EducationWorld January 14

Could a university ever adopt the Google business model and offer tuition for free? This may seem an ever more unlikely prospect as governments the world over struggle to finance the growing demand for higher education ” often levying tuition fees to plug the gap.
But the president of Austral University, a private institution in […]

The determination of the British government to reduce immigration may be hampering aspirations to attract more international students, but Australia™s newly elected right-of-centre government has no such hang-ups. Indeed, Tony Abbott™s Liberal-National Coalition, which emerged victorious from September™s general election, has been highly critical of the previous Labor government for substantially raising visa fees and financial […]

In November 2012, David Willetts, the universities and science minister, signed an agreement with his Indonesian counterpart that struck eight new partnerships between UK universities and the most highly regarded Indonesian institutions. Cranfield University and Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB) are creating a double-degree Masters programme in engineering and technology, for example, while Newcastle University and […]

The American social compact may be under siege, with conservatives deriding the idea of underwriting other people™s healthcare and insisting that government spending be cut. But a proposal that graduates pay for the university education of students who come after them is gaining unexpected traction.
The idea, Pay It Forward, was formulated by a Seattle […]

China boasts more top universities than any other emerging economy, according to a ranking that looks beyond the usual suspects in global higher education league tables. The inaugural Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings consider universities in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, as well as 17 other œemerging economies.
Peking University tops the table, with Tsinghua […]

Character and potential assessment is a capability severely deficient in the sawdust caesars strutting the stage of Indian industry. Despite all their claims to professionalism, the great majority of promotions and fancy designations in India Inc continue to be awarded on considerations of nepotism, kinship, connections and sycophancy. In a society where top political appointments […]

Gandhi Before India by Ramachandra Guha; Penguin India; Price: Rs.899; 673 pp
Arguably contemporary India™s most eminent historian who has sparked a renaissance in the study of history in the subcontinent, Ramachandra Guha is evidently certain that Mohandas Karamchand (aka Mahatma) Gandhi™s enlightened ideals continue to inspire people to fight against injustice and promote world […]

2013 was another uneventful year for Indian education. With the thoroughly disgraced Congress-led UPA-II government fire fighting a spate of corruption scandals, unremitting inflation and devaluation of the rupee, and the opposition BJP blocking legislative business in Parliament, as all political parties gear up for general election 2014, education and welfare of the world’s largest […]

Most parents are responsible adults who want the best for their children. So why do coaches, umpires and sports teachers have to deal with so many crazy sports parents?
The first reason is that parents seldom realise the harm they can do in the name of love. Although most parents would never think of punching […]

Chennai-based dancer couple Kokila Hariram and Goutham Sundararajan are co-founders of the Academy of Modern Danse (AMD, estb. 1998), the city™s first formal Western dance school which offers training and practice in classical ballet, jazz, tap, hip-hop, Latin ballroom and salsa, conducts examinations and awards certification in all genres. Kokila has a BFA (perfo-rming arts) […]

Neeta Lulla, the popular Mumbai-based fashion and costumes designer, has partnered with Bollywood film director Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods International, Mumbai (estb. 2006) to promote the Whistling Woods International Neeta Lulla School of Fashion (WWINL), of which she is the founder-dean. During a career spanning 28 years, Lulla has designed costumes and ensembles for over 350 […]

Aditya Jhajharia, a science alumnus of St. Xavier™s College, Kolkata, is the business head (East India) of Patiala-based Inizio Edutech. Founded in 2009 by Pritish K. Singh, Dhruv Kalia and Nakul Jain, Inizio Edutech provides new-age learning to students through educational tours and school-based courses. Over the past four years, it has established close links […]

Driven by a need to lend a helping hand to the country™s neglected and educationally deprived children, after working in India™s booming IT (information technology) industry for 18 years with blue-chip corporates including Wipro, i-flex, Deustche Software and HCL, Latha Srinivasan, a software engineer and business management graduate of Bharathiar University, Coimbatore and U-21 Global, […]

Narendra Desirazu is promoter of the Bangalore-based Jennard Galleries, a start-up which offers innovative art education and learning programmes to educational institutions, enabling students to study and analyse copyrighted reprints of great works of art from around the world.

Newspeg. In the seven months since Jennard launched commercial operations in April last year, several high-profile private […]

A chemical engineering and business management graduate of the blue- chip IIT-Bombay and IIM-Ahmedabad, K. Sharat Chandra (34) is co-founder of the Hyderabad-based Butterfly Edufields Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2008), an education venture which designs and markets innovative hands-on science and maths learning kits for K-10 schools. The company™s in-school and after-school learning-by-doing kits are being […]

After several decades as a student and teacher in Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, the UK, Switzerland and India, during which I met parents from all walks of life and an enormous diversity of backgrounds, I am amazed by the astonishing similarity of their expectations in the matter of children™s schooling.
What surprises me most is […]

