EducationWorld December 09

“We must find ways of attracting the best talent as faculty in our premier institutions. We today face difficulty in finding top level professors and lecturers in the newly created IITs, IISERs and other such insti-tutions. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to persist and I urge all of you to work to address these problems of deficiency in the quality of teaching in our schools, in our colleges, and in our universities.” Prime minister Manmohan Singh at the National Education Day celebrations in Delhi (November 11) “Our experience with large Indian construction companies suggests that workers typically do actual work for only 20 percent of their total time.” Prashant Gupta and Thomas Netzer, authors of a Mckinsey study on infrastructure sector opportunities in Business Today (November 15) “A year after 26/11, perhaps it is time to reflect on a more serious question. Who speaks for Bombay? Is it the politicians we elect? Is it Thackeray? Is it the rent-a-quote buffoons on TV? Or is it a silent majority that never gets heard? But of course, that question will never get answered.” Well-known journalist and commentator Vir Sanghvi in Mint Lounge (November 21) “Universities here are in a mess. I dont want any controversy on our university campuses. There are complaints of harassment and corruption too. Students are committing suicide. Im determined to put an end to this. I cannot tolerate this.” H.R. Bhardawaj, Karnataka governor and chancellor of all the states universities, in Times of India (November 22) “Indias killer roads account for more deaths than any other single cause, from terrorism to natural disasters. Every hour, 13 people die due to road accidents, the highest in the world.” Mihir Srivastava in a cover story on road accidents in India Today (November 23) “What was done to the economic policy in 1991 should be done to the education policy now to improve and expand higher education.” G. Vishwanathan, chancellor of Vellore Institute of Technology in The Hindu (November 30)

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After graduation I plan to enrol in an MBA programme with specialisation in human resources (HR). Do all business schools offer HR as a specialisation? What are my career prospects in this field?Nalini Sawant, Pune All prominent B-schools offer HR as a specialisation. With manage-ment of human capital becoming increasingly important in all organi-sations, demand for HR professionals is growing continuously. If you enjoy human interaction, problem solving, thinking out-of-the-box and are happy in organisational environments, you are suited to qualify as an HR professional. HR managers supervise all personnel-related administration activities, policies, and develop and implement employee training initiatives and progra-mmes. Start-up pay packages depend on the reputation of the B-school from which you graduate, and the size and reputation of the employer organisation. Im a third year LLB student of ILS Law College, Pune. Though Im reading for a law degree, Im not interested in practising law and want to explore other options. My areas of interest are English, economics, and geography. Please advise. Durba Shome, Pune You could work as a private consultant of a law firm, in the corporate sector as an admin manager, legal advisor, in legal process outsourcing, in technical translations and writing. ILS, Pune is one of Indias most prestigious law colleges and upon graduation your job prospects will be good. Moreover if you want to enhance your employability options in the corporate sector, you could sign up for the distance education Master of business law programme offered by the National Law School of India University, Bangalore (www.nls.ac.in). Another career option you could explore is that of company secretary. Your law background will be useful as it is the company secretarys job to ensure that companies comply with the numerous legal formalities required. It is mandatory for every company with a paid-up share capital of above Rs.5 crore to appoint a company secretary. My son has completed his BE degree in computer science and wants to pursue the MBA in media and entertainment offered by Manipal University, Bangalore. The second year of the MBA degree programme will be conducted at Whistling Woods International Institute in Film City, Mumbai. Whats your assessment of this MBA programme? Dinesh Mahajan, Hubli It seems such a waste that your son spent four years completing his computer science engineering degree programme when he wanted a career in media. He could have read for a bachelors in mass communication followed by an MBA in media and entertainment. However, the MBA programme in question seems to be good as Manipal University is well-reputed for offering high quality professional education. Whistling Woods has also built itself a fine reputation for training students for careers in film production, direction, acting, etc. Im in class X (science) and plan on qualifying as an engineer. Whats the difference between BE and B.Tech degrees? What are the eligibility criteria for admission into these study programmes? Subhash Pillai, Bangalore Bachelor of engineering (be) and Bachelor of technology (B.Tech) are both four-year undergraduate progra-mmes. Some universities/institutes award…

