The Business called Education! - Economic Times - 06/01/2008

The education space is buzzing with activity, with various private players venturing out to get a slice of the hugely untapped market

Shreya Biswas

IT’S boom time for the education sector in India as the concept of ‘business of education’ catches on with India Inc. Considered a ‘social responsibility’ all these years till now and plagued by insufficient infrastructure, the Indian education sector has huge room for improvement.
Increasingly, there are companies on the horizon providing e-learning services, tutoring for kids, coaching institutes expanding their ambit to provide mainstream education, setting up schools, entering the B-school segment et al. Companies like Educomp, NIIT, Tutorvista, Zee Integrated Learning System, Career Launcher, Extramarks, an online tutoring portal for kids, Aptech, Time, IMS, skill enhancement company Abacus Learning are all party to this. Another highlight of the change is the public-private partnership model on which much of the growth of this sector is pinned on. It’s the kind of transition that’s sweeping the Indian education system. Gaja Capital’s $8.25 million investment in Career launcher, Helix Investments pumping in $12 or Mahesh Tutorial and SAIF Partners investing $10 in an English training Academy Veta, are all indications to this. Instances like these are plenty.
Sample this. Career launcher, a leading testprep company, plans a major expansion across Asian countries like Singapore, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan and the US as well as on the home turf. It plans to invest close to Rs 200 crore in the next three-five years for the same. Besides, it will also launch job-oriented courses for emerging sectors like retail and insurance in the beginning of 2008. All this is in sync with the activities triggered in the education space with various private players venturing out to get a slice of the hugely untapped education market, feel experts.
The company also has elaborate plans on school education. Besides, it has also come up with a B-school in the NCR regionSays Sanjay Shivnani, CEO and president, Career launcher: “The boom is just starting. You will see more corporates entering the sector as education becomes highly specialised and gets categorised as an industry.”
Surely this is in sync with the scope. According to a conservative estimate the entire education market could be pegged at Rs 150,000 crore. About 540 mn people are under the age of 26 and at least 10 lakh individuals could be seeking management education. Out of this, 2.5 lakh itself take the common admission test every year. It’s a whole world of opportunity waiting to be tapped.
Not surprising then that companies are rushing to make the most of it, investing huge sums. Educomp, a major education company recently forayed into formal education with the launch of Millennium schools. Millennium Schools will use the Millennium Learning System (MLS), a fully integrated learning delivery system for Schools developed by Educomp. In the next three-four years, there will be 150 millennium schools in the country which will be set up across Indian cities by independent trusts and societies.
Tutorvista, which has been primarily known as a tutoring giant for overseas market, too bets big on its India plans. Starting operations two years back, the company has already raised $15.25mn from PE firms and another $2.5 mn in a strategic investment from Manipal in the last 18 months. In fact, it plans to raise around $50 mn in the next two years to support its foray into various segments of education. Through the recently acquired Edurite-K, it has got into the content business and now plans to set up 30 brick n mortar test centres by April 2008 for 9-12th grade students, besides providing entrance prep services.
Says K Ganesh, CEO & founder, Tutorvista.com; “India can become the education capital of the world and our plans to foray into test prep, vocational education, formal education are all in sync with this trend.”
In the e-learning space too, a subset of the education sector, several companies have been witnessing substantial growth. Also NIIT, a major IT training company, has invested around Rs 150 crore in the last two years itself in creating new offerings for sectors like insurance, banking and others. The spend will average around Rs 60-70 crore in the next two years too.
Another example is Educomp, which is growing at 200% every year, and working with 5,950 government schools to set up learning labs, a virtual classroom and digital library. The success of e-learning has in fact prompted the government to increase spend on IT-aided education to Rs 600 crore from Rs 250 crore last year under the Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan and ICT@schools schemes This also comes under the ambit of public private partnership that the Indian govt is trying forge to better the entire system. “Private sector participation, PPP model and the supplementary education services like coaching and mentoring will be the biggest growth areas for the sector going forward,” says Educomp CEO Shantanu Prakash.
Only if the efforts to revive the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) are taken into consideration, results would be immediately visible. The government’s announcement to provide financial support for the upgradation of ITIs through public-private partnership has given a new lease of life to the scheme. A total of 1,396 ITIs have been proposed to be upgraded into centres of excellence in specific trades and skills under PPP. According to CII, companies such as Hero Honda, ITC, L&T, Ashok Leyland, BHEL, Coca Cola, HCL, Wipro, Kirloskar and TATA have already shown interest in adopting ITIs for upgradation.
In the higher learning space though, due to regulations, it has not been possible to extend the services, though experts believe with some flexibility in increasing the number of seats, deciding on the pay packages et al, institutions would be able to plug the gap between demand and supply.

