Sunday Posts

All Higher Education is intensely local. Its form and agenda are defined by who pays: As long as most degree-granting institutions are funded by local and national governments, this will remain the case. For all the talk about 'global higher education', the idea is mostly to export locally constructed ideas of education, to promote national brands abroad, to import students where possible. Indeed, it is only fair to acknowledge that Higher Education is also one of the most regulated of the sectors, and most nations only want the Higher Education institutions they can control. Whatever the rhetoric, the national governments don't want global higher education: They just want global investment in local Higher Education. But Higher Education needs to be GLOBAL. This relates to the purpose of higher education, which, I shall claim, has expanded beyond the making of citizens to, in the era of mass higher education, making workers and consumers. And, since the expectations of...

If I am working for one thing, it is to create a truly global college, which prepares the students to take advantage of the global opportunities that are in front of us. I am conscious that there are many generalisations in that goal: The globalisation that we see is at best semi-globalisation, and the world is still a very divided space; the opportunities are still very skewed, and biased in favour of a few; and the model, education for profit, may have its own inherent biases that may change how and what the students can be prepared for.  However, it must be said, my approach is informed by my background, and therefore, despite these apparently insurmountable challenges, I remain optimistic. I come from a suburb near Calcutta, a metropolitan city in India, but growing up in the suburb, it seemed a million miles away. I had not been out and about on my own in the big city, which was only few miles away from where I lived, till I was almost 18. Indeed, I had a fairly protected...

This is the best and the worst of time for Independent colleges in the UK. Never before the sector has seen so much investor interest, given its long term potential. At the same time, it has never been subject to such harsh regulation, and a complete transformation of the marketplace in such a short span of time. Many independent colleges closed down since October 2011; some others were forced to close by UK Border Agency. Some others are still going on in the hope that their Highly Trusted Sponsor (HTS) status with UK Border Agency will help them garner a price in the ongoing M&A activities in the sector. Once this illusion is dispelled, which it will be in a few months time, there will be even more closures. At this time, pretending that everything is just the same is an act of madness. While the shape of change is somewhat unclear and emergent at this moment, it is certain that things are going to change, and the sector needs to prepare for it. Some of these changes are rel...

College, except the rhetoric, remains an intensely local affair. One may talk about globalisation of education, of jobs and of knowledge, but only 2% of world's students study outside their home countries. Over the last 150 years, during which the universities were revived - and rightly, this was a revival as John Ruskin meant 'revival is of things that did not exist before' - the nation state has claimed it fully. Mostly in the name of teaching the 'useful arts', primarily in United States but also elsewhere in Europe, the state claimed the universities and turned them, rightly, into the instruments of making citizens. Indeed, this meant a two-, or a multi-tier system, that of making the rulers and the ruled, and alongside newspapers, the university education was essential to the making of modern state. Now that the state is in retreat, the college is somewhat left on its own. Besides, the great mythology of meritocracy, that everyone had the same chance in li...

2012 is set to be a defining year for private sector colleges in the UK. To start with, most of them will disappear. Traditionally, the sector thrived on international students: They charged one-third of the fees that an university will charge the international students, and weened away the market from them. But the UK government effectively killed this market, for now. A set of abrupt changes in the student visa regime, whose burden fell disproportionately on the private colleges, have deeply affected the market. Many private colleges have already found it impossible to keep going and folded: Others have been out in the market in search of a buyer, and holding on to find one. The Private Equity players are out in the market buying private colleges on the cheap, with a strategy of bundling them together and selling these on when the 'real' payday for private sector education - predicted to be around 2015 - comes. This change is good in a way. At the end of this cycle, the ...

In a recent article enlisted in Harvard Business Review's Audacious Ideas , Karan Khemka and Parag Khanna passionately makes the case for private investment in Higher Education and argues that expansion of the For Profit universities will bring growth back by being the best way 'to build a skilled labour force, create more jobs, broaden the consumer base, and ultimately sustain economic growth'. Apparently aimed at investors, they also list out why Higher Education could be good business: Its negative working capital requirements (because students pay upfront), steady and predictable revenue (because most students should stay full duration of the programme), High barriers to entry (regulation, land and capital), prices that rise faster than inflation, and more demand than supply, all the traits that are in evidence abundantly in an economy like India. Apparently grounded in the market realities of a fast growing economy like India, all of these make sense. College is, ...