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Americas Harvard University remains top of the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings for the sixth year running. But the UKs University of Cambridge is now second, pushing Yale University into third place. Fourth place is taken by University College London, up from seventh last year. Fifth place is shared by Imperial College London, up from sixth, and the University of Oxford, which has slipped from fourth spot last year.Despite fierce competition, the UK continues to punch well above its weight. We are second only to the US, which spends twice as much as we do as a proportion of national income, and we are closing the gap, says Steve Smith, president of Universities UK. But he adds: It is clear that countries such as China will continue to invest heavily in their higher education systems, so we cannot presume that we will automatically maintain this leading position. But the US overall dominance of world higher education appears to be slipping: it has 32 universities in the top 100 this year, down from 37 last year. Four US institutions have dropped out of the top 200, giving it a total of 54 that make the grade, down from 58 last year. The UK has 29 institutions in the top 200. Japan has 11 institutions in the top 200, up from ten last year, and its representation in the top 100 has increased from four to six. Mainland China has maintained its position, with six institutions in the top 200. South Korea also increased its representation in the full list, with four institutions included in the ranking compared with three last year. Its best-placed institution, Seoul National University, rose from joint 50th to joint 47th. However only two of Indias 431 universities and 21,000 colleges — IIT-Bombay (163) and IIT-Delhi (181) — made it into the latest THE-QS top 200 league table. Philanthropists wings clipped They were hailed by politicians as pioneers who would turn around underperforming schools with their entrepreneurial spirit. But the days of tycoons being allowed to sponsor new academies on their own will end under controversial plans announced by the Labour government. Any individual, charity or business that does not have first-hand educational experience will be barred from becoming the sole sponsor of an academy. Instead, they will be forced to have a co-sponsor or partner that can demonstrate a track record of improving schools. Ed Balls, schools secretary, insists the development, part of an accreditation scheme for sponsors, will lead to the selection of best possible providers. But it marks a fundamental shift away from the original academies policy, which argued that outside organisations were needed to inject a fresh ethos into poorly performing schools. Early backers from the world of business included courier magnate Sir Clive Bourne, sponsor of the highly successful Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, east London; Sir David Garrard, a retired property developer who backed Bexley Business Academy, Kent; and Lord Harris, former chairman of Carpetright, who sponsors a chain of nine academies…

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And what was the minotaur? The ten-year-olds scribble their answer onto tiny whiteboards and hold them up for the teacher to see. Once each has got a nod, they repeat together: half-man, half-bull.By the time these fifth-graders at the Basis School in Scottsdale, Arizona, reach 8th grade they will have the option of taking Advanced Placement (AP) exams, standardised nationally to test high-school students for college entry. By the 9th grade, they must do so. As a result, says Michael Block, the schools co-founder, our students are two years ahead of Arizona and California schools and one year ahead of the east coast. But that, he emphasises, is not the yardstick he and his wife Olga use. Instead, their two Basis schools, one in Tucson and this one in suburban Phoenix, explicitly compete with the best schools in the world — South Koreas in maths, or Finlands in classics. They had the idea after Olga Block came to Arizona from her native Czech Republic, looked for a school for her daughter and was horrified by the mediocrity and low expectations of American public schools. So they decided to establish a world-standard school in the desert, says Michael Block. They started the Tucson campus in 1998 and added the Scottsdale one recently. On both occasions they had to overcome fierce resistance, as anybody must who takes on Americas unionised and sclerotic public school system. But they persevered. Their schools have charters to receive public money, so they cannot charge tuition fees or select the best students as private schools can. Instead, they have hired the best teachers they can find, many from Ivy League universities. They give them autonomy in the classroom, but then hold them accountable for meeting AP standards. Its working. The Basis schools rank at or near the top in most surveys of American public schools. One part of a documentary about America falling hopelessly behind China and India in education features Basis as the rare exception. Politicians from Newt Gingrich on the right to Al Shrapton on the left have taken an interest. Craig Barrett, a former boss of Intel, sat in on a chemistry class and donated about $500,000 for teachers bonuses on the spot. Every community should have a Basis school, he says. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)

