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Ramblings on Undergraduate Education in India

Swami Manohar

August 29, 2010

1 Impact of the IT success story


Pages have been written about the fantastic achievements of the Indian IT industry and its
positive impact on the economy, the psyche of the population and the brand image of India
abroad. However, the negative impact of the rise of the IT industry in India is deep and
pervasive and completely outside the radar of policy makers as well as industry. The irony
is that the success of the IT industry in its current form, predominantly services oriented, is
in itself a major bottleneck to its growth as will be seen shortly. The primary symptom of
the malaise is the inverted salary structures that have become the norm in the IT industry
when compared with non-IT industry. For instance, fresh engineering graduates from top
engineering colleges are offered a starting salary of Rs 6 lakhs per annum. This is far more
than the salary of a senior manger in a traditional industry like the automotive industry or
the manufcaturing industry. Even with the revised salary structure, an Assistant Professor
at the Indian Institute of Science, the premier research Institute in the country, with a
PhD from a reputed global institution and possibly with a couple of years of post-doctoral
experince draws no more than about Rs 5 lakhs a year. At the higher ends of the spectrum
in the IT sector the compensations reach stratospheric heights, especially when expatriates
at the senior mangement levels are considered.
What is the impact of this? The aspirations of millions of youngsters are set at this high
levels. There is nothing wrong with increased aspirations, but the result of this unrealistic
expectation is insidious. But first, why is this an unrealistic expectation? Even though
there are fresh graduates being paid Rs 5 lakhs to even Rs 10 lakhs per annum (some
of the IIT graduates hired by finance industry MNCs are indeed offered such salaries),
the number of such offers is very small, compared to the annual turnout of engineering
graduates in India, which is close to about half a million. The reality is that more than
80% of these are unemployable, and some fraction of these eventually find employment at
annual salaries no more than Rs 1 lakh, in domains as disparate as call centers, data entry
shops, as teachers in polytechnics, and computer training shops.
Many of these youngsters completed their BE by borrowing money from banks to pay
private engineering colleges and thus at the age of 21 are left with an useless degree, a bank

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loan to pay off and a battered self esteem. For most of these kids the toil started when they
were in the 9th standard: given the irrational pay structure for (some) BE graduates that
were prevalent in the industry, there is enormous parental and peer pressure on school kids
to start preparing for an entry into some engineering degree and with a well defined caste
hierarchy among possible colleges: The IITs at the top (within which the older IITs are
above the newer ones and there is a finely nuanced ranking), followed by NIITs, followed by
specific colleges in each state that are ranked as the top. And there are a slew of entrance
tests (JEE, AIEEE, CET, COMED-K, numerous state-government run exams and exams
conducted by a host of private autonomous universities). Preparation for these exams
starts as early as the end of 8th standard (to start training classes for JEE!) and continues
till the summer of their 12th standard exams. At the end of these exams and a highly
analysed and watched selection process these kids end up in various colleges.

2 Engineering College Admission process


A snapshot of the process is important to understand the shakiness of the foundation on
which today’s engineering education rests on. In TamilNadu, one of the three biggies of
engineering education, a recent government order has enforced the use of 12th standard
marks as the sole criterion for admission to the ’merit’ seats of all engineering colleges.
Leaving out the complexities of multiple school boards (CBSE, ISE, Matriculation, and
State Board), and simply looking at kids in the State Board. All the students are ranked
on the basis of the 12th standard exam and here is where things immediately get interesting:
there are about a few hundred students who usually score 100% on all the four subjects
that are used in the ranking. Hence these names are ranked in random order for the basis of
admission to specific colleges and branches. For example, Electronics and Communication
engineering branch in Anna University Guindy will be deemed the top choice by several
thousand aspirants and hence the first two hundred rank holders will fill this branch up.

2.1 Selecting the College


The counseling center during the engineering admission is a place of enormous stress. Each
student is allowed to come in with one parent/guardian. The aspirants are seated according
to the ranking that had been established and communicated to them.
Each of the students has a list of names of colleges and branches in a clear order of
priority. This order is normally arrived at using a diverse mix of inputs that will put ancient
alchemists to shame. First there are well publicised rankings of engineering colleges brought
out by general magazines and some newspapers every year (for example, Mint, Outlook,
India Today, Dataquest and EFY). The methodology used for this ranking is described
sometimes, but given the high stakes involved for the colleges, it is not clear how scientific
such rankings are, even if we allow for the possibility that a college can be ’ranked’. Second,
there are numerous inputs from friends, family and well-wishers on which college is the best

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and which branch is the best. Third, the peer inputs on which colleges and branches are
the most prestigious. Added to the mix are factors like the distance to the colleges from
their place of residence, the proximity of some close relative to a college, presence of a
close relative (’uncle’s cousin’s friend’s husband’) at a senior position (’assistant to the
Principal’s secretary’) in a college, the cost of hostel and board, and so on. The top factor
common to most of rankings is the ’placement record’ of the college in question.
The placement record of a college is by itself a complex parameter. Most colleges and
students have a classification of companies into Tiers. Tier-1 companies are the like sof
Google, Amazon, General Motors, and Ernst and Young. Tier-2 are companies like Texas
Instruments, Samsung, and Honeywell and Tier-3 are companies like Infosys, Wipro, L&T,
and others. Of course a single parameter decides the position of a company in the order, the
CTC (cost to company), three letters bandied about by everyone connected to engineering
colleges. In other words, the annual compensation for the entry level position offered by
the company is the only factor. It is agnostic to the nature of work done, the intellectual
challenges involved, or the potential for career growth offered by the company.
The placement record of a college primarily depends on ’Campus Placement’, not about
employment of students after they have left the college. No college keeps track of such trivia.
Hence there is a huge machinery at play in every engineering college (majority of them are
private) to ensure that top tier companies come for campus placement as early as possible
every year and recruit as many students as possible. Colleges advertise their placement
percentage every year and list the names of companies that have recruited their students.
For example, a top engineering college in Bangalore during the campus recruitment season
has a big board proudly proclaiming that ’325 students across all branches have been
recruited by Infosys’. Yes, this process is also called trawling. Companies like Infosys
and TCS hire the top few hundred students from the ’top ranked’ colleges, irrespective of
their branches of study. Thus a chemical engineer and a electronics engineer are identical
in their view. And not surprisingly, this expectation is borne out. Neither knows any
chemical engineering or electronics engineering. They posses the smarts needed for doing
the work that is expected at Infosys or TCS after a 6 week training period. Let us leave
aside, for the moment, the question of why then do a four year degree in chemical or
electronic engineering and get back to the issue of college rankings. Colleges get highly
ranked based on campus placements. Hence the top ranked students rush to join these
colleges, irrespective of what branches are available. Top tier companies then target these
top ranked colleges because they know that the smartest students have all congregated in
these colleges. This vicious cycle is at the core of the decline in engineering education in
India today.
Let us get back to the aspirant waiting at the counseling center. The ranking list of
colleges, as we saw, is primarily based on their ability to place their students successfully
into top tier companies. we need to keep in mind that neither the applicant nor the guardian
has any clue about what different branches of engineering mean. And as seen above, it
is not of much significance. Except that there is a rank order among the branches of

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engineering: so called circuit branches (Electronics and communication, Computer Science
and its various alternate names, electrical, and instrumentation) are considered the top
choice, with Mechanical engineering being considered by many as being a close second,
chemical, civil and production engineerings relegated to the end.

