Sunday Posts

My new year's resolution is not to wait any more and get on with what I always wanted to do: Set up a new higher education institution. I have been waiting forever. Not that I haven't tried, but I have ended up taking the wrong route a few times. Each time I learnt: I have learnt about the merits and considerable challenges of For Profit Higher Education, and how to balance the different interests to do something innovative. I have learnt about international markets and rapidly changing expectations of the students. I have taught and know first hand what social media has done to attention and commitment of the students. Having tried project based learning, I have seen its possibilities and also why it does not work at scale. But, in the learning mode, I was forever waiting - doing various projects adjecent to what I really wanted to do, but not quite the real thing. Hence, I started the year promising to break from the infinite loop and get on with setting up a new college. Thi...

The opening of international university campuses in India has a distinct gold rush feel to it. There are 17 universities whose applications are already through and the projects are at several stages of implementation. Several are in the pipeline. The British universities were quick to move in, given their historical affinity. The Australians followed suit, taking advantage of the geopolitical bonhomie between the two nations. The Canadian universities, despite Canada being a top destination of Indian students in the last decade, were hampered by the rift between the two nations around an alleged state-sponsored assassination of a Canadian citizen. But they feel left behind, and will soon turn up in force at the India AI Summit in February, looking for deals. And, finally, the US universities, ever so inward-looking (international students at US universities make up only 6% of the population, compared to about a quarter in UK or Australia), are slower, but some, like the Illinois Instit...