Dr Rahul Choudaha writes about the franchising trends of the British, Australian and American Higher Education on his blog . This presents two interesting pieces of statistics: First, the British HE classroom is far more global than the American (15% international students in the system compared to USA's 3%,), and the second, a fact which is becoming apparent now, that more international students study for a British Higher Education degree outside Britain than inside it. In fact, this is a recent trend: In 2010, for the first time, the number of offshore students exceeded the number of students studying for British Higher Education degrees in Britain. However, the number is large: Out of a total 814, 495 international students studying for a British qualification, 408,685 was offshore, which is about half the number (slightly higher). Australia, despite a higher proportion of international students in country (21% as opposed to Britain's 15% mentioned earlier), has less studen...

These are exciting times in the international student recruitment market. This is a time for new winners and losers, new markets emerging and dominant ones stagnating, and new rules are being written. After explosive growth for a decade, Australia let its dominating position slip in 2008. Also, Britain, which became a very attractive destination in the new millennium, enjoying 64% growth in annual student numbers in the years leading up to 2010, is all set to lose the markets because of the muddled and unwelcoming approach of the current government, which seems to regard all International students coming from outside the EU as potential illegal immigrants. Further, the coalition government's on-the-fly policy-making has decidedly hurt Britain's position as a provider of High Quality Higher Education internationally: The absurd categorisation of Higher Education, Further Education and Private Education colleges (a system not readily understood elsewhere in the World) for visa pu...

Shall we call it the brand? But reputation is slightly different from a brand. Brand is like personality, what one's known for. It can include the likeable and not so likeable traits, sometimes intentionally. Reputation is somewhat of a subset, what's good of the institution in question, word of which spreads far and wide. Reputation is also more than word of mouth, because it is not just what my friend said, but this is supposed to be - what everyone knows.  I am interested in reputation as I think this is the only way way an education business can generate a surplus. In the strict economic sense, this surplus isn't profit: This will be more like rent. Profits are generated for taking risks, rent is for having created a privileged position. Reputation is all about creating a privileged position which students want to gain access to. What price is the access to the class of 2015 of Harvard: Priceless, I would assume. The analogy to rent is useful because it seems e...

The Economist makes the point that Higher Education may be the latest bubble and may be it is about to burst. The argument rests on three things. The first, as observed by Peter Thiel, the legendary Paypal investor, is that the tuition fees are too high, debt burdens are too onerous, and rewards are too uncertain for people to keep investing in education. In his view, higher education is like housing, seen as an insurance against the uncertain future: Once the promise of the future disappears, the students may not be interested to pay the high fees that the top schools now demand. The second is an economic argument made by, among others, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman. Krugman observes that contrary to the popular belief that technology is making only low skill jobs redundant, it is also replacing the skilled jobs. This essentially means that the salaries for these jobs will come under pressure in the medium term, further reducing the pay-off for good education. Besides, it will undermine...

The problem of Indian Higher Education does not come from the poverty of ideas, but the populism and vested interests that drive the policy-making. This plagued India's past, and just when it seemed to be emerging out of lumber, the same disease caught up with it again. Indeed, Higher Ed is good business and most politicians keep their money invested in it, but by continuing to protect their interests, the country risks missing out on its demographic dividend and getting itself on the slippery slope of missing a historical opportunity. India is Higher Education's most attractive market. It has all the ingredients of a Higher Education revolution of sorts: Millions of young people, growing economy, skill hungry employers and an education system not fit for purpose from the word go. Higher Ed in India, in particular, is a game of political privileges and cronyism; consequently, Indian institutions fail to make it to global top table and also fail to equip its 2.9 million graduate...

