Sunday Posts

One would have considered the events surrounding the suspension of London Metropolitan University as a farce, if its tragic consequences were not so obvious. To recount the events, the University was visited by UKBA in March, subsequent to which its Tier 4 License, which allows the university to recruit students from outside the EU, was temporarily suspended on the 20th of July. The university was reportedly audited again in the first weeks of August, and then a report appeared in Sunday Times on the 26th August, quoting a leak and reporting that the license has now permanently been revoked. In a bizarre twist, then, on the 29th August, BBC reported that UKBA is yet to make a decision , while the university reported that they are inundated with hundreds of calls from worried students and their parents . Coming right in the middle of recruitment season, this is going to have a significant financial impact: The university says that it would potentially create a funding gap of over £10 ...

The Home Office has revoked the Tier 4 License of London Metropolitan University and branded it 'a threat to immigration control', Sunday Times reports . Here is an university always in the news. It got its entire board of governors sacked only a couple of years back. However, it was popular and highly visible. It was fined in successive years for over-recruitment. It was criticised for not changing, and then for trying to change too much, as a new Vice Chancellor and his team tried to turn the university around. No wonder some of the commentators are now labelling it a 'controversial' university. Thus far, it is simple: A faltering university fell foul of the regulators. Going by the report, it allowed students whose visas expired to attend classes. It did not report students who got visa and failed to show up to enrol. It did not properly assess the students' English. So on and so forth, a list of all-too predictable sins have already been laid out. C...

The first ten years of this millennium saw globalisation of Higher Education at an unprecedented scale. The number of students opting to study abroad grew exponentially, mostly coming from the newly industrialised countries like India and China (they were the two big elephants in the room) to the popular destinations like United States, UK and Australia. This made good business - all the recipient countries led out red carpet and competed with each other, often fiercely, for market share. Higher Education exports, which roughly translates into how much money the sector brings to the economy from abroad, became the fifth or sixth largest (depending on what you count) in the UK: It attained a similar prominence in national policy making in other countries as well. While America, reeling under the impact of 9/11, global wars and the wave of social conservatism, remained a somewhat reluctant participant, it continued to draw maximum number of students because of its highly respected unive...

India is an ancient land but a modern nation: The battle to define what it stands for is about to begin. It is common in the history of nations, such battles. Despite the lore, nations are neither perennial nor indispensable, it is only a rather modern construct to define the state with cultural traits and organise the society around it. India as a modern nation, which emerged sixty-five years ago out of a retreating British empire, was based on certain ideas grounded in the belief systems at the time of its creation: of a redeeming optimism at the end of great wars and at the beginning of the end of political imperialism, of the triumph for modern science and technology in beating back our Malthusian destiny and expanding our physical capabilities, and of the faith in human freedom. These lofty visions that defined India, and the nations born thereafter, had one crucial drawback: They were aspirational, and ignored the muddy realities of concocted nations emerging out of centurie...

I need a meta-theory to explain whatever happened in my professional life, as I reach another decision point, where, yet again, I have to do some explaining for what happened so far. When I narrate the story of my career, which is a sequence of several mini-careers, it appears like a dance than a journey, the usual metaphor most people would be comfortable with. I moved vertically, did things which seemed like going back on time, took risks commonly deemed unacceptable, and mostly lived on the brink. I may have achieved too little, reached the right place often too early, and preached, to those who cared, a view too antiquated. Someone, who was my Line Manager for several years, told me that I was the most intelligent person she ever worked with, but I should be mindful that intelligence is a double-edged sword: The wisdom of her words is beginning to dawn on me only now. There is one easy explanation of my relationship with work: That I sought meaning. I was motivated by the stor...

The Promise of College Education Being middle class means, among other things, aspiring to go to college and having a white collar job of some description in the end. While millions in Asia, Africa and Latin America follow this dream, in the West, there is a different reality: Middle class jobs are disappearing. They are mostly moving down the ladder, reduced to irrelevance by the rise of clever machines. The solid certainty, the ethic of working for a retirement, alongside a clear vision of what life would be like thirty years on, are all fragments of nostalgia. Regardless of aspirations, middle class lives and jobs are disappearing all over the world. If middle class life is to change, the educational ideals must do so too. This is a debate whether the College-for-Jobs myth should be propagated any further and whether time has come to reshape the modern higher education all over again. The Hangover of The Fifties We have come a long way from the Fifties, the age of opt...

In my quest to get a technology-led global education network off the ground, I have now made several iterations of the business plan, made several presentations and attended scores of meetings, some with some success. Indeed, the ideas that I started with changed somewhat: However, that hurts no one as they have only become better, more road worthy, if anything. After several months of doing this, I feel more wedded to the process than I ever was. But I still I have one reservation which I have to deal with before we end signing up with anyone. It is that to build an institution of any value, one needs what the silicon valley types will call 'patient capital'. My interactions with venture capital industry have told me a very different story than what I initially signed up to. It is fair to say that the structure of the venture capital industry may have changed since the heady days of dotcom, indeed because of that; it has become more interested in traction and tried and te...