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School textbooks in China have a habit of bending the truth to suit Communist Party dogma or to reinforce moral messages. Rarely does anyone challenge them. Exams require rote learning, and children are not encouraged to question received wisdom. A group of 20 or so teachers from across China, however, has recently caused a stir by pointing out some mistakes.Their efforts, widely reported in the official press, have steered clear of politically sensitive issues such as the partys own record. Indeed the errors they have focused on sound little more than nitpicks. They question, for example, a commonly told tale (not just in China), that Thomas Edison, who was later to invent the light bulb, supposedly helped a doctor illuminate an operation performed on his mother by manipulating candles and mirrors. In Chinese schools, however, the dividing line between historical fiction and history can easily be confused. Children are not taught to make a distinction. As a result, students lose the ability to look for and identify mistakes, says Leng Yubin, one of the teachers campaigning for a textbook purge. The press has quoted comparisons of these errors to the adulteration of milk with toxic melamine, which poisoned tens of thousands of infants last year. Chinas prime minister, Wen Jiabao, perhaps unwittingly stirred the debate recently when he visited a Beijing high school. After sitting at the back of a class, he pointed out a mistake. A textbook described the provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu as in north China, whereas they are officially in north-western China. Why, asked one widely circulated commentary, did it take the prime minister to point out such an error? The publishing house reportedly retorted that geographically speaking, north China is correct. Such brushes with orthodoxy are unlikely to make much headway. Occasional reports have surfaced in the official press in recent years that Mao Zedong did not, contrary to widespread belief, declare on October 1, 1949 in Tiananmen Square that the Chinese people had stood up. (He said something like it at a less dramatic ceremony a few days earlier.) But during recent 60th anniversary celebrations of communist Chinas founding, several reports in state controlled newspapers revived the old myth. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)

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Arab world falling behind issue of science, the weekly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was devoted to research into ‘Ardi or Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million-year-old hominid species whose discovery deepens understanding of human evolution. These latest studies suggest, among other things, that rather than descending from a closely related species such as the chimpanzee, the hominid branch parted earlier than previously thought from the common ancestral tree.In much of the Arab world, coverage of the research took a different spin. American Scientists Debunk Darwin, exclaimed the headline in al-Masry al-Youm, Egypts leading independent daily. Ardi Refutes Darwins Theory, chimed the website of al-Jazeera, the regions most-watched television channel. Scores of comments from readers celebrated this news as a blow to Western materialism and a triumph for Islam. Two or three lonely readers wrote in to complain that the report had inaccurately presented the findings of the research. The response to Ardis unearthing was not surprising. According to surveys, barely a third of Egyptian adults have ever heard of Charles Darwin and just 8 percent think there is any evidence to back his famous theory. The strength of religious belief among Arabs partly explains their reluctance to accept the facts of evolution. Until recent reforms, state primary schools in Saudi Arabia devoted 31 percent of classroom time to religion, compared with just 20 percent for mathematics and science. Such choices carry a cost that goes beyond ignorance of Darwin. Arab countries now spend as much or more on education, as a share of GDP, than the world average. They have made great strides in eradicating illiteracy, boosting university enrolment and reducing gaps in education between the sexes. But the gap in the quality of education between Arabs and other people at a similar level of development is still frightening. The most rigorous comparative study of education systems, a survey called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) that comes out every four years, revealed in its latest report (2007) that out of 48 countries tested, all 12 participating Arab countries fell below the average. More disturbingly, less than 1 percent of students aged 12-13 in ten Arab countries reached an advanced benchmark in science, compared with 32 percent in Singapore and 10 percent in the United States. Other comparative measures are equally alarming. A listing of the worlds top 500 universities, compiled annually by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, includes three South African and six Israeli universities, but not a single Arab one. Well aware that their school systems are doing badly, Arab governments have been scrambling to improve. In an attempt to leapfrog the slow process of curriculum reform and teacher training, many have taken the easy route of encouraging private schools. In Qatar, for instance, the share of students in private education leapt from 30 percent to more than 60 percent between 1999 and 2006, according to the UNs Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). Syria has licensed some 20 private universities since…

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