EducationWorld March 10

The need for a more expansive and high-quality education system in India is well-known. Accordingly, the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry has embarked on an ambitious programme of education reform. However by the ministrys own internal estimate, the gross allocation to education in the Eleventh Plan (2007-12) covers only 20 percent of the total investment required. This strengthens the case for greater private sector participation. Given that consumer spend on education is expected to grow eight-fold over the next two decades, the size of opportunity for private players in education is substantial.Currently, the private sector plays three roles in Indian education. Firstly it plays a direct role in the formal education sector comprising K-12 schools and higher education institutions (colleges and universities). In K-12 education, most private schools, except for those affiliated with offshore examination boards, are bound by a ‘not-for-profit diktat. There is relatively greater freedom in higher education though operational control on fees, curriculum, student intake etc are stringent. The second role discharged by private sector education entrepreneurs or edupreneurs is in the informal sector made up of non-compulsory educa-tion and training institutions — pre-schools, career training institutes and coaching classes. Unlike the formal sector, the informal sector is not subjected to control on operations or the right to earn profit. The third space available to edupreneurs is that of vendor to the formal and informal education sectors. Here, players provide various products and services e.g books, stationery, e-learning solutions etc, to formal and informal sector enterprises. In this segment too, financial and operational constraints dont apply. In the US, private institutions tutor 11 percent and 26 percent of students enroled in school and higher education respectively. These independent private institutions enjoy high degree of financial and operational autonomy. For-profit private institutions in the US are expanding their enrolments at 10 percent per annum as compared to public institutions which are experiencing 1 percent growth — an indicator of the value addition that private edupreneurs are creating for their customers. There is another niche model of private participation in US school education. School districts selectively outsource the various services associated with the running of public schools to education management organisations (EMOs). The prospect of leveraging the efficiency of the private sector to improve delivery of public education is the rationale for the emergence of EMOs. While EMOs have had limited success in the US thus far, a similar model has been far more successful in Sweden. In this model, the government funds private school ventures drawing benchmark data on educational spends incurred in public institutions in the same locality. The private body complies with broad guidelines and drives efficiency to make profits. Today, this phenomenon of ‘school voucher programmes caters to more than 10 percent of the Swedish population. These examples indicate the possibility of two high-potential roles for private players in the formal education sector in India — a ‘direct independent role of operating institutions and a ‘collaborative role of running institutions in the PPP (public-private…

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Im in second year B.Sc (microbiology) and interested in a career in virology. Which institutes offer this study programme and what are my career prospects?Sridhar Raghavan, Chennai M.Sc degree programmes in virology are offered by the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh (http://pgimer.nic.in); Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati (www.svuniv-ersity.in); National Institute of Virology, Pune (http:icmr.nic.in/pininstitute/niv.htm) and University of Pune (www.unipune.ernet.in). You can also pursue research or further studies in virology after postgraduation in microbiology. Qualified virologists work in academic, industrial and government research institutes or health agencies (developing new drugs or vaccines). They investigate disease outbreaks and are employed in government health departments. Virologists can also be employed as teachers in colleges/ universities or the World Health Organisation. In addition, virologists can use their knowledge to pursue careers as science writers or reporters, in business administration, or law especially involving the pharmaceutical industry. After graduating in the liberal arts next year I want to enrol for a postgraduate degree in mass communication. Im keen on working in corporate communications. Please advise. Radhika Nair, Bangalore Corporate communications is a dynamic field with a variety of challenging and interesting career paths including media relations, events planning, public relations, accounts management and internal communi-cations. You should also consider acquiring an MBA in communications management or advertising and communications management for direct recruitment through campus placement. Please provide information on institutions offering postgrad programmes in logistics and supply chain management. Im currently in my second year B.Com. Nalini Gupta, Mumbai Among the reputed institutions offering this study programme are AMET University (www.ametunivac.in) which offers an MBA in shipping and logistics management; Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management, Kolkata (www.iiswbm. edu) which offers a postgrad diploma in public systems management with specialisation in transportation and logistics management. The Symbiosis Institute of International Business, Pune (www.siib.ac.in) offers a postgrad diploma in international business management with specialisation in supply chain management, and the University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (www.upes.ac.in) offers an MBA degree in logistics and supply management. Keep track of admission notifications in local dailies for leads on other institutions. Prospects are good in this career especially if you graduate from a reputed B-school/institution. After completing M.Com with specialisation in marketing, what are my job prospects? Avinash Sood, New Delhi You should apply for marketing jobs across all industries including banking, insurance, retail, fast moving consumer goods etc. Though you may not be able to get the openings usually offered to MBA graduates from reputed business schools, you could be employed in organisations where you can learn on-the-job and improve your career prospects. Further education could be in marketing management either as a part-time student after two-three years of work experience, or in the full-time programme of a reputed business school. I want to pursue a Ph D programme. Please advise. Swati Ganguly, Kolkata Ph d programmes are offered by most universities. Students are expected to write a substantial thesis based on original research. The thesis is usually related to your postgrad…