2.2 The decision


When our aspirant gets into the hot seat, where there is a counselor in front of a computer
terminal that gives up to the minute information about current seat availability (called the
seat matrix). That is what branches are available in what colleges among all the colleges
in the pool in Tamil Nadu that are under the single-window counselling process. The
aspirant and the guardian have about ten minutes or fewer to make up their minds about
which college/branch combination to choose. ”ECE in Sathyabama college just got filled,
there is a vacancy in Manufacturing engineering in Anna University Guindy, and Oh, SRM
university has both Information Science and Electrical and Electronic branches. If you
want computer science it is available in Coimbatore”, and so on. Even though the tuition
fee is fixed by government for the ’merit seats’ the other costs are quite variable. A decision
is made to opt for a specific branch and a college. A decision that binds that student for
four years of the most formative period of an youngster, with such a chaotic process.

2.3 The AIEEE exam


The results of AIEEE exam recently came out. All candidates had been ranked from 1 to
about 300000. I was surprised to find out that there are websites that tell you the set of
institutes that one will possibly get admitted to given the rank.
http://questionpaper.in/AIEEE/RankAnalysis/
The complexities of this process are mind boggling. A friend of mine sent a query to
our college batch yahoo groups, stating his son’s rank (very good, around 150, AIR, which
incidentally means All India Rank), and wants any inputs on whether his son is eligible to
get into REC Trichy. And there is a group of helpful friends who make suggestions. And
I find the above site and send him mail with my unsolicited suggestion that REC Trcihy
is not great anymore (compared to the late seventies when it was ranked the second most
preferred college after College of Engineering Guindy). One can only imagine the stress
that the younger generation is going through and the immensely higher levels of stress the
parents are going through. And all of this discussion without the said son having any clue
about what REC Trcihy (currently called NIT Trichy) is really like. And he will find out
on landing there the first day after paying all the fees and shutting out other options, only
to find out that may be he should have joined some other college. But by the time it is too
late. My suggestion to him, for example, is that he should put his son in IIIT Hyderabad.
This is because of my personal knowledge about the quality of the faculty and hence the
high quality of the undergraduate program there. However, given the volley of suggestions

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and comments that he is getting, it is likely that this really objective advise will get lost
in the crowd.
A major confounding factor is that any decision made in the choice of the college is
heartbreakingly final in most cases. If you pick a college in your home state based on the
AIEEE rank, pay the fees and join it. Then for whatever reason, you want to change your
mind and go to another college, it is almost impossible. The process is so complicated, that
the easier option is to just quit, wait another year and apply to join to the different college
again. Since losing a year is considered a great calamity in India, most people do not even
consider this possibility. hence kids who have landed up in the wrong college, grit their
teeth for the next four years and get out with a degree. That brings us to the the really
blighted lot, the students who ’fail’ in their 12th standard. The whole extended family is
devastated. The kid is traumatised. A pall of gloom descends on the household. What is
his future going to be? It is gone. over. He can forget his future since he has failed in the
most crucial exam of his life. These are some of the grim comments one can hear. The
next six months till the kids writes the repeat exam and clears it, he is convinced that he
is a loser and a good-for-nothing. His performance in the repeat exam, even if he passes,
is marginal, since even the graders of the repeat exams are convinced that everyone taking
this exam is a loser anyway, and correct the papers that much stricter. There are very few
families that support the child, give him confidence that it is not the end of the world,
work with him so that in the repeat exam he does reasonably well, and then guide him to
a suitable career path. Most families make life unbearable. So much so that even kids who
pass the exam, commit suicide because they have not scored high enough.
The paucity of social scientists which is caused by the skewed educational system,
means that there is no systematic long-term studies of the correlation between high scores
in examinations (like the 10th and 12th) and academic, industrial, commercial, artistic or
political excellence in later years. How many State Toppers have gone on to have significant
positive impact on their society? How many high achievers of today are top rank hold-
ers in their school years? How many successful individuals actually trace their success to
working hard to score 90+ percentage in their school final examinations? No such studies
have been undertaken as far as I know. Hence, there are no scientific studies to support or
oppose the importance of high scores in school terminal examinations and so the rat race
continues unchecked. The quantum of creative energies of a large nation like India that is
being dumped down the drain in pursuit of such completely unvalidated performance goals
is depressing and disheartening.

2.4 Post Admission


So finally the youngster has got a seat in a decent college in a decent branch. Now to really
go there and find out what that college and branch really are! Given that a majority of
the students (at least 90%) make a choice the same way, there is a whole lot of discovery

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that is made on arrival at the college. Ignoring the many nasty surprises along the way
(like the additional money that is usually asked by the management, the remoteness of the
campus from everything else, etc.), the first year of college is usually when most students
figure out that they didn’t want to be there, and that they are doing mostly what they
were doing in their twelfth standard, mindlessly doing math physics and chemistry and in
addition a couple of subjects on the basics of engineering. To their surprise most of them
find that there are even more stricter rules of discipline in the college than in their schools:
uniforms, strict rules on attendance, fines if they miss a class, message to parents if their
score in the internal tests are not up to the mark and so on. And the teaching, if you can
call what happens in most of these colleges as teaching is uninspiring at best and abysmal
as a norm.

3 Teaching in Engineering Colleges


The teaching in engineering colleges or the lack of it is the second most insidious effect of
the IT boom, the first one as we discussed being the mad craze among students for any
branch of engineering solely based on placement success of the college. The teaching faculty
(in less than 5% of the colleges is there even a notion of research by faculty) in an average
engineering college has the following composition: the principal is a fairly well qualified
individual, with some teaching and or industry experience. If the college management is
reasonable, it would have attracted a few retired individuals from the industry or DRDO
labs or engineering colleges to head the departments. In each department there could
be one other person with a decent qualification (either a PhD or a Masters from a good
research institution). The rest of the faculty entirely consists of people with BEs with no
industry experience, but who have registered themselves for a Masters (usually in the same
college) and in some cases for a PhD. Let us first look at the so called circuit branches,
computer science and its variants, electronics and communication, electrical and electronics
and instrumentation. These are the first branches of choice from which most software
service companies hire students. The top students in these branches from the top rated
colleges are en mass hired by these companies. It must be noted explicitly among all the
negatives that the quality and energy of the students who complete their twelfth and enter
engineering colleges is very good, no less and in most cases better informed and better
prepared than their counterparts of 15 years ago. Hence in every engineering college,
however bad, the top 10% of the students are very smart and capable and have picked up
good engineering skills in spite of the college and the teachers.
All of these students find a job in industry or go on to acquire a Masters from a better
reputed college to improve the prospects of their getting hired. The next rung of students
struggle and find placement, at wages below that of drivers and domestic help, in smaller
companies with the hope that by gaining experience in industry their prospects will improve
after a few years (which mostly happens). The good news is at least that these smaller