Real life hero - Subodh Bedre - we need laks of his kind.

An engineer with a passion for teaching

Ketan Tanna I TNN

Reshma Shinde from Aptech is busy packing her bags to leave for the US on a prestigious assignment. Nothing out of the ordinary one would say. But Reshma’s story is truly extraordinary.
Just a few years ago, the 20-year-old—a first generation literate in the family—used to attend New Sion Municipal Secondary School near Gandhi market in Sion. No one was very surprised when Reshma had to drop out of school in her final year owing to an economic crisis—she had to take up a job at a PCO to make ends meet. However, she knew it from the very beginning that working at a public phone booth was not what she would do for the rest of her life—she had bigger dreams.
Ambition pushed her ahead and soon she got in touch with Subodh Bedre, an engineer, who besides running his own business, has been volunteering in the municipal school for the last eight years.
Recognising the youngster’s dream to better her life, Bedre helped her join a coaching class so that she could take the Std XII exams. By the time she completed her exams, Reshma wanted to do more. Bedre helped her join Aptech at a concessional rate. She was so good at her work that the institution offered her a job in her second year and now, the girl is preparing to leave for the US.
Incidents like these add a little bit of more happiness to Bedre’s life. He has been quietly teaching maths, science and English to municipal school students as a volunteer with two NGOs—Each One Teach One and S R Charitable Foundation. He is among the handful of dedicated people who have been teaching without a break. For the father of two young boys, teaching children was not new. “Teaching has always been a passion and when I was in college I used to give lessons to neighbourhood children. Later, when I wanted to do more, I approached the Society for Service to Voluntary Agencies (SOSVA) which told me about NGOs who needed volunteers. I was then assigned to start teaching at the school,’’ the 41-year-old engineer said.
Initially, Bedre started with English classes because the immediate requirement was for a Marathi-speaking teacher who knew English. Gradually, he moved on to other subjects and takes classes in Std VII and VIII. Now, he spends around an-hourand-a-half every day at the school. Nearly 20 to 30 students attend his classes besides the regular BMC classes. There are of course other volunteers, most of whom are paid an honorarium. Since Bedre has his own business, he says he does not need to be paid.
Circumstances made him opt for engineering—his father died and the family business needed him. If he had an option, he would have gone into academics but that was not meant to be. Now that he has two small businesses that are doing well and a supportive wife, Bedre says teaching these children is not financially taxing. “However, what is tough is waking up early in the morning. But one gets used to it. Moreover, if I was not teaching the municipal children, I would have wasted those hours sleeping and getting up late,’’ he said.
A sense of loss bogs down Bedre when bright students are forced to give up their studies because their parents need them to work or to get married. “I remember this one girl, Babita, who was brilliant at maths and science. Her mother married her off at an early age and now she doesn’t come to school anymore. Unfortunately, many of these municipal school children have single parents, they are either living with a mother or a father. Some of them live with relatives and cannot but have to drop out of school,’’ he says.
Another thing that troubles Bedre is that many of the children, especially girls, suffer from night blindness. They cannot see clearly even in the late evening because of the condition caused by malnutrition. “And I thought such things happened in the backward areas of our country,’’ he says. “But things have improved somewhat after the BMC launched their mid-day meal scheme.’’
(Subodh Bedre can be contacted on 9324268562)
ketan.tanna@timesgroup.com

GOOD SAMARITAN: Subodh Bendre is a volunteer with two NGOs and has been teaching several subjects at various municipal schools

IIT - Just another Brand?

