The new face of Education - Going High Tech and Global

The faster we get there the better! I wish we had free yet Quality Online Education available for the masses a decade ago :)

The TOI article - 30/12/2007

[I just love TOI for being so active in reporting the education scenario in India - it helps!]

2008 TIME TO CHANGE

THE WORLD IS YOUR CLASSROOM

Virtual Campuses Are Gaining Ground, Foreign Players Are Bringing In Funds and Investing Resources, Even IIT Is Broadcasting Live From Powai

Hemali Chhapia | TNN

Mumbai: Higher education for Priyanka Sinha, a class ten student who will enter college next year, is surely not going to be the same as it was for her brother who joined the campus world three years ago. For one, expansion in higher education will give her a wider range of options to choose from in terms of colleges and universities — she could even sit at home and enrol for a recognised course abroad, online. But her family will also have to shell out a substantially larger sum than what they did for their son. And given the rise in quotas, the competition will get stiff.

FEE HIKE
It was a government paper titled ‘Government Subsidies in India’ in 1997 that classified higher education as a “Non-merit Good’’ as compared to elementary education which was defined as a “Merit good’’, which required states to subsidise it heavily.

The same government later slotted higher education into a category called “Merit 2 Goods’’ that need not be subsidised by the state at the same level as “Merit Goods’’. Ever since, the government has hinted at increasing the cost for higher education.

Earlier this year, while increasing the financial allocation for education, the Planning Commission had suggested the need to hike fees in colleges and central and state universities. But alongside, the government also promised easy access to loans and a larger outlay for scholarships.

Vice chancellor of the University of Mumbai Vijay Khole pointed out that in Mumbai, “An interim report prepared by Principal Naresh Chandra is being relooked (at) and fee hike is imperative to better the amenities on college campuses.’’ The interim report submitted last year had recommended a 10%-15% hike, but members of the management council had suggested that the committee could relook at the figures and probably bring in a larger hike.

QUOTAS
Apart from fees, reservations is the other issue which will overshadow the higher education sector. The coming year may change the face of some of the country’s centres of excellence. The UPA government unleashed the quota genie in 2006 on all Centrally-aided institutions across the country, including Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs); campuses thereafter erupted in protests and counter-protests. While the IITs and IIMs have gone into expansion mode to accommodate more candidates from the Other Backward Classes, the case is pending in the Supreme Court.

Director of IIT-Bombay Ashok Misra pointed out that the coming year will also see “enhanced stress’’ on research as well as technology incubation. “We may also be able to set up a Tech Park, which will be able to support companies that are incubated on campus,’’ he said.

ONLINE EDUCATION

Peter Drucker in his article, The Death of the University, had said: “Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive....’’ 2008 may well mark the beginning of this trend.

Virtual campuses are going to be the reality of this year. Bhaskar Ranjan Das, the (west India) director of U-21 Global — a Singapore-based firm that offers online courses in management and hospitality — pointed out, “online would be the way to go if access to higher education is to go up.’’ His institute runs online courses in collaboration with several international universities, and enrolment in India has been increasing “exponentially’’ — by over 100% annually. Presently, there are 1,200 Indian students enrolled with U-21 Global.

Expansion in this sector has also propelled the union government to pass a bill governing digital education. “The Union HRD ministry has prepared a draft law to provide legal backing for the Distance Education Council (DEC), currently a body under Indira Gandhi National Open University,’’ said a senior member of the HRD ministry. His ministry had sought the Cabinet’s approval to set up a statutory body that will also monitor courses being provided by foreign universities/colleges through the internet.

Even established institutions are taking their courseware to the world via broadband or television. Starting January 2008, IIT-Bombay will broadcast lectures live through Edusat, a satellite which caters exclusively to the education sector. Students of any engineering institute will now not only have real-time access to IIT-B tutoring, but can interact with faculty at Powai. “There is an urgent need to get more and more high quality educationists. Through distance education, we will be able to provide high quality content to other technology schools across the country,’’ added Misra.

In fact, presently, 23 percent of all higher education enrolments in India are in distance education. According to a McKinsey-Nasscom Report, the Indian government has targeted 40 percent of all higher education participation via distance education by 2010.

FOREIGN/PRIVATE PLAYERS
Get a degree from a fullfledged foreign university sitting at home in India, from 2008 onwards. India lifted the restrictions on foreign direct investment in education way back in 2001. But the union government has not yet brought out a clear policy for foreign players. It may do that in the coming year.

Besides, Maharashtra may get its share of private universities. Like Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Devesh Kapur, Associate professor of government at Harvard University point out in their paper, ‘Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half-baked Socialism to Half-Baked Capitalism’: “Privatisation has resulted from the breakdown of state system and the exit of Indian elites from public institutions.’’

And so when the state will have players like the Tatas and Ambanis setting up universities, Priyanka will be able to do something her brother could not — choose.

THE 2007 REPORT CARD

J M. Lyngdoh Commission gave its nod to hold students’ union elections in universities and colleges. The panel, however, limited election expenditure to Rs 5,000 and banned political interference in college polls.

The apex court comes down on ragging. Based on the recommendations of a Committee on Ragging led by the former CBI director R K Raghavan, the SC said ragging should be made a criminal offence. The committee had said those caught ragging should be booked by the police, expelled from college and denied future admission.

The Joint Entrance Exam conducted by the IITs this year revealed that almost 14% of successful candidates from the general category are OBCs. Across IITs, a total of 990 OBC students qualified from the open category this year.

Following up on the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission, the University of Mumbai permitted colleges to offer their popular courses in two shifts —- morning and evening.

IIT-B took over one of the country’s oldest academic establishments - the Institute of Science. The erstwhile Royal Institute of Science was among the first home-grown institutions dedicated to pure science and related research. Renowned scientists like Homi Bhabha, M G K Menon, V V Narlikar and chemical technologist R D Desai are among its alumni.

The Prime Minister announced the setting up of 1,600 new Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and Polytechnics, 5,000 new Skill Development Centres, 30 new central universities, 5 new Institutes of Science Education and Research, 8 new IITs, 7 new IIMs and 20 new Indian Institutes of Information Technology.

Health minister Anbumani Ramadoss proposed that medical graduates be awarded their MBBS certificates only after a compulsory yearlong rural internship. After countrywide protests, the health minister backed down and declared that the internship would be part of the existing five-and-ahalf year MBBS program.me.

University of Mumbai came up with a hair-brained idea - it set aside finances to conduct a feasibility study on listing the state university on the stock exchange. After being pulled up by the central government, the study was conveniently given a burial.

IIT alumni backed by former McKinsey MD Rajat Gupta, also the founding member and chairman of the board of directors of the PAN-IIT group of former students, drew up a blueprint to build resources for a new IIT..