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companies are in broadly the engineering domain and hence these students gain significant
industry experience.
This process leaves the bottom rung of students who have just managed to pass their
engineering, but have no idea of engineering to be able to find any jobs. And what do they
do? Promptly apply and get selected as teachers in engineering colleges! But one would
think that with such non-existent academic skills they should not be hired anywhere,
especially as teachers. One would be right if one did not have to factor in the AICTE
norms for engineering colleges. There are very clear norms for setting up and getting
approval for an engineering college: chief among the regulations is the teacher-student
ratio guideline, to quote, ”The desirable student to teacher ratio for engineering degree
program for the model curriculum will be 10:1. However, it should not be allowed to rise
beyond 15:1.” From this the arithmetic needed to be done by college managements does
not require qualification beyond high school (many of the college management just barely
have such a qualification). For each student, the AICTE fee norm is in the range of 30,000
for ’government seats’ and about Rs 1 lakh for management seats. So even if yo average
out, each student brings in at least Rs 50,000 per year in fees. So 15 students bring in Rs
7.5 lakhs. (of course, if you expect the management to go by the recommended 10:1 ratio,
you probably are from a different country, if not a different planet altogether). Any of
these left over BE graduates with no job prospects will be happy to jump at a job offer in
thee colleges where the AICTE norm (yes, there certainly are norms for every little detail
where you can put a number on) for salary is roughly about Rs 1.5 lakhs a year. Even if
the managements actually pay this amount, they are still at least Rs 6 lakhs ahead!
In the circuit branches all the reasonable students opt out of teaching even though the
AICTE salary norms are quite decent, compared to the low salaries that they get paid
elsewhere. But the hope of getting larger salaries in the not too distant future is strong
enough for them to shut out the teaching path. The poor reputation of teaching jobs is a
factor which works in a vicious cycle to keep the fact a reality.
In non-circuit branches, the migration of talent happens earlier, even at the time of
entry to engineering as we saw earlier. Branches like civil, production, manufacturing,
metallurgy, and aerospace, in spite of the obvious (to industry watchers) boom in these
sectors, have no takers because every parent and his ward are eyeing the Tier 1 software job
paying Rs 6 lakhs per annum. Any takers are there because the college has high placement
record, and predictably after finishing their civil (or manufacturing or whatever) degree
get promptly picked up by some software company. So in these branches the left-over BE
graduates have abysmal engineering knowledge. Fortunately for the next generation of
students, most private engineering colleges do not even offer non-circuit branches except
mechanical engineering until they have reached the AICTE limit of all seats in all circuit
branches.

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3.1 Teaching Condiitons
So finding good teachers for engineering colleges is a tough task. The input pool consists
entirely of applicants who are there because they cannot be placed elsewhere. Two other
factors conspire to prevent even the small number of qualified people becoming teachers in
engineering colleges. First is the salary and second is the working conditions. For govern-
ment colleges, a small minority in terms of numbers, the salaries are fixed by AICTE, and
these are fairly low for someone who is really qualified to be a good teacher: understanding
of the subject matter, practical experience and passion for the subject. Private engineer-
ing colleges have also declared that they will follow the AICTE norms for salaries, even
though AICTE does not require these norms to be the upper limit. It is convenient for
private managements to charge much higher fees but claim to adhere to AICTE salaries.
With very few exceptions in very few colleges, the salaries are roughly as prescribed by
AICTE. In these colleges there are very little opportunities to augment the teacher’s in-
come by industrial consultancy, since the better teachers are saddled with large teaching
load that leaves them hardly anytime for pronfession development or industry interaction.
The working conditions of teachers is the second major factor that dissuades the interested
people from taking up this profession. First is the very heavy teaching loads. Second lack
of any quality academic peers or academically qualified management. Most of the private
universities have the founder (usually the person who invested the capital for obtaining
the land and buildings) by default declaring himself as the Chancellor of the University (if
it had become an autonomous university) or the Chairman of the managing Board of the
College. This Board usually consists of relatives of the founder and a nominal one or two
persons with some academic credibility, but who mostly have no say in the running of the
College.
Thus a qualified and academically oriented person has no enabling environment to
thrive as an academic. Compounding this is the fact that for most students securing a job,
any job so long as the pay is high. as their primary goal and have no interest i learning
anything that in their view does not aid in that goal. This can be very demotivating for a
good teacher.
Thus to cut a long story short, good teaching, or even good academic roll models are
noticeable by their absence in most engineering colleges. And this is the environment that
our typical aspiring youngster with dreams of securing a bright IT future lands up.

3.2 Courses
Let us look at the kind of courses that get taught in these engineering colleges. Students
don’t study any quality text books these days. In fact, most cannot name the authors of
any of their text books. Especially in autonomous universities, where the courses and text
books are set by the same college, the quality of the course content is very low. The exams
are usually a farce. Students in engineering college sign up for tuition for courses, paying

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as much as 7000 to 8000 for a single course. The driving force is the need to score 75%
or above in order to ensure thatthey clear the cut off marks for the campus interviews. In
colleges that come under universities. for example a large university like Anna university,
students use two study materials: books that published solved question papers from the
previous 10 years for all the subjects and course notes for each of the courses. These notes
are usually written by some of the enterprising teachers of private colleges who also get
these notes declared as the books to be used for their classes. The more entrenched of
the ’authors’ get their books listed as the prescribed text books in the University syllabus,
and thus ensure a steady ad large demand for their books. A famous example is one Dr.
E. Balaguruswamy, who has written text books in practically every aspect of computer
science, though he got his PhD in Systems engineering and spent most of his career as an
adminsitrator, including as Vice Chancellor of Anna University. Hence it was quite easy
to get his books listed as required texts in many courses. The unfortunate fact is most of
the students get by four years of college without being introduced to either a great book or
a great teacher. And as we discussed earlier, have not been introduced to a good problem
that they solve themselves.

4 The MBA Aspiration


The pot at the end of the MBA rainbow is another persistent and alluring myth for the
youngsters of today, especially those in the pre-final year of their BE. The smarter and
brighter ones realise that by the end of the third year they still have no idea of what
engineering is and that it is unlikely that they will learn any further in the remaining year,
given the state of the teaching (that we discussed earlier) and the pressures of finding a
campus job in the final year. So most of their study time is spent on working towards getting
placed in the campus interviews. Preparations for this includes looking through numerous
resources available both on- and off-line for jumping the campus recruitment hoops. For
instance there are websites that provide sample aptitude tests that are supposed to be what
the top software companies use. There are brick and mortar entities that claim to prepare
the students for aptitude tests as well as train them in ’soft skills’. We will return latter
to this all important phrase. Needless to say, none of this preparation includes working on
real engineering skills. And preparing for the semester exams and internal tests to ensure
that they cross the cut-off percentage for campus recruitment takes up significant time.
But in case they do not get placed anywhere during campus placement, and the likelihood
of this increases in proportion to the ranking of their college, the students need a plan B.
And Plan B is to appear for CAT and attempt to score as high a rank as possible.
CAT, the acronym for Common Admissions Test, was initially for admission to the
Indian Institutes of Management. In recent times the results of this test are being used by
numerous other management degree-granting colleges. In terms of numbers, the numbers
appearing for CAT (2.4 lakhs in 2009) is next only to that of the other great entrance exam

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in the Indian landscape, the JEE (4.72 lakhs this April).
The rational for opting to pursue an MBA after a BE is that the CTC for those with
a good MBA is always higher than for those with only a technical degree. And there is
an urban myth that a BE-MBA combination is the ultimate qualification for an aspiring
youngster. It is an irony that youngsters who joined engineering without knowing what
engineering is and who have not been able to find out what it is even after three years
decide to pursue an MBA, with equally no clue about what an MBA is. The only deciding
factor is the lure of a higher salary, propagated by yearly news items about the highest
CTC offered to that year’s graduates of the IIMs.
The fact that the CAT scores are used for admission by close to 1500 colleges makes
it attractive enough for even average students to prepare and take the test. The 7th
semester of engineering is spent preparing for the CAT exam and for campus interviews
in colleges with ranking enough to attract companies to come recruiting on their campus.
The final semester is a time of high anxiety with very complex rules governing appearance
in interviews. There is a premium placed on arriving on campus for recruitment as early as
possible to catch the brightest students. This is because to ensure opportunity to a large
number of students, the Placement Offices of the colleges (very powerful and influential
office) have a rule that if a student is made an offer by any company then he or she cannot
attend further interviews. So companies scramble to be the first on campus to the top
ranked colleges so that they have access to the best students. This mad scramble during
the boom years reached such a state that campus recruitment was pushed forward to the
end of the 6th semester: so by the beginning of the seventh semester, successful students
already has a job in hand (with a handsome CTC) with a whole year of engineering yet to
be done! When the market fell in 2008, several hundreds of students who had offers from
the top software services companies by the summer of 2007 were left hanging on to the
offer letters for almost a year with no joining letters being issued till late in 2009.
Many colleges have realised the negative fallout of too early campus placements and
have pushed back companies to the beginning of the eight semester. However, the push
back is possible only for highly ranked colleges and that too with Tier-2 companies. I am
not aware of any engineering college in India which can dictate terms to Google or Yahoo,
for example.