India is higher education’s wild west, so says The Economist. That’s spot on. This is the macho territory, where none of the genteelness of the Higher Education world is in evidence. Those who survive need the mercenary spirit, whether they are on the right or the wrong side, and need, indeed, plenty of luck and firepower. But, then, this is also the land of possibilities, as Wild West was supposed to be. This is a land of an emerging, aspiring middle class, a country of the fastest growing cities in the world, of millions of entrepreneurs, of some of the hungriest companies in the world. Besides, most of the people are young, unlike China’s, and a country poised at the threshold of a huge demographic boom. If someone thinks the El Dorado of education is in India, he won’t be too far off the mark. However, despite all this, the Gold Rush moment is yet to come. Not too far, I shall argue, about six months’ away is the moment when everyone goes to India. The Indian cabinet is finalizing...

The recession is refusing to go away. Even before some good news emerged in the United States - at last - Europe started crumbling. It was Deja Vu all over again: The leaders' scramble, a patched up loan fund, a North-South divide, and one crisis after another. We are just in the Christmas Break from the crisis, and there is no signs yet that the domino effect has been contained. And, it is not about the financial crisis alone. The world continued its journey towards becoming a more dangerous place. Despite some drone-induced victory against Al Queda and Asif Zardari clinging on to power by his teeth in Pakistan, the American-led coalition in Asia looked tired and divided, ready to cut-and-run, in contrast with their opponents, who seemed to have an endless stream of recruits, covert state sponsors and a zeal to continue for thousand years. North Korea, on the brink under pressures of economic crisis and leadership succession, continued to play dangerously. The Chinese induced...

I have come to believe that having a profession is actually about learning two things: A particular method of enquiry and a particular sort of language. Each profession has both of these, otherwise they are not considered a profession. Some take it to extremes, like the Accountants and Lawyers. Some derive a language through complicated phrases and sometimes obfuscation, like the Philosophers and Sociologists. And, some, like educationalists and politicians, because of the nature of their task, which involves 'unschooled' people, struggle to adopt a particularly differentiated language - and hence are not considered to be 'full' professions. We already know that people with different disciplines think differently. This is more likely to be the effect of their training rather than the cause of choosing the respective disciplines. But it is equally possible to see the use of a particular language as a sort of tribal ritual, a way to demarcate the intellectual spaces and ...

I have decided to focus my research on the Overseas Student experience, particularly in the UK. I have strong reasons: I have access to a lot of overseas students, and the fact that I feel a natural affinity, though, truth be told, I have never been an 'overseas' student myself. I still have an year before I start writing the thesis, so I decided to use this time to collect data and reflect. This blog, being my scrapbook of ideas and the platform to continue the conversation with all those who share my interests, will obviously be the place where I post these ideas and observations. I shall start with a random one. The use of agencies by British colleges and universities have always been controversial, though the practice has only expanded in the recent years to American colleges. The idea is simple and common sense - that a commission is paid to an agent for recruiting students on behalf of British universities and colleges. The commission varies from 10% to 35%, not a bad sum...

I am back in my usual reflective mood and enjoying it. I was in action mode for last few weeks, which allowed me to achieve quite a bit, but this caused a sort of writing block too. Indeed, this is what I wished for - something worthwhile to do. All my stated wishes, hands-on exposure, opportunity to work on an assortment of various little projects [so that I am never bored], regular life, and a piece of action in global higher education, have all been granted: But, strangely, this has taken away my ability to write. Much to the relief of my sister, I admit, but I struggled with thoughts and words every morning. It was not comforting: The thoughts seem all too fragmented and words so ungenerous that they would not come together in a sentence. I felt laden with ideas, but all clotted up in a pre -migraine kaleidoscope of visions, not making any sense whatsoever. However, a visit unlocked all this, and as I expected, it started with a question. I spent the day in Oxford, attending a sess...

I am engaged in the business of learning, literally. I don’t teach. I am engaged in managing a for-profit education enterprise. The focus of the business is on developing leaders, who, as I usually proclaim, are a special type of people different from ‘managers’ and in short supply, in communities and inside companies. My special skill is in creating business models and partnerships to take training programmes globally. I enjoy the work and always felt a certain sense of mission in doing what I did. Starting my career in India, where the business I worked for offered IT Training to inner city graduates, this was easy: I saw a lot of lives ‘transformed’ for real. I used the experience in the international training market, first in South East Asia, and then in Eastern Europe and Middle East, over last ten years. I dealt with various learning programmes and varied customers along the way. I gradually became confident of what I did, though I never ever taught myself. Practice invariably de...