In a nation obsessed with comparing one's child with the neighbor's child or the child's cousin, its no surprise that education is a big business. From top institutes to local tuitions, all seem to be spinning money on account of a promise - making a child's financial future secure! And thinking of brands in education, whats better than our prestigious IITs and IIMs? But come to think of it, they are just another brand. They have been smart enough to build upon it.

Why are these brands thought of so highly? Well you provide 1500 seats when the demand is more like 1.5 lakh [total applicants] or lets say [15000 strong candidates] - that seems to have been working for such institutes. Yes, they do provide quality education, but it is not something that other institutes can't provide. While IIMs are set for increasing the already high fee[in the range of 2 lacs to 3 lacs per annum across IIMs], thankfully IITs have maintained an affordable fee. Yet this news in TOI comes as a shock.

IIT-JEE cut-offs under scanner

RTI Reveals Bungled Procedure

Manoj Mitta | TNN

New Delhi: How does the IIT-JEE, one of the most respected competitive examinations in the world, determine who makes the cut-off for admission? In response to notices sent by the Central Information Commission (CIC) on an RTI application, the IIT authorities have given conflicting versions, putting the JEE under a cloud.
CIC member O P Kejariwal has threatened to take an “extremely serious’’ view if IIT Kharagpur, which conducted the JEE in 2006, did not disclose by January 15 how it had calculated the cutoff marks in each of three subjects—mathematics, physics and chemistry.
This is the third time CIC has issued a non-compliance notice to IIT Kharagpur, which was found to have given two different versions of the statistical procedure to arrive at the cut-off marks. Worse, neither of those versions was found to tally with the cut-off marks admittedly applied in the 2006 IIT JEE.
The system, in which every year a different IIT conducts the JEE by rotation, is hard pressed to come clean on the procedure for cut-off marks as RTI has put a question mark on the credibility of what is considered to be a global brand. Jan 15 deadline to explain IIT cut-offs
Consider the sequence of events that led to such a pass:
In October 2006, a parent of an unsuccessful candidate filed RTI applications asking for cut-off marks, the procedure for arriving at them and marks of the students above the cut-off marks in the IITJEE held that year.
In December 2006, IIT Kharagpur evasively said there was “no fixed procedure or technique’’ for deciding the cut-off marks.
In May 2007, after holding a hearing on an appeal filed by the aggrieved parent, CIC directed IIT Kharagpur to disclose all information sought under the RTI and issued notice on why a penalty should not be imposed for its failure to do so until then. IIT Kharagpur came up with the first version of the procedure to arrive at the qualifying marks.
In June 2007, CIC issued a non-compliance notice as the stated procedure did not tally with the cut-off marks.
In July 2007, IIT Kharagpur said the information provided by it was correct.
In August 2007, CIC issued a second non-compliance notice. IIT Kharagpur came up with a second version of the procedure for determining the cut-off marks.
In September 2007, CIC closed the case on the basis of the second version.
In October ’07, the appellant asked CIC to reopen the case, saying the second version didn’t tally with the cut-off marks.
On December 7, the CIC directed IIT Kharagpur to comply with its directions “in full’’ by January 15. TNN