4.1 Summary of Four years in Engineering


The first year is spent getting used to being away from home, being a grown up in college,
making new friends and trying to understand what engineering is all about. But sadly
at the end of the first year, it is clear to the brighter students that they are no better
informed about what engineering is than they were the previous year. They hopefully
enter the second year assuming that when they start working on courses specific to their
branches they will get wiser. Here they are hit by the abysmal teaching standards and
the poor quality of teachers. Someone who has struggled to get out with a degree and

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someone who is just earning a salary is in no position to convey the challenges and joy
of engineering or the big picture. So students grind through another year wondering why
engineering is held up to be such a great thing, and start concentrating on scoring marks
in exams, because that is the only factor that can possibly allow them to get the right
job during campus selection. By the end of the second year, they are looking forward to
getting out of engineering college as soon as possible. Of course, life on campus is fun,
with year round availability of inter-collegiate ’techincal-cum-cultural’ festivals that are
organised by every college worth its salt. It is also during the second year that students
in non-circuit branches start attending certificate courses in various IT buzzwords, paying
good money, learning next to nothing, but receiving a certificate at the end of the process
that contributes one line to their CVs. Circuit branch students also do these IT certificate
courses hoping to redress the lack of quality in their academic work, but they also mostly
end up acquiring certificates in ’advanced topics’ and not much more.
The third year of college proceeds along similar lines, but many of the smarter students
now have a Plan B, in case they do not get placed during campus interviews. And this
Plan B is, to pursue an MBA!
Here is the summary of the path traversed so far by our young engineering student:
Corralled into an engineering college due to a parental aspirations and peer pressure, with-
out any understanding of the branch in which he has finally landed, with very poor quality
teachers resulting in no enlightnemnet about engineering till the end of the third year, the
fourth year being spent chasing campus jobs and working to get a decent rank in CAT.
So the final year of engineering is lost. The final year project, which is meant to be the
capstone of four years of work, the integration and synthesis of all knowledge gained during
the four years culminating in addressing a real world problem heralding the emergence of
a real engineer, almost always is undermined. A very very small percentage of students
who have risen beyond all the above limitations, and who, in spite of a prestigious job in
hand, have the motivation undertake and complete ambitious final year projects.
Thus every year close of half a million graduates from engineering colleges join the work-
force with almost no real competencies. Given the fact that these half a million youngsters
were among the top of their high school cohort is cause for grave concern. Leaving alone
their technical competence, most of these graduates do not possess basic soft skills needed
in the world of work. Hence there is a thriving enterprise in the ’finishing school’ business.
For several thousand rupees per head, these finishing schools eat into the already depleted
final year of college providing training in soft skills. These include basic communication
skills in English, personal grooming and etiquette, ability to work in teams, presentation
skills and so on. Here is where the one-dimensional nature of the BE curriculum becomes
starkly apparent. During eight semesters of college, except for two courses in English
during the first year, a single course on management or industrial relations and possibly
another course on ethics and social responsibility, there are no attempts to study anything
else. No humanities, no arts, no history, no languages, literature or culture studies. These
are all considered by the middle-class Indians as ’waste’. (Many of these engineering col-

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leges have obtained the status of Universities even with such a one-dimensional view of the
world, clearly indicating the lack of appreciation of a what a University should mean).
Given this curricular structure, and given that most of the students have very limited
facility in English (predominantly coming from non-urban backgrounds immersed in a
multitude of regional languages), attempts to bridge the gap with a few weeks of ’finishing
school’ simply end up providing revenue streams to smart entrepreneurs but provides no
real benefits to the majority of the students.
The big question is what about the thousands of fresh engineers hired every year by
the top software companies? If their engineering competencies are so limited why would
they get hired? We come back to the question of the basis of success of the Indian software
services industry. As is well known, the primary factor is the cost arbitrage. A fresh
computer science graduate in the US will cost upwards of US$ 60000 as CTC, which is
about Rs 30 lakhs in India. The average entry level CTC in a software services company
is about Rs 5 lakhs. Even if we assume low productivity and hire three engineers for
every one in the US, there is still a 50% cost saving. Indian services companies, factor
in an additional one to two lakhs per engineer to provide a two to three month training.
This training is adequate to get the smart engineering graduate with not much of real
engineering skills to get productive on the job. This also a reflection on the nature and
intellectual depth of the work done by most of these companies. But we are digressing.
It is clear that the lack of depth and quality in engineering college education is really of
no concern to the software services companies. All they need are people with the aptitude
and attitude to be trained and the discipline to work hard following given directions. This
they find in plenty, at least for now, at costs that keep the operations highly profitable.
The downside is that most of these engineers after a few years of work that does not
require any depth of any engineering, become incapable of doing any creative work and
this is the wall that the Indian IT industry is facing today: the lack of talent that is needed
for them to move up the value chain to compete globally were the earlier cost advantages
are slowly but surely going down.

5 Engineering Colleges as a business


How do engineering colleges make money?
First, management seats are riced higher than government seats. This fees is the
official fee. Most colleges have donations that precede admission and are a pre-requisite
for admission. This is usually unaccounted for and no receipts are given. This money does
not affect the not-for-profit status of the Trust or group that is running the college.
- Student development fee. beyond the advertised fees most colleges collect an annual
development fee from students. This could be anywhere between 10,000 to 20,000 per year
per student.
- Most of the colleges require the students to stay in the hostel and eat in the hostel.

12
There is no regulation governing hostel fees and mess fees, and good margins are made by
the management in running these facilities.
- Many colleges tie up with companies like NIIT or Aptech to offer computer certification
courses to their students. Rather than being optional, in which case it could be construed
as additional service to students, these courses are compulsory for every student. And the
management gets a cut from the company for every student.
- Colleges run buses, insist on uniforms (?), supply text books and notebooks, all of
which could be made compulsory at the discretion of the management. - A very clean and
high margin activity is the entrance examination conducted by ’well reputed’ institutions.
These are usually well marketed, in the case of private colleges. For instance, Vellore
Institue of technology conducts an entrance exam across india which is taken by over 1.25
lakh aspirants. The application fee (non-refundable) is about Rs 1000. A whopping 11
crores is collected every year by the college through this channel. The number of people
who actually join are around 10,000 every year. The rest of the students pay this money
in their quest for joining an engineering college. - A very insidious practice came to my
knowledge recently and that is placement fee. A very well known autonomous university
run by a private family, demands that every final year student who has been extended
an offer by a campus recruiter pay 8.33% of the CTC offered to the University! This has
to be paid even if the student ends up not joining the company because he decides to go
for higher studies! What is more, the college allows each student up to three recruitment
offers, but collects the 8.33% on every offer. The rational is that if such money is not
collected the brightest students will corner multiple offers taking away opportunities from
other students.
- All of these mechanisms are enforced with more authority if the college has au-
tonomous status. Since the fate of the student is completely in the hands of the manage-
ment. In fact, the XII standard certificate, and mark lists are collected by the college at
the time of admission and held by the college as a surety for good behaviour.
- Unlike for-profit entities, these colleges pay no TAX on any of the above activities,
even when they are accounted for and billed, because of existing tax laws that exempt
non-profits. So effectively, these moneys are multiplied by a factor of 1.33 in real terms.
No wonder the number of colleges has reached 3000 and counting in India. And the
number of engineering seats on offer just crossed 1 Million in 2010. At an average fee per
year per student of RS 10,000, this works out to grand total of about 5000 crore per year
market. Which is a billion dollar industry.