I™m a commerce graduate with three years work experience. To better my job prospects, I want to pursue an MBA degree through distance learning. What are my options?
Nilima Swamy, Bangalore
A full-time MBA has greater value in the job market. However if it™s not possible for you to enroll in a full-time programme, a […]

With Mars Orbiter having created history by vaulting India into the elite club of outer space nations, the demand for aerospace engineers is likely to zoom in the near future Mars Orbiter, India’s first interplanetary mission engineered by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has created history with India joining an elite club of outer space […]

Dilip Thakore interviewed Sanjeev Bolia, the peripatetic promoter-chairman and chief executive of Afairs Exhibitions and Media Pvt. Ltd (AEM/Afairs) over the telephone in Kolkata and Kathmandu. Excerpts:

How satisfied are you with the growth and development of Afairs?
The company has achieved a lot during the past 20 years, but there™s a lot more to achieve. […]

A substantial share of the credit for leading the charge of India™s legacy boarding and new genre international schools into neighbouring countries and further afield in the new millennium, should accrue to the Kolkata-based Afairs Exhibitions and Media Pvt. Ltd. Dilip Thakore reports
For over half a century, successive governments in New Delhi have made […]

Over three years ago, when the Lok Sabha passed the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, almost no one noticed the anomaly of its having to guarantee what was already guaranteed in the Constitution. The reason why the Lok Sabha felt it necessary to do so was, however, obvious: 59 years after […]

The newest of the three DPS schools promoted by the KKEC Trust, this K-12 school constructed on a 16-acre plot with superior infrastructure, has attained full capacity in quick time. 

Over the past 64 years, since it was registered to provide excellent and holistic K-12 education, the Delhi Public Schools Society (estb. 1937) has promoted 190 […]

Bihar
Indo-French cooperation accords
During a 30-minute interaction with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in Patna on December 3, French ambass-ador to India Francois Richier offered cooperation in higher education, particularly by way of student and faculty exchange programmes with the new Nalanda International University and National Institute of Technology (NIT), Patna.
According to Richier, […]

“His tireless struggle for freedom earned him the respect of the world. His humility, passion and humanity earned him their love.”
Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, mourning the loss of his iconic predecessor Nelson Mandela who died on December 5 (Time, December 23)

“If Narendra Modi becomes the prime minister of India, I will stay […]

For the great majority of 250,000 engineering students graduating from Tamil Nadu™s 560 engineering colleges in May this year, hopes of getting remunerative employment in the IT (information technology) industry are dimming. During the boom years of the industry (2003-08), HRD managers of IT companies descended in droves on college campuses to recruit stud-ents. But […]

With placement offers from major IT companies, the first batch of students from the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) established in 2008 in three rural regions of Andhra Pradesh (pop. 84 million) ” Basar (Telangana), Nuzvid (Andhra) and Idupulapaya (Rayalaseema) ” are all set to start their dream jobs when they complete their B.Tech […]

A series of about turns by the Congress government in Karnataka on the issue of student admissions into the state™s 250 professional i.e. medical, engineering, dental, etc colleges has created a crisis in professional education in the state.
On December 14, the state government led by chief minister M. Siddaramaiah announced an intent to implement […]

To the surprise of academics cynical about the promises of the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government which was swept to power in West Bengal in 2011 ending 34 years of rule of the Communist Party of India (CPM)-led Front government, efforts of the past two years to restore Kolkata™s Presidency University (estb. 1817) to its […]

Although the western sea-board state of Gujarat (pop. 62.7 million) is endowed with an entrepreneurial and international trading tradition of several millennia, it has not been able to overtake  neighbouring Maharashtra as the country™s most industrialised state. Knowledgable observers of the national development scenario believe that a major factor behind Gujarat being obliged to play […]

Aspiring would-be school teachers who passed the state government™s Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) in 2011 have become infamous in Lucknow, the admin capital of Uttar Pradesh (pop. 200 million), India™s most populous, under-governed and arguably, most educationally backward state. They have regularly been protesting on the city™s roads, blocking traffic and indulging in anti-social behaviour.

The latest CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) audit report on the University of Mumbai (UoM, estb. 1857) indicts the varsity™s administration for gross mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, apathetic governance, and has exposed several administrative lapses.
Conducted between January-March last year and accessed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by public interest activist […]

An unofficial turf war waged covertly between the University Grants Commission (UGC, estb. 1953) which is mandated to supervise, regulate, fund and subsidise university education countrywide and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE, estb. 1987), has been decisively won by the former.
Following a Supreme Court verdict earlier this year which stripped AICTE […]

Thanks for the EW India Preschool Rankings 2013 (EW December). The league tables   are very informative and useful to parents looking to enroll their children in quality preschools across the country. In Delhi in particular, there are so many nurseries opening every other day that it™s difficult for parents to distinguish the best.
In fact […]

The dramatic political debut of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the recently concluded Delhi state assembly election, and the rout of the Congress party in the assembly elections held concurrently in the Hindi heartland states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, are landmark events in the troubled history of post-independence India, a sorry narrative […]