitive at around $60,000, or upwards of 30 lakh. Batra was among the few lucky ones to get 60% financial aid at Penn. Still, with or without aid, more and more youngsters who are unable to get into the domestic top league are taking flight to the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and to some universities in Europe.
Sample these numbers from Princeton University, one of the Ivy League universities. The number of undergraduate students enrolled from India in the 2006-07 academic year was 14; that has gone up to 59 in 2012-13. At Yale University, too, there has been an increase in the number of undergraduates from India. “Our enrolment of undergraduate students from India has more than doubled from a decade ago,” says a university spokesperson.
Private Universities, Ahoy
For those who can’t afford lakhs of rupees, private universities are a sliver of hope. They won’t come cheap, either, compared to current fees in domestic universities of just 10,000 per year for some DU courses; but, at between 3 lakh and 5 lakh annually, they won’t be as exorbitant as the foreign ones, either.
“Private universities will play a significant role in meeting the demand and supply gap. Those who enrol students in thousands will make a big impact,” says Nikhil Sinha, vice-chancellor of Shiv Nadar University (SNU), which is in the third year of its maiden four-year undergrad degree programme.
But it’s not just about soaking in more students; as Sinha points out, the new age universities are better placed to provide “broad-based education, a combination of liberal arts and professional education”. Agrees PwC’s Mathur: “There is a growing awareness about the merits of a broad-based liberal arts programme. High-quality institutions like SNU are taking the lead in adopting this important innovation.”
“Private universities will lead the change over the next 10 years. They are more focused; being fee-based, they know they have to attract students and deliver value; [but] they need to have a good management to survive and grow,” adds Pai.
Ashoka University, which has not yet come into existence, has more than 1,00,000 likes on its Facebook page. The university will be a fullfledged liberal arts institute and begins session in June 2014. “At Ashoka University, we are talking about liberal education, which is the notion of combining specialisation and general education,” says Pramath Sinha, one of the founders.
Sweet Spot
Perhaps there is a certain inevitability about private universities in higher education simply because of the sheer scale of investment required and the challenges that abound. As RK Pandey, president of NIIT University, puts it: “India’s higher education system faces challenges on three fronts: expansion, equity and excellence.” He adds there are other challenges, ranging from a low gross enrolment ratio (GER, or total enrolment at specific levels of education as a percentage of the population), inequitable access to education, and lack of quality research.
The government has set a target of 30% GER in higher education by 2020. Pandey says achieving that target — the GER currently is 18.8% — calls for an estimated investment of $190 billion. “Given the size of the investment required, the private sector needs to play a much larger role,” adds the NIIT University president.
Sinha of Ashoka University has a clear idea of his potential market — not those who want to study medicine, engineering, and commerce. “Some will go to Xavier’s and Stephen’s, they won’t come to us. But after this level, quality [of institutions] goes downhill. That’s the sweet spot we have,” adds Sinha, a former partner at McKinsey and founding dean of the Indian School of Business.
Four-year vs Three
The four-year undergraduate system is one of the decisive shifts being witnessed in the Indian higher education system. Although the intent and objective is to address some lacunae in the existing system, its success and failure will purely depend on its implementation.
One reason DPS’ Batra has chosen to look overseas for further education is that she feels she and her mates have become the guinea pig batch of the CBSE — the new system of CCE (continuous and comprehensive evaluation) started with them, class X boards were scrapped; and, now as the batch is entering college, DU is replacing the three-year system with a four-year undergrad programme. “In principle, the four-year programme is nice, but then we know that the first batch of every new system faces chaos. I don’t want that instability,” says Batra.
“It would have been ideal if considerable public debate had happened before implementing the system to avoid the present controversy,” says KR Sekar, partner at consultants Deloitte Haskins & Sells.
Amity University, Noida, a private university that admits 7,000 undergrads annually, is averse to the change. “The three-year degree is more than sufficient. One year of a student’s life is very valuable. Plus, there are additional costs: residential, and opportunity cost of not working among others, says Atul Chauhan, chancellor of Amity University.
The newer universities seem more open to accepting the fouryear system. Ashoka University, for instance, is looking at a four-year undergrad degree, with two years of general education and the other two for specialised education — just like the way it is in the US. “To be able to provide breadth through general education, you need time. In three years you cannot do what you want to do,” says Pramath Sinha.
SNU, too, feels four years is the right timeframe for a degree. It gives students adequate time to build a basic foundation in a range of subjects, and even have the opportunity to change their minds about subjects. “The four-year programme was not pre-conceived; it was the outcome of wanting to meet these objectives,” says SNU’s Nikhil Sinha.
Building a Base
DU vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh avers that “education needs a totally different approach”, and hence the four-year degree. “Indian universities and institutes of higher education are not in tune with Indian society,” he had said a few weeks ago.
The four-year degree has its advantages. “It will enhance quality of education and create better graduates. A four-year course gives students enough time to learn and grow. As there is a choice of opting out in two or three or four years, students can change course and ensure that they study what interests them too. Over time this will make a qualitative difference to graduates,” reckons Pai.
