Sunday Posts

As they scramble emergency measures together, the university leaders are gradually coming to the conclusion that the changes will be long-term. If only reluctantly, they are accepting that remote learning is here to stay, if only because the students' direct experience of it makes it far less intimidating. But this is only a part of the change. The economic and political after-effects of the massively stretched state finances are bound to mean accelerating changes in the public-private balance in higher education. Coming together with the expansion of remote learning, shift to digital work and changing geopolitical alignment reconfiguring international education, this is a perfect storm moment for higher education. As with remote learning, the balance has already been changing in public-private higher ed. In fact, this 'new normal' creates new opportunities for private higher education. With their focus on efficiencies, private Higher Ed institutions were ahead in the appli...

The pandemic made the universities scramble into online education. What happens next is the question. One line of thought is that this is just a temporary disruption. Life will return to normal, perhaps in 6 to 12 months time, and the classes will resume. Online will disappear to the margins, where it was. The other is that this is an irreversible loss of innocence. The rubicon has been crossed and a new normal has emerged. Even when this pandemic is behind us, we will never go back again to education-as-usual. Temporary disruption Indeed, it is perfectly logical to see the pandemic-induced online surge as temporary. As we live through imposed constraints, it's hard to imagine anything to be long term. The changes have happened overnight and we have had little time to adjust to it. We are hoping this will pass - soon - alongwith all its relics and practices. It is also true that online education has failed to live up to the hype. Universities and colleges went into poorly prepared,...

In India, people demand that there should be more universities. Why, they point out, India has only 600-odd universities, whereas United States as 6 times as many for one-fifth of the population? More universities, in their mind, equate with more education, and also economic success, as we live in 'knowledge economies'. So far, so straightforward! I state this as an Indian phenomenon, but it is really a global view. Indians only demand so as the Chinese, the Malaysians and the South Koreans are stealing the march, building more and bigger universities faster. The Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the South Africans are all in it. I remember, as late as 2002, I was told in Bhutan that it did not have a college in the country as the Government was fearful that the student politics would destabilise the country; those days are long gone, colleges in Thumpu came up in due time - by 2015, the new government was floating the idea of a greenfield 'education city' and checking out in...

There is a certain role of 'degree' and 'diploma' in our society.  These, supported by a generally elaborate regulation structure and recognition from Governments, are not unlike the currency: A diploma holder's worth is transparent and understood generally as a mark of competence. Also, it is important to acknowledge the link between the degree and diploma and commercial employment. We can indulge in as much fantasy about monastic life and pure quest of knowledge for its own sake, but most of the state-funded, modern, mass education system is closely tied to the requirements of the industrial society and its employers, both state and commercial houses [as well as the Research Universities, which should be seen as a specific kind of employer with a specific requirement]. Degrees and Diplomas, therefore, are currencies of competence, to be accepted by the employers. However, we have arrived at a stage where the regulation structure is too elaborate and ...

There is some sort of consensus that Higher Education needs to change, but the shape of it is hotly contested. One key idea that has got some traction is that some sort of unbundling is both inevitable and desirable. This model of 3- or 4-year Undergraduate degrees, focused on one or few disciplines, is too costly and too closed for our time. Unbundling, which rests on recognition of various ways of earning college credit, through various channels and activities, would reduce the costs and allow the students flexibility in terms of time and location to complete their degrees. All sorts of experimentation has followed: From the launch of college credit bearing (as well as non-credit) MOOCs to variation of the structure of college degrees, including shortening of the time required, have got under way.  But, it has also gone the other way, as Chris Mayer argued (see the article here ). The Higher Education community in general, accepting that a transformation is necessary, is ar...

As I write this, that Penguin, the famous publisher, has abolished degrees as a requirement for their recruitment, is on the news ( see here ). They join a handful of firms at the top of prestige and professional hierarchy, such as Deloitte, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and EY, in their search for a more diverse talent pool.  One could, and possibly many would, dismiss this as mere publicity, rather than serious moves. And, indeed, this may represent a fraction of their total new intakes. For every Penguin taking themselves off-Degree, there may be an Accenture who would not want to look outside a few elite universities. But the point here is philosophical - degrees having dominated our educational thinking so vigorously that we forgot what this stood for - and not statistical.  So, what do degrees stand for? Why did we come to accept that this ornate piece of paper, often deliberately evoking medieval imagery,  come to signify our knowledge, and even our abilities? ...

The currently fashionable view in education is that knowledge does not matter.  The thesis goes something like this - at a time when you can search for almost anything in Google, why does one need to know anything?  So, goes the argument, the point of education is not to enhance knowledge, but to enhance professional skills. So, it is not the texts and discussions about ideas and subjects, but rather abilities such as thinking critically is the point. As long as one can do such things, they would be able to know. There are deep flaws in this view. First, can one think critically outside any domain? This view of secular professional skills, professional skills outside a domain or practise, undermines the importance of professions itself. While this is symptomatic of the time (where a humble blogger pretends to write about epistemology), the domains remain important and the blogger in question should know the limits of his endeavour. The process of education is s...

Competency-based Higher Education is the new mantra in the United States, something that the For-Profit sector loves to talk about. The reaction to this is bound to be ambivalent elsewhere, particularly in Europe, where Competency-based Education has a rather long tradition, though not in Higher Education. Whether this is a new idea or an old thing packaged anew, the old questions persist - whose competencies and who gets to define them. The answers are less obvious than it appears. An offhand answer may treat a sector or an industry as the starting point, which was the traditional approach followed in European Further Education and now being copied in the developing countries. While such competency frameworks may have some merit, we are also aware of their limitations - that the individual employers may not necessarily follow the same competency frameworks (in other words, company culture plays a dominant role regarding which competencies are valued) and these are highly dynamic...

India is facing a Higher Ed recession! Okay, the students are still coming, as they always do in India, but the colleges have now started failing. There are some colleges in India with less than 10 students. The rapid expansion of private colleges, when at least 10 opened every day between 2006 and 2012, seems to be over. Business Schools are in even deeper crisis, with a crisis of confidence on MBA as it fails to fetch anything more than jobs undergraduates can easily do. So, the fees are falling, marketing expenses are rising, seats are going vacant and yet, the admission queues in the tried-and-tested colleges are getting longer. This is a difficult time to talk about new ideas, and new ideas are sorely needed. Even those traditional institutions, enjoying a sudden popularity in the wake of widespread disillusion, have crisis of their own in their midst, not least the political interference and widespread corruption in the Public Education sector. While these may stand solid i...

What shape would disruption happen in Higher Ed? All the new institutions claim they are disruptive, and indeed, even the old and prestigious institutions are keen on disrupting themselves with the MOOCs. What shape the disruption will take is a guessing game, and here is my two-bits on what this could look like. My conjecture about 'What' is based on the 'Why' question. Why is Higher Education in the risk of getting disrupted? A large part of the answer is clearly linked to the decline of the nation state, the key sponsor of the Higher Education that we see now. And, this is not just about the money that the State gives to Higher Education. It is more about the nation state as a social system and Higher Education's function within the same.  The Nation State should be understood as a Power System, run by an elite with certain ethnic and cultural values. This system, with its set of rules, privileges and relationship, are linked closely to the definition of this eli...