6 Non-Engineering Options
A typical 12th standard kid writes several entrance exams after completing his final exam-
ination. A typical list: JEE, AIEEE, COMED-K and CET (Karnataka), AIIMS, AFMC,
AIPMT, CLAT, and numerous other exams conducted by private universities and colleges.

13
An indication of the chaos afflicting career choices in India is the fact the above list includes
tests for admissions to engineering, medicine, dental, law, nursing and pharmacy! In short,
the admissions to these disciplines is so fraught with uncertainity that it is prudent practice
to keep many options open, even at the cost of preparing (individually as well as through
paid coaching classes), and writing (often involving travel to different centers) a multitude
of entrance exams. Thus a student who did not make it to the right engineering college
may, when the results of a medical exam offers a possibility of a higher preference medical
college may drop out of the engineering college and join the medical college. Since there
are a multitude of entities managing these exams and the corresponding Institutions, it
takes several months after the 12th standard exam’s results are announced for the classical
’stable marriage problem’ reaches steady state. When some reasonable stability is reached,
all those who have not made it into engineering, medical, law, or pharmacy, finalise their
backup options. The backup options, depending on who you talk to, may be in the order
of preference, BCA, BBM, BCom, BSc and finally BA.
There are close to two and half million who graduate every year with some of these
degrees. From universities and colleges around the country. The quality of education in
these degree granting institutions have eroded over the past couple of decades primarily
because of the ripple effect from the success of the IT industry. The brightest students
who have the independent means or the ability to obtain loans join engineering or medicine
or law. The rest trickle down to various other colleges depending on their means and
environment. The situation in these colleges is deprived along two dimensions. The first
is again the paucity of good teachers and the second is the paucity of a energetic and
passionate peer group.
The paucity of good teachers is endemic to all educational institutions, starting from
the primary school level, all the way up to post graduate schools. As mentioned earlier,
the profession of teaching has become undervalued and the input pipeline for the teaching
profession started drying out about two decades ago, unnoticed and unremarked, and we
are today facing the impact of his now.
The paucity of engineering college teachers is driven by the huge disparity in compen-
sation and working environments between the teaching position and other alternatives in
industry. The second factor is that the best from all branches of engineering have been
sucked out to the IT industry with no inflow into the teaching profession in those fields.
For non-engineering fields the shortage is compounded by the exit of potential candidates
much earlier in the pipeline. The best moved to engineering, medicine and law, the next
level moved to BCA, BSc and BCom, from where if they could, with certifications from
numerous enterprises, worm their way into the IT industry. One item which gets head-
lines occasionally is the lament from top scientists in the country about the dearth of
students doing science and research in science. And this gets positive hearing from the
government and there are a large number of of new Institutes that have been set up in
recent years: many Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research have been set up
to foster interest in science. However, the dearth of education, research and scholarship in

14
the humanities is not being lamented or even seriously considered by any decision makers
or opinion makers. Because of this paucity, there are hardly any good teachers in any of
the numerous universities and colleges, where academic freedom is heavily curtailed due
to heavy political influence in the administration of State universities, and the focus on
commercialisation in the case of private Universities.
So a student joining any of these last-chance colleges is hit by two factors: poor teaching
and poor peer group. Even if a student is interested in humanities, that interest cannot
be sustained or enhanced in the college because of these double barriers. Hence very few
opt to go to these colleges. There are no colleges or Universities in India that offer what
can be defined as liberal arts education, the hallmark of the best Universities in the US.
Hence for an Indian student desirous of a rounded undergraduate education ends up with
no choice but to go to the US, where the top hundred liberal arts colleges provide a quality
of education unmatched by the best in India.

7 Liberal Arts Education in India


What really is a liberal arts education? What really is a University? These are, in my
mind, related questions. Universities have become certification agencies in recent years,
especially in India, instead of a place of learning, enquiry and discovery and a place where
youngsters gain the worldview necessary to be responsible and contributing citizens of
modern society. In India, the recent debate on Higher education has been triggered by
the Higher education bill. The key thrust of this Bill is to create a very centralised entity
manned by a small number of wise men, who are supposed to oversee the restructuring of
Indian higher education for the 21st century. Most of the discussion and most of the actual
content of the Bill is focussed on organisational structure, guidelines for appointment of
the core members of the National Commission on Higher Education and Research as well
as the Collegium of scholars, their tenure of appointments and how they will retire or be
nominated etc. There are heated debates about the encroachment of autonomy of the
States by the Central Government, the proposal of a pool of potential Vice Chancellors
comprising of eminent academics and so on. Nowhere is to be found discussions about
what is the true purpose and goal of higher education.
In India we have a tendency to ape many aspects of the west, and in particular the
US: reality shows, IPL, Malls, McDonalds and the consumer culture are some examples.
The one outstanding aspect of the US is its enviable university education system and its
dynamics. Far from being aped, there is very little understanding of why and how the US
university system reached its current eminence, and in spite of recent financial difficulties,
there is every sign that this system will continue its global leadership for decades to come,
unless their leaders mess up in a major way. An example of how one can mess up a
good system was ably provided by the great George Bush with his ’No Child Left Behind’
effort, where the creative and diverse aspects of US school education system have been

15
systematically inflicted with testing and evaluation with misguided goal of ’catching up’
with Asia. The irony of this is striking. Leaving this aside, and getting back to higher
education, the recent action of MHRD in derecognizing forty odd deemed Universities
stirred a hornet’s nest of debate about private education, profiteering, corruption in UGC
and AICTE and a host of other view points. Chancellors of some deemed Universities who
are Chancellors only because they bank rolled the setting up of the University and with no
other academic credentials were given heavy media visibility for their views on the service
they are providing to higher education.

7.1 Level of Debate


It is highly educative to look at the extreme contrast to this situation, namely a recent
debate in the US about the real nature and purpose of higher education. In particular a
healthy and open evaluation of what a liberal arts education really means, what its goals
are, and what preparation is needed by youngsters in a modern democratic society. I re-
fer to the AAUC, the Association of American Universities and Colleges. Just a cursory
view of the membership and structure of the Association reveals the real democratisa-
tion and autonomy of higher education in the US: ”Founded in 1915, AAC&U’s mem-
bership is comprised of institutions of higher education dedicated to ensuring that the
advantages of a liberal education are available to all students regardless of background,
enrollment path, academic specialization, or intended career.” (quote from the webpage
http://www.aacu.org/).
A recent statement from the Board of Directors of the AACU is essential reading for any-
one in India interested in higher education. The content is impressive for its vision, scholar-
ship and vigor, but the manner in which such a statement was arrived at by seeking inputs
from top decision makers in public universities, private universities, government and non
government agencies with a stake in higher education, the democratic manner of arriving at
a credible and authoritative statement on higher education that is backed by scholarship, re-
search and scientific survey of stakeholders is worthy of emulation. The document itself can
be accessed at http://www.aacu.org/about/statements/documents/Quality Imperative 2010.pdf.
There is no single organisation in India related to higher education that has as dis-
tinguished a Board of Directors as the AACU, and this Board did not get appointed by
a Bill passed by the US President. Instead such a Board has evolved based on excellent
governance practices followed for nearly a century by this organisation. Let me close with
a quote from a statement adopted by the Board in 1998. ”The ability to think, to learn,
and to express oneself both rigorously and creatively, the capacity to understand ideas
and issues in context, the commitment to live in society, and the yearning for truth are
fundamental features of our humanity. In centering education upon these qualities, liberal
learning is societys best investment in our shared future.”