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Unlike many of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free that have sought refuge in America, the Romeike family comes from a comfortable place: Bissingen an der Teck, a town in south-western Germany. Yet on January 26 an American immigration judge granted the Romeikes — a piano teacher, his wife and five children — political asylum, accepting their case that difficulties with home schooling their children created reasonable fear of persecution.Under Germanys stringent rules, home schooling is allowed only in exceptional circumstances. Before emigrating, Mr and Mrs Romeike had been fined Euro 12,000 (Rs.7.57 lakh); policemen had arrived at their house and forcibly taken their children to school. The Romeikes feared that the youngsters might soon be removed by the state. In September 2006 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Germany was within its rights to follow this approach. Schools represented society, it judged, and it was in the childrens interest to become part of that society. The parents right to raise their offspring did not go as far as depriving their children of the social experience of school. Despite its illegality, home schooling in Germany is becoming more popular. Thomas Spiegler, a sociologist at Friedensau Adventist University, a Protestant theological college, reckons that 600 to 1,000 children are being taught at home. He wants Germany to rethink its approach and look at regulated home-schooling regimes elsewhere in Europe. In Sweden, for example, parents must apply annually for permission to teach their children at home. Two years ago the authorities revoked that permission for Lisa Angerstig, an MBA-holding mother-of-four. They have threatened her with a fine of SKr10,000 (about Rs.63,700). Now new legislation is pending that would make home schooling even harder. Dominic Johansson, a seven-year-old, has been in state foster care since June 2009 — in order to stop his parents home schooling him, campaigners say, though officials cite other issues as well. In Britain home schooling has become more popular, but worries about the risk of abuse have prompted calls for mandatory inspections and tougher rules, including the right for officials to enter a home and quiz a home-schooled child in the parents absence. The Romeikes lawyer is Mike Donnelly, director of international relations for the Home School Legal Defence Association, a group based in Virginia. He cites research showing that home-schooled children tend to excel both academically and socially in later life. But that will not convince people who believe it is the states duty to ensure that children mix with others, and learn what everyone else learns about thorny topics such as evolution and sex. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)

