EducationWorld June 2018

Given the extraordinary ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic diversity of India, one would expect its citizens to be well-mannered, tolerant and civil. After all, when citizens have to brush shoulders, transact business and interact socially with people from entirely different cultural and religious backgrounds on an everyday basis, they have to necessarily learn to tread […]

Thanks for focusing a spotlight on India’s emerging private universities in the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2018-19 (EW May). Some of them offer excellent education — notwithstanding the whimsical and arbitrary diktats of the government and its regulatory agencies. Deemed or otherwise, some of these private universities have eclipsed state-run varsities with higher NAAC […]

The US-based college board (estb.1900), which conducts the globally famous SAT (formerly Scholastic Aptitude Test) that determines admission into colleges and universities in the US, UK, Singapore and Canada, has announced a new India-specific initiative. Under this initiative ten highly ranked private universities in India and the US have formed an alliance to help India’s […]

On April 24, the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC, estb.1956), the apex Soviet-style body empowered to licence, monitor, and provide discretionary grants-in-aid to all non-technical institutions of higher education, released a list of unrecognised, self-styled universities unauthorisedly operating in contravention of the UGC Act, 1956, and merrily issuing degrees, diplomas and certificates. 

This is not the […]

Student council elections in college and university campuses of Maharashtra (pop.114 million), will be held after a gap of 23 years in the forthcoming academic year 2018-19. While student leaders are jubilant about elections being permitted after an interregnum of two decades-plus — not a few leaders of national parties including Congress, BJP, CPM among […]

On the eve of commencement of the new academic (school) year 2018-19 which begins in June, a huge row has erupted over a suspected high price mark-ups textbooks racket. 

On May 21, a large crowd of parents of the vintage Baldwin group of three schools — Baldwin Boys High School, Baldwin Girls High School (estb.1880) and Baldwin […]

A major drive of the  AIADMK government in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) to ensure admissions under s.12 (1) (c) of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 (which mandates reservation of 25 percent capacity in private, unaided non-minority primary schools for children from socio-economically disadvantaged households in their neighbourhood) in the […]

Public education and health, widely accepted as prerequisites of economic development, were grossly neglected during the 34-year uninterrupted rule of the CPM-led Left Front government (1977-2011) in West Bengal. The consequence is that the country’s then most industrially and academically advanced state transformed into the most backward following a massive — and continuing — flight of […]

“Universities have existed since the times of Plato’s Academia and one of the fundamental activities of all of these institutions has been to question the yet ‘unquestioned’. But what we observe globally (including India) in recent times is that this very act of questioning by the universities is itself being questioned.” 

Sumit Howladar, assistant professor, Jagran Lakecity […]

CHANDIGARH, MAY 10. The state government formally inaugurated 31 undergraduate colleges for women students which will be completed in the academic year 2018-19, said Ram Bilas Sharma, education minister, speaking at a function in the city.

“Till the time their construction is complete, the colleges will function from vacant buildings of government schools or other organisations starting […]

MUMBAI, MAY 18. The Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB) celebrated its inclusion in the Top 50 Global MBAs for Finance league table of the London-based Financial Times by ‘ringing the bell’ at the Bombay Stock Exchange. ISB continues to be the only Indian B-School in the Top 50 FT Finance MBA global rankings. Adi Godrej, […]

Back in Jhajjar (Haryana) from the XXI Commonwealth Games 2018, which concluded in Gold Coast, Australia amid a blaze of colour and pageantry on April 15, teenage sharpshooting sensation Manu Bhaker (16) brought home a gold medal after besting 25 shooters from 18 countries in the women’s 10 metre Air Pistol event. But that’s only one […]

A bio-informatics postgraduate  of Rohtak’s Maharishi Dayanand University and a Ph D scholar at the Complex Systems, Big Data and Informatics Initiative of New Zealand’s vintage Lincoln University (LU, estb.1878) in Christchurch, Pooja Pawar is making an impact within scientific communities with her breakthrough research in developing vaccines for drug-resistant tuberculosis (aka TB). New Zealand’s not-for-profit OSPRI […]

I’m a final year BA student interested in a professional acting career. Which institutions offer training programmes and what are their eligibility requirements? — Sarla Patil, Mumbai

The Film & Television Institute of India, Pune offers a two-year postgraduate diploma in acting. Graduate students are eligible to write the FTII entrance examination followed by a personal interview. […]

Change is invariably the result and objective of all revolutions — peaceful and bloody. Change is also the outcome when revolutionary technologies disrupt age-old businesses and traditional education systems. This is what we are witnessing today on a global scale with pioneering new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D printing. […]

River of Life, River of Death: the Ganges & India’s future, Victor Mallet; Oxford University Press; Rs.550, Pages 344

Victor Mallet is the latest in a string of visitors over the centuries who have evocatively recorded their fascination for India’s life-giving River Ganges. They include Xuanzang in the 7th century, who was in raptures of its waters, “dark blue […]

By the Grace of God: An Autobiography, Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil, Kristu Jyoti Publications; Rs. 130, Pages 160

On March 4, 2016, a group of terrorists barged into a care-home for the destitute run by Catholic nuns in the poverty-stricken, war-torn Middle East country of Yemen. They shot 16 people, including four nuns and several locals dead, […]