16
8 Liberal Arts colleges in India?
Are there no colleges in India that impart a liberal arts education at all? To my knowledge,
there are none, if we take the definition of liberal education to mean what is defined by
AACU which views ”rounded liberal education as a philosophy of education that empowers
individuals with broad knowledge and transferable skills, and a strong sense of value, ethics,
and civic engagement”. Let us approach this differently. What are the best colleges in India
for obtaining a quality undergraduate degree that attempts to provide some aspects of the
above. Clearly, the IITs and the top medical and professional colleges do not fit this
by definition: they are one dimensional, focused exclusively on the professional subject
matter, with no thoughts to citizenship, humanities, arts or culture. So one is left with
colleges that are well known for their humanities programs. To pick the top names with
no scientific basis, but simply on the word of mouth reputation from the four parts of the
country, one can name Presidency College in Kolkotta, St. Stephens College in Delhi, St.
Xavier’s college in Mumbai, Madras Christian College in Chennai, and Mysore University
as a sample from a well reputed University. Let us look at these colleges and see if a student
can hope to attain a rounded undergraduate education. We primarily look at evidence of
scholarship, possibility of obtaining a well rounded undergraduate eduction, as defined by
the possibility of a student opting to study in depth across disciplines breaking traditional
barriers of science, humanities and professional subjects.
A caveat: almost in all cases, I have no personal experience and what I write here is
purely based on information from the websites and in some cases second-hand through
people who are presently either students or a parents of a student in these colleges.

8.1 Presidency College, Kolkottta


Let us start with Presidency college Kolkotta, almost the first college to be set up in In-
dia, starting out as the Hindoo college in 1817. The first paragraph of the page titled
Academic Programmes is not very encouraging: ”This course leading to the B.A. or B.Sc.
Honours degree is meant for those who have passed the Higher Secondary Examination
(10+2 course) conducted by the Council of Higher Secondary Education, West Bengal or
an equivalent examination recognised as such by Calcutta University, in at least five recog-
nised subjects including English language of full marks (not being less than 100) each with
pass marks.” The mention of 100 marks and pass marks in the first para of a university’s
description of the academic program is indicative of what is to follow. The second para-
graph describes the requirements that every undergraduate student of the college should
fulfill. ”Every student must enrol himself/herself for an Honours Course consisting of: 1.
One Honours subject Eight papers (each paper is of 100 marks) 2. Environmental Studies
50 marks 3. Two subsidiary subjects Three papers each (each paper is of 100 marks)# 4.
English Language 50 marks 5. Modern Indian Language (Alternative English or Bengali
or Hindi) 50 marks”

17
We then come to a listing of all possible combinations of Honours (equivalent of a major)
and subsidiary (equivalent of a minor) subjects that are allowed. A detailed study of the list
reveals what is true of most undergraduate degree programs in India. The clear separation
between the left and right brains. For instance, mathematics as a Honours subject can
only be taken with (a) Physics and Chemistry or Statistics or (b) Economics and Statistics.
And Mathematics figures as a subsidiary subject only for economics, physics, chemistry,
biochemistry, geology, geography and statistics. You cannot for instance, do a English
Honours with a mathematics (or for that matter any science) Subsidiary. There are similar
restrictions on all non-science Honours and vice versa. Which means all the undergraduates
who opt for science have no chance of doing any language or humanities minor. Ditto for
humanities majors. Economics is the only subject to straddle this boundary. And of course
the college has no offerings in either Studio Arts or Performing Arts. The next level detail
from departments is also not very encouraging. The Philosophy department in the first
paragraph of describing itself has this statement ”The students performance in University
Examination is the most important target in our purview.”
Thus any student at Presidency College cannot hope to have anything approaching a
liberal education. There is no notion of a thesis or a capstone project work to integrate
the learning in either in the major subjects or the minor. Fairly disappointing for a college
with such a distinguished history in Indian higher education.

8.2 St. Stephen’s College Delhi


Let us visit the St. Stephen’s college, Delhi next. An 120-year old college, with a very
high reputation and visibility in India and abroad. The website is lot more professional
and the B.A. Programme section actually talks about liberal education! ”The structure
and contents of the programme make it an integrated and inter-disciplinary programme
with flexibility and choice. Thus the B.A. Programme is bound to provide the students a
demanding but worthwhile and enjoyable experience in the form of a liberal education.”
However, the flexibility is curtailed by the fact that St. Stephen’s college programs are
governed by the University of Delhi syllabus and examinations, and hence the flexibility
is restricted to what is offered by Delhi University. And the DElhi University follows
primarily a British model of college education where the structure of the program is based
on three years with terminal examinations at the end of each year. For the BA program:
”There is a total of twelve courses over a three-year period with four courses taught and
examined every year. A full-year course has 3 credits and the whole programme has 36
credits for 12 courses”
Let us compare this course structure with that for Presidency Collge (Kolkata Univer-
sity)
The Kolkata University Structure (three year program): ”Every student must enrol
himself/herself for an Honours Course consisting of: 1. One Honours subject Eight papers
(each paper is of 100 marks) 2. Environmental Studies 50 marks 3. Two subsidiary

18
subjects Three papers each (each paper is of 100 marks)# 4. English Language 50 marks
5. Modern Indian Language (Alternative English or Bengali or Hindi) 50 marks ”
In contrast the Stephainte has the following structure:
Discipline Courses (Instead of a Honours and Subsidiary); Each student has to do three
courses each from two Disciplines. The Disciplines offered are English, Economics, History,
Philosophy and Political Science. Language Courses: Two English courses and two Indian
language courses (out of Persian, Urdu, Sanskrit and Hindi) One Foundation Course out
of 2: Contemporary India, and Language, Literature & Culture. One Application Course
out of 2: Creative Writing, Globalization and Mass Communication.
The difference is that two disciplines are considered of equal importance and three
courses are done in each discipline. There is some amount of width in the form of Creative
Writing, Language, Literature & Culture courses, for example.
The compartmentalisation of Science and Humanities is as strong here as at Presidency.
St. Stephen’s BSc programs are very rigorously science-only than at Presidency. But looks
like the winds of change are beginning to blow. The newly revised BSc. Mathematics (Hon-
ours) program (effective July 2009) requires 12 courses in mathematics and five courses
from a choice of diverse disciplines: Physics, Chemistry, Economics, English, Hindi, His-
tory, Political Science, Philosophy and Sanskrit. In contrast, the BSc Physics (Honours)
programme is at the other extreme. In three years, a single course in English and optionally
one in Economics (which could be replaced by Chemistry) are the only exceptions: Every
other course is Physics or mathematics or electronics. Talk of one-dimensional!
Just as in Presidency, St. Stephens has no room for either Studio Arts or Performing
Arts. Nor or there languages beyond Hindi and Sanskrit.

8.3 Madras Christian College


We move on to Madras Christian College another college with a long history. It is 173 years
old and is one of the top ten liberal Arts and Science Colleges in India (according to the
webpage). It is also an autonomous college in the sense that it has the authority to create
new academic programs, courses and degree program without need for approval from a
UNiversity. (MCC was part of the MAdras University before it attained the autonomous
status).
The key differentiator when compared to the other two colleges appears to be the au-
tonomy which has allowed MCC to offer a semester system for its three-year undergraduate
programs. A choice based semester system (CBCS) has the markings of a system that can
provide a rounded education to the students. The structure also appears to be based on
a promising premise: ”The structure of undergraduate courses under the CBCS in the
semester pattern provides for wide ranging choice for students to opt for courses based
on their aptitude and their career goals. The undergraduate curriculum will include the
following categories of courses in order to accomplish a holistic approach to undergraduate
education.” Very much in line with the objectives of a liberal education as per our defini-

19
tion. That there are 32 academic departments in the college also is very promising, from
the perspective of a possible set of choices available to students. However, the details of the
courses are not immediately accessible from the website and requires further investigation.

