Sunday Posts

I am preparing for the next phase of my life: This, as far as my plans go, involves travel. The immediate trigger for this thought is the degree certificate, from UCL, which arrived by post last week. This is significant for me: I wanted to top up my experience in Adult Education with a formal qualification and spent the last three years pursuing this. Now that it is over, I must look out to what comes after. My life, right now, is both incredibly exciting and boring. The business I started is slowly taking shape, through a series of conversations, projects, interactions, developments. Each of these developments are full of potential, incredibly exciting: But at the same time, it fills me with despair that I am so far from where the action is. The business we built is about delivering education in different countries of the world, and while we are engaged in designing the programmes and managing the technology etc. on the ground activities are driven by partner organisations....

Indian universities fail to make it to Global Top 100 in reputation rankings, and this has now caused some embarrassment. Not that we are used to see Indian universities in the top league, but now it happens to be the only BRIC country that does not make it. Indeed, it is a moot point that the universities from Singapore, Korea, Turkey and Israel all feature in the list, but what really matters for India is that it shows, yet again, how India is falling behind China on this aspect too. What should be done? Phil Baty, from Times Higher Education who published the rankings, suggest that India must embrace internationalisation . What this means is to focus on greater global collaborations in research and teaching, and recruitment of international faculty, as the top universities in China have been doing for some time now. He rightly observes that quality and standards have been the casualty in the face of rapid expansion of Higher Education in India, and even the top Indian institut...

When we initially conceived U-Aspire, our plan was to focus on what we do best: Designing Curricula, assuring quality and managing technology. The plan was to develop a network on learning centres, across different countries and locations, which will market and deliver these training programmes. The underlying assumption was the existence of spare capacity in these institutions, and that it would be inherently attractive for them to market an additional programme, which will lead to better usage of capacity as well as help lift their profile. Several months into the project, we know that this aspect of the plan needs revisiting. We have weaved together an innovative programme in International Management, as a starting point, and built elements of branding, technology and partners around the same. However, our initial focus on India as a market meant that we were to deal with the most complex education market in the world straightaway. The size of the market, its complex regulator...

There is massive arrogance in the technology circles, captured best perhaps by Marc Andreessen's WSJ article proclaiming the same. The rise of the 'information economy', though a bit of jargon in itself, has boosted such rhetoric: Today, technologists confidently sermonise others on how to do healthcare, education, construction, everything else, and even money. It did seem that this is the final frontier, a scientific thesis that is really un-falsifiable. Until Bitcoin. Bitcoin possibly shows what's wrong with this position. It is not about the technology or the economics of it, nor the failure of Mt Gox. It is about the underlying proposition that software can save/ change everything. It may appear arrogant, but the recent pronouncements of Jon Matonis that Bitcoin is a currency in beta and you should only invest if you can afford to lose ( see story here ), is really symptomatic that software may be living inside a bubble itself. And, bubble in this context is ...

As India approaches the 2014 General Election, and the prospect of a Fascist takeover becomes real, the grand old idea of India - that of a cosmopolitan nation - comes to the fore in sharp relief. This foundational idea of modern India, a nation that welcomed everyone and rejected no one, with an  identity to be conceived on the basis of inclusion rather than exclusivity, is the one up on the ballot paper, so to speak.  But this is a strange contest. Despite the fact that the idea of India is being contested upon, there is not a side standing for it. In the post-modern reality of Indian politics, the parties are jostling for positions on various other issues, ranging from India's pride to the battle against corruption, with various local and parochial issues lined up in between. The idea of India as conceived by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in its constitution is being represented, ironically as it must be, by the 'None of the Above' option on the ballot. Wh...

There is a lot of talk about freedom and tolerance in Chinese Higher Ed. I remember one English University getting into trouble for letting a student writing a dissertation on Pornography in their campus in Dubai. Tales like this are often told by Indian Academics, implicitly highlighting the freedom that a democracy is supposed to guarantee. And, at one level, that's almost taken for granted - no one discusses whether academic freedom could be an issue in Indian campuses.  However, if one needed an ugly incident to start talking about this, we have got one now. Indeed, the case I am referring to relates to basic freedom of expression, a much more fundamental issue than academic freedom, but without which, discussions about academic freedom is meaningless. An event which brings out a picture of India's campus culture that would undermine the smugness about democracy guarantees freedom. I am talking about the decision of Meerut's Subharati University ( the website ...

I love the way William Hague speaks, using the gravitas of his voice trying to make up for the empire Britain does not have. It is also intriguing what he says: Recently in Kiev, he was talking about 'costs and consequences' if Russia does not listen to the West's suggestion of withdrawing Russian troops from Crimea, but refused to talk about what these could be. The other notable voice in this Ukraine affair (the worst crisis facing Europe in a hundred years, we are told) is that of Victoria Nuland, an Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at US State Department. It was on her phone call to Geoffrey Pyatt, the US Ambassador in Ukraine, which was leaked subsequently, the world heard first time about what was about to happen there ( See the story in BBC ): A few months later, 'Our Man Yats', the current Ukrainian PM Yatsenyuk, is duly in place ( see the story in Forbes ). Ms Nuland's call, however, gained infamy for a different reas...

After my generally pessimistic note about vocational education in developing countries ( the earlier story here ), I received several emails, mostly from India but also a few from Africa and elsewhere, confirming my observations that while the current practice possibly falls short, one shouldn't yet call 'Game Over' for vocational education. There is enormous potential (read 'unemployed and unskilled people') and new ventures will take shape to do things better.  In context, I thought I could do better in presenting my argument. I had two problems with the way vocational education is currently being done in developing countries (which, in turn, follows a Western European model). First, the whole proposition is based on the assumption of a new industrial revolution, but such industrial revolution is largely a work of fiction. In today's world, it is difficult to see expansionary large industry absorbing the excess labour coming out of the villages. The othe...

It is fashionable to think that vocational education is something every developing country needs. The economic logic is simple: Since the only model of economic growth we are comfortable with is the Anglo-Saxon model based on consolidation of land holdings, mechanisation of agriculture leading to a significant displacement of rural labour into urban and industrial activities, vocational education is seen as the catalyst that makes such transition possible. It is that secret potion that can take the farm hands into urban technicians and industrial labour, smoothing out the problems of land acquisition of large-scale farming, resource extraction and industrialisation, raising 'productivity' by moving people from low-yield small-holder agriculture to large industries and urban professions, and allowing urbanisation which is supposed to raise the standards of living. It really does not matter that this model of development is about two hundred years old. Besides, based on the...

I just finished reading Arthur Levine and Diane R Deane's excellent Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait of Today's College Student (Jossey-Bass: 2012), a follow-up of Arthur Levine's earlier works looking at the college students in the 70s ( When Dreams and Heroes Died , Jossey-Bass, 1980) and in the 1990s ( When Hope and Fear Collide , co-authored with Jeanette S Cureton, Jossey-Bass, 1998). Just like the previous volumes, this is an insightful read, covering institutions across America and exploring the life of American undergraduate students. The most pleasant thing about this, however, is its optimism: It is not one of those books decrying the state of education or the non-engagement of today's graduates. Instead, this talks about the challenges (that today's graduates are less attentive in the classroom, more likely to plagiarise, talks global but would fail to recognise the names of world leaders, etc.) and follow-up with analysis why this may be so and ...