Manish Sabharwal, chairman of staffing firm TeamLease Services and founder of one of India’s first vocational education universities, also sees good coming out of this change. “DU is a lighthouse for Indian education and these changes should spark changes nationally. And frankly the fourth year is an option that I don’t anticipate most students will take. Few realise that half of US college enrolment is in twoyear associate degree programmes. Only 30% of these students go onto their four-year degrees,” he says.
Massification of higher education requires diversity; multiple on and off ramps will create flexibility that makes the current one size fits all redundant, Sabharwal adds.
However, the four-year degree is hardly the panacea for all ills of the education system. “There is nothing that prescribes that the US or the UK model is the best for India,” says George Joseph, assistant secretary at Yale University. The issues Indian education faces have to be sorted out in a unique and indigenous manner because the systems of governance, regulation and education are different in India, adds Joseph.
The New World
Last year in August, Indranjan Banerjee, 19, a BA English student at Shiv Nadar University, did what 54,000 students will attempt to do this year at DU — be a part of the fouryear undergrad degree. A student of ICSE board from Kolkata, Banerjee chose the university primarily because it offers a four-year degree.
“A four-year degree gives a lot of opportunity to research. In every course you do research and present papers. I would get to do an undergraduate thesis. No other university gives you that opportunity,” he says.
Nipun Thakurele, 20, a batch senior to Banerjee and doing his second year of BS, mathematics with a minor in economics, had got an 88.6% in class XII. A recipient of tuition-fee and hostel-fee waiver, he says: “The research work from day one has done wonders to my learning.”
In most undergraduate programmes in India, students do not do research. “However, private institutes can be progressive and more innovative because they are not burdened with having to follow the same set of regulations,” says Joseph, who is keenly watching the shift in the Indian education system. He hopes to see experimentation, competing models, three-year and four-year programmes along with non-rigid or set curriculum.
Money Matters
If fees for the new age universities run into lakhs, that’s because running high-quality institutes require resources. It’s not inexpensive to maintain world-class labs and hire world-class faculty. “We cannot apologise for the fact that highquality institutes require resources,” avers Joseph. Yale does not derive the majority of operating income from students. It has an endowment of $20-billion plus. A new university in India does not have that option, he says.
Anurag Behar, vice-chancellor of Azim Premji University (APU), a Bangalore-based private university, acknowledges that education is an enterprise that is hard to sustain financially. But trying to recoup operating costs from fees is not feasible, he says. “One has to recognise that the enterprise of
education cannot be sustained
from those who benefit from it. Over a period of time, you have to have a fund-raising engine. The new age universities are smart enough to do that,” explains Behar. He adds that one has to have a “degree of patience and you need around 10 years to see shoots of success”.
Established by the Azim Premji Foundation, APU is one of the few new institutes that is not in it for the money. “We should distinguish between two types of universities: one is philanthropic and the other has commercial intent,” says Behar. “The fact is nowhere in the world is a robust education sustainable with for-profit capital,” he claims.
For the moment, though, the new age private universities have other things to worry about. Pai lists out the three biggest challenges: autonomy, freedom from bad regulation and government control, and freedom to decide their own destiny. “All regulators seem bent on ensuring low-quality similar education all over India. They intend to cater to mediocre institutions that toe the line. Even the accreditation is inputbased not output-based,” says Pai.
Global Network
To understand the damage caused by bad regulations and centralised control he cites an example. At the time of Independence in 1947, Madras University, Bombay University, Calcutta University, Mysore University would have been among the top 200 universities of the world. Today after 50 years of the University Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education and government control through the Ministry of Human Resource Development, none of them figure in the top 200 and have only gone down, some into oblivion. “This is what centralised control and lack of autonomy have done to our universities,” laments Pai.
SNU’s Nikhil Sinha says the paucity of faculty has the potential to derail the best-laid plans of universities, new and old. “Like most institutes, we have fewer faculties than we want. We will not fill positions unless we have quality faculty,” he says.
His wish list for dealing with this scarcity is rather ambitious. He cites the example of China that has a programme for sending students abroad to do PhDs and come back and teach. They also send faculty abroad. “We need our government to think on those lines,” says Sinha. Partnerships too can help. “Institutes like Yale can work in India. Research collaborations are important as are faculty-exchange programmes,” adds the SNU vice-chancellor.
Ashish Dhawan, one of the cofounders of Ashoka University and founder and CEO of Central Square Foundation, an education-focused philanthropy fund, says building credibility by recruiting high-quality faculty and attracting talented students is the way to go. “We have access to world-class faculty and strong partnerships with globally renowned schools. For Ashoka, we will recruit from all over the world.” At last count, Ashoka University had sent out two offers to “very renowned faculty in the US for English literature”.
Faculty, however, can be a differentiator up to a point. After all, as Sabharwal says, just like war is too important to be left to generals, education is too important to be left only to teachers. The onus is on the new age universities to create a comprehensive experience that will convince students that — to paraphrase Einstein — their education is no longer interfering with their learning.
• :: Saumya Bhattacharya ETM130309
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