8.4 St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai


Let us look at St. Xavier’s college, Mumbai. A 140-year old institution, here also the divide
between arts (as humanities are called in India, for some reason) and sciences is solid. B.A
and BSc are divisions that have no connections except possibly a lone English course. And
as in the other colleges explored, there are no topics in the performing or studio arts. And
they follow the British type year long program with a final exam at the end of each year,
in about 7 subjects each year. So there is not much scope for any inter-disciplinary work
beyond rigid specifications in the program.

8.5 Mysore University


Let us look at one of the older and respected universities, the Mysore University, well
supported by the erstwhile Maharaja of Mysore. I now understand what must be obvious to
many: the indian Unviersity system, prior to the recent mushrooming of private universities
followed the UK system, with a University and a many colleges affiliated to the University.
usually, the colleges primarily conducted undergraduate teaching while PG courses and
doctoral programs were offered only at the University. This system is clearly evident
when one looks at the structure of Mysore University, or more properly, the university of
Mysore. There are few affiliated colleges and then there is the University. The University
offers PG courses only. And by definition, these re quite focused on the discipline. The
Maharaja college, one of the affiliated colleges is more than a hundred years old and boasts
of very many scholars, writers, linguists and other eminent academicians. However, all these
achievements are pre-1970’s. For instance, the History section of the History department
waxes eloquent about the achievements of the department from 1912 onwards, but the
most recent date and people mentioned in the history is somewhere in 1959. The current
faculty page, does not even have active links to the faculty, but a shadowy outlines instead
of photographs, and no links or homepages, other than names and titles!

8.6 Newer Initiatives


My quest for finding a liberal arts education at the undergraduate level led me to FLAME
university in Pune. The name: Foundation for Liberal art and management education itself
was interesting. A look at the introduction to their four-year liberal arts undergraduate
program was encouraging. The course content was quite heartening trimester system, with
the first six trimesters (two years) dedicated to interdisciplinary studies across all areas:
”The Core Courses: Logic, Writing and Rhetoric and Visual Communication The Universe
of Physical and Natural Sciences: Physics, Mathematics, Earth Sciences, Biology, etc.

20
The Universe of Humanities: Literature, History, Philosophy, Comparative Religion, Art
History, etc. The Universe of Global Studies: Justice, Languages, Gender Studies, etc.
The Universe of Social Sciences: Economics, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, etc.
The Universe of Fine and Performing Arts: Theatre, Visual Art, Dance, Film-making, etc.
In all, there are 30 Foundation subjects carrying 3 credits each to be studied, adding up
to a total of 90 credits in the first two years. In the first two years students must take a
minimum of 3 courses from each universe. They must take at least two intermediate level
(201) courses, 2 Foreign Language courses and a course on values and ethics.”
90 credits in the first two years for the above, 60 credits in the Major field and another
30 credits for a Minor. With a few additional courses in research methodology, internship
and a seminar course linked ot the Major. Very impressive.
Then I proceeded to understand their faculty. (http://www.flame.edu.in/index.php/faculty.html)
An Alphabetical listing gives 42 short profiles of which 18 have PhDs. The only related
faculty are in the Management stream. That is there is more than one PhD in the man-
agement area. All other PhDs are in distinct areas. For example there is one person with
PhD in architecture, one in clinical psychology, one in archeology, one in microbiology, one
in ethanomusicology and so on. There is short list of Visiting and International faculty.
There is a strong bias towards Management with several IIM graduates and former
faculty of IIMA being on the faculty.
Given that there are 30 courses to be offered in 6x5 diverse areas (as listed in the
’Universe of Physical and Natural Sciences’ etc., listing above), the question arises as to
the level of expertise in the courses being taught. I could not find detailed syllabi for the
courses online. Nor was there any listing of schedule of courses being taught in the current
year.
Without the detailed listing of courses and their content it is difficult to comment on
any of the Majors. However, given the dearth of critical mass in any area, it is fair to say
that there is no critical mass of research expertise in ANY area for a quality major to be
offered, with the exception of Management and some fine arts. However, given that there
is a school of Business, a school of Communication, a school of FIne arts, in addition to
the School of Liberal Education and given that the listed faculty are from all the above
schools, it is clear that the School of Liberal Education has very little in terms of faculty
expertise.
FLAME itself is founded by two philanthropists, with no academic standing. This is not
a problem if like in other illustrious examples of philanthropist-founded liberal universities
elsewhere (Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, etc.) the founders simply gave the money, created
an endowment and a strong and independent academic structure to nurture and grow the
institution, and let real academics run the show. In complete synchrony with existing
practice in India, the founders have created the key posts of Director and Chairman of the
Foundation and promise ’complete academic freedom to the President and Deans’.
The link describing Research/industry experience of the Faculty is woefully short on
the research experience and nothing to boast about in terms of Industry experience. And

21
there is this annoying insistence on proclaiming oneself as Professor, with just a masters
degree and no research experience.
The fee structure is very clearly strongly modeled after US university fee structures!
Annual fees and charges roughly about 12,000 US dollars!
The President of FLAME is a past faculty of IIMA. No research experience or publi-
cations are cited, except her long stint as faculty at IIMA and some visiting assignments
at some minor university in Texas.
So summary: very disappointing. A US liberal arts undergraduate program is built
around academic scholarship of the faculty. As a random example, I picked a liberal arts
college, Bloomfield College, ranked as Tier-4 by the USA Today ranking of US colleges.
The Division of Natural Science and Mathematics itself has 13 PhDs, all in coherent areas
with some critical mass. The College thus offers limited number of science majors, in line
with the faculty strength. Very unlike FLAME, where, the creation of a School of Liberal
Education specifically for offering an undergraduate program in liberal arts as if liberal
arts is a major like Physics or Sociology) demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of
what a liberal arts education means.

8.7 Integrated Bachelors Degrees


There was a recent announcement by Bangalore University about allowing students in the
university a range of choices that encompass two or more of the above four. A quote from a
news item in the Hindu (http://www.thehindu.com/2010/05/09/stories/2010050954431200.htm):
”a four-year Bachelor of Science (BS) degree course. This first of its kind course is modelled
around the credit-based, multi-disciplinary American system of university education”. It
also stated the ”Academics hope that this multi-disciplinary approach, where students will
be free to study pure sciences while opting for electives or minors in Economics, Political
Science or even Arts, will attract more students to the pure science stream.”
This is almost the first announcement of its kind in the country. From the announce-
ment to actual implementation, and from the vision to the realisation, there are many slips
between the cup and the lip. One has to wait and see how this initiative takes off.

9 Science Stream
Let us get back to the non-engineering stream of students. That is, essentially those who
could not get admissions to or those who could not afford to pay for an engineering college.
(Like in any generalisation, there are always exceptions: as much as 5% or even 10%, if you
are an optimist, of the students may be voluntarily opting for non-engineering options, but
our focus here is on the 90%). Given the state of teaching and academics in engineering
colleges in spite of the huge amounts of money and investments made into them, it is hardly
to be expected that Arts and science colleges will fare any better. In fact, except for a