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A strange new world in which students study on their mobile phones and learn in both virtual and augmented realities is less than five years away, according to technology experts. The 2010 Horizon Report, published by the New Media Consortium in the US, predicts how emerging technologies will affect teaching and learning worldwide.This years edition, released in mid January, says that in the short term mobile technology will have the biggest effect on pedagogy. However, within three years, e-books and augmented-reality technology will also play a major role in universities. The academy, it claims, faces a host of challenges posed by technology. Emerging providers delivering higher education online are eroding the value of the university gold standard, it warns. The role of universities in preparing students for work is also changing as digital-media literacy continues its rise in importance as a key skill in every profession. Speed of access and the use of social networking to help students interpret material will grow in importance, it predicts, as will new forms of scholarly writing and publishing. Citation-based metrics, to pick one example, are hard to apply to research based in social media, the report says, noting that new alternatives such as tagging, linking and retweeting are taking their place. Over the next 12 months, mobile computing is forecast to be a key driver of change. The opportunity is great; virtually all higher education students carry some form of mobile device, the report says. Norbert Pachler, reader in education at the Institute of Education, University of London, agrees that mobile learning is the big game in town, while Lawrie Phipps, programme manager at the Joint Information Systems Committee, says that technology moving things away from the desk and into peoples pockets is really important. In the longer term, but still within three years, substantial shifts in teaching and learning are predicted. So-called augmented reality, where digital information is overlaid on to the physical world, will become central to teaching in technical subjects, the report anticipates. For example, augmented-reality goggles are already used in industry, allowing digital plans and images to be superimposed on mechanical apparatus in front of engineers. Medical students could use the same equipment, the report suggests. Maggi Savin-Baden, professor of higher education research at Coventry University, says augmented reality could also lead to other pedagogic developments. Haptic technology, which uses touch to enhance visual engagement, is already emerging and will be increasingly important, she says. The 2010 Horizon Report adds that open-access content is likely to grow, and that within five years gesture-based computing, where computers respond to physical movement, could be having a significant impact, especially in medicine. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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The Australian state of Victoria is host to 45,000 students from India. On January 2 one of them, Nitin Garg, was stabbed to death in Melbourne, the capital, in the latest and most violent of a series of attacks on Indian students in the city. Victorias police say they have no evidence these crimes are racially motivated. But they recorded 1,447 robberies and assaults against Indians in 2007-08, a figure seized upon by the Indian media as proof that their countrymen are being targeted. In response to what the Australian press has dubbed the curry bashings, Indias government has issued an advisory urging its nationals to take extra care in Australias second-biggest city. The row has become so shrill it threatens to damage Australias third-biggest export earner, after coal and iron ore: education, which brings in about A$17 billion (Rs.69,700 crore) a year from foreigners.Applications for student visas from India have gone into free-fall — down by 46 percent between July and October compared with the same period the previous year. Almost a fifth of Australias 630,000 full-time international students hail from India, and the attacks have also received publicity in other big markets such as China. As it was, Australia had been getting a bad press thanks to the collapse of a number of private colleges offering cheap vocational qualifications to foreign students. These had flourished at a time of chronic skills shortages, when hairdressing and catering qualifications opened up a fast track to permanent residence in Australia. But immigration rules have since been tightened. The global recession and the strength of the Australian dollar have also sapped the countrys appeal to foreign students. In all, applications for student visas have fallen by 23 percent in the past year. Dennis Murray, executive director of the International Education Association of Australia, a trade group, is expecting a quick recovery. He foresees growth of 4 percent a year over the next 20 years. But Australian universities are taking no chances. They are responding to the threat of cheaper foreign competition by forging partnership agreements with Asian counterparts and setting up branches in Asian cities. Two years ago, for example, Melbournes Monash University opened a purpose-built campus in Kuala Lumpur. Having been slow to grasp the full measure of the commercial and diplomatic fallout, the Australian government has gone into overdrive. Senior ministers have descended on Delhi, while Indian journalists have been offered press junkets Down Under. Kevin Rudd, Australias prime minister, has even attested to his love of Indian food, a goodwill gesture that went down about as well as a soggy papadom. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)