Universal Syllabus in Universities! - TOI - 04/01/2008

Single syllabus for varsities mooted

Seethalakshmi S | TNN

Bangalore: Soon, all universities in India could have a uniform curriculum. In other words, students of Mumbai and Bangalore universities, or any other university, will study the same syllabi.
In a complete revamp of the functioning of universities across the country, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has made this sweeping reform proposal to ensure the horizontal mobility of students among universities. The move will definitely help students whose parents have transferable jobs.
“At present, the quality of syllabi varies from one university to another, making it difficult for students to move. A uniform curriculum will ensure that quality is maintained across the country. An action plan to operationalize the new strategies has been prepared. This will also involve upgrading of syllabi at the under-graduation and post-graduation levels,’’ a source told TOI.
A NEW CHAPTER
Creating new univs out of big varsities
Internationalisation of education, including twinning of programmes, joint degrees and collaboration with foreign universities
Enhancing enrolment by 5% during the 11th plan by establishing more varsities and colleges besides increasing intake in existing colleges UGC plans to split big univs for efficiency
Bangalore/Mumbai: The UGC has proposed to improve the quality of state universities and colleges and bridge the quality gap between universities. A strategy will be prepared to bring B and C grade universities on par with A grade ones.
Another major reform move by the UGC is the creation of new universities from among the existing big ones. The UGC has also decided to put a cap on the maximum number of colleges that can be affiliated to a university.
Not just that, an alternative to the existing model, including a constituent colleges system, unitary universities with undergraduation and postgraduation, PhD and integrated facilities, will be brought in to reduce the load on the big universities. The academic and administrative reforms committee will look into the methodology for admissions, credit\grading system, semester system, teacher assessment, examination\evaluation reforms and the composition of university academic bodies like the senate, syndicate and executive council. Also, the UGC will launch a special drive to establish 370 educationally backward districts. Under the 11th plan, the UGC is looking at public-private partnerships where the private sector will finance higher education.
The idea of a common curriculum for varsities across the country dates back to the NDA regime. But several varsities rejected the idea fearing it would be biased towards Hindutva. But an expert from the Mumbai University who has been monitoring curriculum changes pointed out that a common curriculum was not enforceable. “We speak of university autonomy and weaving in of local issues in the curricula. But common curriculum is more likely to be a model curriculum,’’ he said.
UGC chairman Sukhdeo Thorat pointed out that the committee set up was merely going to review the curricula in various varsities and suggest changes. “How can a common curriculum be applicable to the country? It has been tried in 2002 and not worked. We won’t enforce a common curriculum, merely review it across varsities,’’ he said.

Students stand to benefit as the UGC proposes to bridge the quality gap between universities. It has also decided to put a cap on the maximum number of colleges that can be affiliated to a university

New Sheriff, New Hopes!

Let's hope this helps the cause of education. :)

TOI - 03/01/2008

Educationist will be new city sheriff

S Balakrishnan | TNN

Mumbai: After being without a sheriff for two years, Mumbai has a new incumbent in the p o s t — I n d u S h a h a n i , principal of HR College of Commerce.
After the last sheriff ’s tenure ended, the government was unable to find a suitable candidate, drawing criticism from several quarters.
The sheriff ’s post, though titular, saw hectic lobbying for it. The prime contenders were banker K D Vora, chairman of Kapole Cooperative Bank, and R N Singh, owner of a security firm who enjoys the backing of former minister Kripa Shankar Singh. The CM eventually handpicked Shahani for the post in view of her contribution to the cause of education.
Shahani has been in the field of education for 33 years. Principal of HR College for the last seven years, she was vice-principal before that. She is a vice-president of the International Baccalaureate Organisation and a member of Mumbai University’s academic council.
Shahani told TOI, “I will be able to speak on my plans for Mumbai only after I am sworn in.’’