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The past, even in Indonesia, is a foreign country: they did things differently there. The downfall in 1998 of the 32-year Suharto ‘New Order regime seemed to mark the border as clearly as would a checkpoint and a queue for immigration. This side of the boundary, Indonesia enjoys liberties, a raucous free-for-all of competing ideas and the luxury of democratic choice. On the other side lurked repression, rigged elections, stifled opinions and a long list of banned books. So it is odd and not a little disturbing, in this last respect, to find the freely elected government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono not doing things differently at all. In December the attorney-generals office banned five books. The government is looking at proscribing a further 20, which might, it frets, prove a threat to national unity.If this is continuity, theres also an attempt to disguise it. Most of the books in question are histories, guidebooks to parts of that foreign country which the government still wants to keep out of bounds. One tackles the mysterious atrocities that still haunt Indonesia: the massacre of hundreds of thousands of alleged communists and others as Suharto consolidated his power in 1965-66. Few horrors have been so unexamined. Back in 1998 the late Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Indonesias greatest novelist, a prison-camp veteran who was by then a deaf and cantankerous but still eloquent old man, enjoyed a moment of untypical optimism. At last, he believed, the truth about 1965 would come out. He dismissed the usual guess of up to 500,000 deaths, claiming there had been 2 million. Now that Suharto had gone, there was no reason the truth had to lie buried with the many dead. Today Pramoedyas books, at least, are unbanned. But had he lived, he would be raging against the incompleteness of reformasi (reformation) and the resilience of censorship. Nor is 1965 the only forbidden territory. Also banned (censors do not do irony) is a book called Lekra Doesnt Burn Books, a reference to a leftist cultural institute, very influential in the early 1960s, to which Pramoedya belonged and which was later demonised by the Suharto regime. Another banned volume covers Indonesias controversial annexation of Papua in 1969. An Australian film (Balibo) has also been banned. Yet far from sliding back to the authoritarian ways of the past, Indonesia now has arguably the freest and most vibrant press in South-east Asia. ‘Law number 4, passed in 1963 to sanction fierce censorship, was lifted for the press in 1999. So, though books, pamphlets and posters remain under the censors thumb, newspapers and magazines have proliferated. They report the latest political intrigues involving President Yudhoyono with little restraint. The attorney-generals office is reportedly also mulling a ban on a book claiming campaign-finance violations by the president last year. But as soon as this became known hawkers started flogging pirated versions across Jakarta. Indonesia has more than 30 million Indonesian internet-users, with access to every fact, theory and guess about their countrys recent past.…

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Some male lecturers in Ghana and Tanzania consider it their right to demand sex for grades, researchers at the University of Sussex have found. Louise Morley and Kattie Lussier wrote their study after encountering widespread reports of sexual harassment suffered by female students during separate research on widening participation in the two countries higher education systems. In a paper, Sex, Grades and Power: Gender Violence in African Higher Education, they say the hierarchical power relations within universities appear to have naturalised a sexual contract in which some male academics consider it their right to demand sex for grades.This has led to the construction of negative female learner identities, they add. If women fail, this is seen as evidence of their lack of academic abilities and preparedness for higher education. If they achieve academically, this is attributed to prostitution. Prof. Morley, director of the Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research at Sussex University and lead researcher, says sexual harassment in universities is not limited to Africa. Its a global issue, she told Times Higher Education. Its about power and the abuse of power. Prof. Morley and Dr. Lussier conducted 200 interviews with academics and policymakers and 200 life-history interviews with students. The paper quotes an academic manager from a Ghanaian university, who said: Sexual harassment is a way of life at this university… the female students are very vulnerable to lecturers… and the girls think thats a legitimate way to get marks. Boys think the girls have an advantage as a result. Prof. Morley, who hopes to research the issue further, says the interviews show that sexual harassment had become normalised within some universities. Male students assumptions about prostitution among their female peers diminishes womens achievements, she says. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)

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China and other Asian countries are responding to the global recession with massive public investment in higher education while Western nations cut university budgets, an international conference has heard. Among the speeches at the World Universities Forum in Davos, Switzerland (January) were two that highlighted contrasting government and public attitudes to higher education in China and the US.Linda Katehi, chancellor of the University of California, Davis, looked at the future of the states publicly funded university system in the wake of a 20 percent budget cut over the past year. She warned that without increased federal and state investment, Americas public research universities faced the shrunken, caste-bound future of the privatised university. On the other hand, David Strangway, who co-chaired the task force on innovation and environment for the China Council on International Co-operation on Environment and Development, presented a contrasting vision of higher education investment in China, particularly in the low-carbon economy. They are investing heavily in research and development and building a lot of university-based capacity, he told Times Higher Education (THE). Bill Cope, director of Common Ground Publishing, which organises the World Universities Forum with the University of Illinois College of Education, said a key theme to emerge from the conference was Chinas huge, structured public investment in higher education at a time when there is disinvestment in northern Europe and North America. Higher education investment is a key part of Chinas economic-stimulus package, he noted. His analysis was similar to that of Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne, who was a keynote speaker at the forum. Writing in THE, he describes the higher education policies of Asian and Western governments as polar opposites. In Far Eastern nations, public faith in educational investment is increasing while the West withdraws, he writes. Prof. Katehi made the case for challenging that approach in a keynote speech titled ‘Safeguarding the future: a call for renewed commitment to public higher education in challenging economic times. She contrasted the University of Californias current plight — budget cuts of $637 million (Rs.2,930 crore) have prompted a 32 percent rise in tuition fees — with its founding ideals as a public good to be cherished and financially supported by its citizenry. It is time for the US to reconsider leaving planning for higher education and funding of its national universities to the trepidation of short-sighted state politics, Prof. Katehi said. If ever the US needed to formulate a long-range master plan for the future of its higher education system, now is the time. In another of the forums keynote speeches, Jandhyala B.G. Tilak, professor of educational finance at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi, looked at changing definitions of the idea of the university. Higher education is a public good, producing a huge set of wider social benefits that span social, economic, political, cultural and technological areas. Therefore Prof. Tilak argued that we need to expand, strengthen, re-energise and revitalise the dying public university system.…

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The Union HRD ministrys resolve to revoke the deemed university status of 44 higher education institutions on the recommendation of the P.N. Tandon Committees report, has a deep connection with the ubiquitous licence-permit-quota regime which unmindful of liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy since 1991, is still pervasive in Indian education. Under s.3 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, the Delhi-based UGC is invested with the power to confer deemed university status on outstanding and/or extraordinary institutions of higher education, including privately promoted professional (engineering, medical etc) colleges. In the past decade (1999-2009) during the incumbencies of the BJPs Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi (1999-2004) and the Congress partys Arjun Singh (2004-09) in the Union HRD ministry, this discretionary power has been exercised liberally, multiplying the number of deemed varsities countrywide from 37 in 1999 to 127 currently.Unsurprisingly, many of the private higher education institutions conferred deemed varsity status are professional education colleges promoted by powerful state-level politicians, particularly in peninsular India. With their power and influence in state government secretariats, a large and growing number of politicians have promoted colleges and higher education institutions cutting through the red tape which slows non-political education entrepreneurs. But now with the Congress-led UPA-2 government and Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal hell-bent on cracking down on substandard deemed universities, institutions promoted by politicians are also in the line of fire. An estimated 18 of the 44 deemed universities on the ministrys hit list are politically connected. Of these 18 politicians-owned blacklisted universities, 12 are in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, with most of them promoted by members of the ruling DMK party, an important ally of the 17-party coalition UPA-1 government (2004-2009) and the incumbent Congress-led UPA-2 government in New Delhi. Prominent among them are the Bharath University, promoted by S. Jagathrakshakan of the DMK who is currently minister of state for information and broadcasting in the UPA-2 government; St Peters University (promoted by former Tamil Nadu education minister M. Thambidurai); Dr. MGR University (former AIDMK leader A.C. Shanmugham) and Periyar Maniammai University (K. Veeramani, leader of the Dravida Kazhagam). In the neighbouring state of Karnataka, two of the six universities recommended for withdrawal of deemed university status are promoted by politicians. The Devraj Urs Academy of Higher Education and Research, Kolar is owned by former Congress MP and former Union minister L. Jalappa; and BLDE University, Bijapur, is administered by incumbent Congress MLA M.B. Patil. The politicians-deemed universities connection is not confined to southern states. In Maharashtra D.Y. Patil University, promoted by Congress leader and incumbent governor of Tripura D.Y. Patil, has also been blacklisted by the Tandon Committee. In Uttar Pradesh, one of the ‘doomed universities — Santosh University, Ghaziabad — was established by Dr. P. Mahalingam, former personal physician of BSP founder Kanshi Ram. With the 44 blacklisted deemed universities, especially those owned by politicians, all set to defend themselves when the Supreme Court resumes hearing of the case on March 8, the HRD/UGC-politicians nexus is likely to…

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