Indu Shahani

Now that's, Interesting!!! - TOI - 03/01/2008

Indian edu is new fad in Japan

Japan, renowned for its technology, is suffering a sudden crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected—a growing craze for Indian education.
The rising insecurity about the nation’s schools, which nottoo-long-ago churned out international toppers, is increasingly driving many in Japan to look for lessons from India, the country they see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.
Bookstores are filled with titles like Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills and The Unknown Secrets of the Indians. Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan. And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.
At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even colour maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag. This, when Little Angels is located in a Tokyo suburb where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard of just a few years ago, say education experts and historians. Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development. NYT NEWS SERVICE Education: India’s doing what Japan once did
The Japanese are increasingly turning to the Indian eduction system for their children. In the last few years, Japan has been increasingly gripped by the fear of being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbours.
Last month, a national cry of alarm greeted the announcement by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development that in a survey of math skills, Japan had fallen from first place in 2000 to 10th place and from second to sixth spot in science.
While China has stirred more concern here as a political and economic challenger, India has emerged as the country to beat in a more benign rivalry over education. In part, this reflect’s China’s image in Japan as a cheap manufacturer and technological imitator. But India’s success in software development, internet businesses and knowledgeintensive industries in all of which Japan has failed to make inroads has set off more than a tinge of envy.
Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline—learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorisation and cramming and a focus on the basics, especially in math and science.
India’s more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten and are its main selling point. Its two-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, three-year-olds are introduced to computers, and fiveyear-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.
Japan’s interest in learning from Indian education is a lot like America’s interest in learning from Japanese education. As with many new things here, the interest in Indian-style education has quickly become a fad.
Indian education is a frequent topic in forums like talk shows. Popular books claim to reveal the Indian secrets for multiplying and dividing multiple-digit numbers. Even Japan’s conservative education ministry has begun discussing Indian methods. Eager parents try to send their children to Japan’s roughly half-a-dozen Indian schools, hoping for an edge on the competitive college entrance exams. In Tokyo, the two largest Indian schools, which teach kindergarten through junior high mainly to Indian expatriates, have received a sudden increase in inquiries from Japanese parents starting last year. NYT NEWS SERVICE

TAKING A LEAF OUT OF INDIA’S TEXTBOOK: Japanese children in an Indian kindergarten school

Good news for Engineering Students - TOI article - 2/1/08

IIT to air lectures live from today

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: For lakhs of aspirants who don’t make it to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the new year has brought in cheer—this tech school is opening its classrooms beginning Wednesday for engineering colleges across the country.
As reported by TOI on December 8, IIT-Bombay will broadcast its lectures live through Edusat, the satellite which caters exclusively to the educational sector. Students of any engineering institute will now not only have real-time access to IITB tutoring, but can also interact with resident faculty at Powai.
Inaugurating the live interactive classroom, former TCS vice chairman F C Kohli said he had visited the MIT’s classrooms of the future and India needs to harness technology in education to a great extent. “I will not call this distance learning, but a classroom redesigned. This is virtual live education,’’ said Kohli, speaking on the IITB-ISRO initiative.
Hinting at the poor quality of education imparted in tier two engineering colleges, he said institutions need to realise they are not graduating “progressive technicians, but progressive thinkers and knowledge workers.’’ Kohli, who is also the chairman of the board of governors at the College of Engineering, Pune, which had invested in setting up a dedicated fibre optic line to transmit lectures from IITB, said engineering colleges will have to work on “prerequisites’’ before exposing their students to IIT-B lectures. “Basic pre-requisites, attendance when the course is on and follow-up are three essentials that colleges will have to keep in mind if they want to start offering the IIT courses,’’ the father of Indian IT said. Additional chief secretary (higher and technical education) Joyce Shankaran suggested that IITs look beyond engineering colleges and transmit lectures to polytechnics and science colleges too.
For IIT-B, director Ashok Misra pointed out that the initiative will go a long way in furthering the cause of education. IIT will start transmitting lectures from 8.30 am to 8 pm. Head of IIT’s centre for distance engineering education programme Kannan Moudgalya said almost 100 engineering colleges had already purchased ISRO receivers to access the live IIT-B lectures. To begin with, IIT-B will broadcast lectures in 13 courses, including software engineering, information systems, computation fluid dynamics, embedded systems, instrumentation and process control and fibre optics communication. “Besides, this initiative should be seen as an inclusive effort of all the IITs. Subject experts from other IITs and engineering colleges can also come to IIT-B and deliver lectures,’’ added Moudgalya.
toireporter@timesgroup.com