22
handful of established colleges in every metro that have decent standards in their Arts and
Science programs, the rest of the colleges are uniformly pathetic.
Let us look at the Science stream of undergraduate education. There has been serious
laments from senior scientists, the department of science and technology, the CSIR labs
scientists, and science luminaries like Prof. C. N. R. Rao, that science education in the
country is seriously in trouble. Well trained manpower in the sciences is rapidly diminishing
due to the combination of three factors: the ’best and the brightest’ youngsters being drawn
into engineering, the pool of good teachers and researchers in science is rapidly drying up
(due to retirements) and not being replenished by fresh blood and third, the academic
ecosystem for science has become dilapidated. We looked at the first factor in detail, and
it is fairly clear that over the past 15 years (the growth period of Indian IT), all talent at
any level of science has been drawn to the IT and BT industry.
We have not talked about the Biotech industry and its impact so far. Just like IT,
though to a much lesser extent, there has been hype surrounding it for the past ten years.
It is indeed true that global expenditure on healthcare has been on the rise for the past
several years. It is also true that India has a huge pool of people trained in the lifesciences:
biology, zoology, botany, and allied areas. However, many governments and some segments
of industry attempted in early 2000s to build a bubble similar to that of IT, buy making tall
claims about the potential of biotechnology. The irony is that very few know what exactly
constitutes biotechnology, except that it sounds high-tech and impressive. For example,
following the success of bangaloreIT.com, a tradeshow showcasing information technology,
the Karnataka government floated bangalorebio.com, set up biotechnology parks, created
a secretary for IT&BT. In response to this hype several engineering colleges set up un-
dergraduate programs in Biotechnology, with scarcely anyone with expertise in the overall
field, these departments or programs were handled by a hotch potch collection of some
biologists, some chemical/process engineers, some wetlab experts and a some people with
familiarity in courses and software under the catchall term bioinformatics. So many bi-
ologists who could have potentially been be excellent teachers and researchers in Science
colleges, took the much better paths in this new wave. In response to the lack of teachers
in the sciences, the government of India set up indian Institutes of Science Education and
Research at several places in india. These have attracted good faculty from outside the
country as well as fresh PhDs from within the country. The goal of these Institutes is
to create the next generation of teachers and researchers in the Sciences. A project with
similar mandate is the KVPY (Kishore Vignanik Protsahan Yojana) started sometime in
2000, to encourage youngsters to take up science as a career. Very attractive scholarships
were offered to youngsters in their 10th, 11th and 12th standard to pursue science (as
opposed to Engineering). However, these bright youngsters at the point where a decision
has to be made, invariably opt for engineering. I am not aware of a systematic study of
the career paths of the cohorts of KVPY scholarship holders since 2000, as to how many of
them actually took up science careers and how many did not. Such scientific study will at
least allow for money to be spent where the returns match the expectations. It is not clear

23
what careers the students who are pursuing the four year science degree programs in these
IISER’s are opting for. My guess is that all of these students are attractive hires for our IT
services companies, since the quality of education, and hence the input pool of students, in
these Institutes are far higher than most engineering colleges! So the IT companies come
back to bite quality higher education again!

10 The Marks and Ranks Obsession


A general note to on the examinations and huge importance given to marks scored. This
is primarily the reason for so much stress being piled on our youngsters. The day 10th or
12th class marks are announced, everyone wants to find out marks of every student known
to him. The uncle of your second cousin’s aunt calls to find out how much your son has
scored in the 12th standard. The last time you had anything to do with this gentleman
is when he gave a cover with a torn 50 rupee note at your wedding. People appear out
of nowhere wanting to know the exact reason why your son’s physics score is three marks
short of the school average. Remember that this scenario is watched by the younger sibling
who till then was happily enjoying the peace of 7th standard. She gets up realises that, in
spite of what her parents may think or say about the importance or otherwise of marks,
there is no escape. She slowly drops the dolls and the color pencils and trudges to find her
school books.
This obsession is astoundingly real. Mr. R’s daughter just got her PUC results (in
Karnataka). (all names have been suppressed to protect the privacy of the individuals).
She got a respectable 92%. However, she insisted that she could have got 5 marks more
than the 92 she got in Math, 4 marks more in chemistry etc. So Mr. R applied for
recounting (being easier than revaluation). In Karnataka, they give you a copy of your
answer sheet. It was terrible to look at the sheet: there were three valuations and so many
scribbles and struck and overwritten grades that there were three possible totals: 82, 83,
84. And three numbers written out as total in words, two of them struck out with crude
signatures. Now he has taken it to the commissioner or some such authority to get the
correct total!
Mr. R has also called several others whom he knows have children in 12th. Finding out
their marks, if they are applying for revaluation or not, etc. etc. Another friend tutored a
child (10th std) of some working class parents from the neighborhood. That child managed
78% and also had secured admission for 11th in a prestigious school in Bangalore. However,
the mother calls this friend and is very sad about the poor performance of the child! I can
understand parents who have not gone through college placing such emphasis on a single
number, because they do not know enough to understand anything more. But how about
educated parents with degrees and long experience in technology and other high-end fields.
Don’t they realise that their 12th standard marks have had zilch impact on their successful
career? Many of these parents, probably did very poorly in their twelfth, but in spite of

24
it did very well. But in their ambition (greed) think that if only they had scored better,
they would have done even better. And hence egg their child to cross mountains which in
their youth they didn’t even dare to look at.
The month of May is months of marks and results. Heralded by the JEE results that
show up in late April, followed in Karnataka by the state board 10th and 12th results,
then by ISC, ICSE and CBSE results. In between, we have the CET results. Every result
is announced with great fanfare. The results are available on the Internet, and people
continuously check the sites so that the minute the results are uploaded, they are able to
see their scores. Every exam has it toppers: national in the case of JEE, CBSE, AIEEE and
so on, and a corresponding list of State toppers. Photographs of the toppers are published
in al the newspapers, along with snippets of interviews. ” Hard work and the guidance
and help of my elders and teachers paid off handsome results”, ”I expected to do very well
but did not expect to top the list”, ”I want to do a BE in Computer science and join a
global company like Google”, ”I want to do BE in ECE then do IAS and help the citizens
of India”, are some of the usual quotes. Proud parents are interviewed and quoted’ ’he has
always been a bright child. So it is not a surprise” is one typical parental quote.
For JEE, the many coaching centers immediately go on a recruitment drive by publish-
ing large advertisements in newspapers with photographs of their rank holding students.
The MHRD minister Sibal has done at least one thing right: by changing CBSE to
report only grades and not percentages. This has upset many schools that pride themselves
on top class performance based on the scores in such examinations. K.S. Gopalakrishanan,
the Chairman of NPS group has this to say on the change over to grading system: ” It
will take away the competitive spirit among students and pave the way for deterioration
of our educational system” (from the Hindu, dated 29th May). Principal Manjula Raman
of Army Public School has a counter view and praises the new grading system as a boon
to students. But the newspapers are undeterred. They report now the topper based on
the CGPA. But fortunately, these are reported only to the precision of one digit after the
decimal point for now. Looks like CBSE 10th standard subjects are graded as follows: A1,
A2, B1, B2, C1, C2 and D, which are all pass grades. Anything below D is a failing grade.
This is certainly an improvement over the existing percentage based system where every
mark lost pushes the ranking of the student by several tens or even hundreds in the case
of an exam like the CET.
Why is this obsession with marks and percentages? There have been no systematic
studies of the career progression of these ’toppers’. Has topping in such exams a certain
predictor of glorious career performance? Why has there not been a single study on tracking
the progress of these school toppers and exam toppers at various levels. Such a study should
include interviews with these students and their views in hindsight about the impact that
topping the exam ha had on their lives. A second revealing question is if given a chance
to go back in time and be in the same position again, will they put in the same effort and
energy into topping that exam?
One reason parents are obsessed is very clear. Middle class parents have great aspira-

25
tions for their children, They sincerely believe that the current generation of students have
lot more opportunities along with lot more competition than when they were growing up.
And if guided and pushed properly, their children can get on to the fast track career path
and move to the next level of living standards. A direct financial impact is the fact hat if
the student doe not score a high enough rank in CET and does not have a high percentage
in the 12th standard, then all the good engineering seats in the good colleges under the
’government quota’ or ’merit seats’ will be exhausted and they will have to pay a much
higher fees for their education.
Indian middle class parents sacrifice a whole lot, both in terms of foregoing their per-
sonal comforts and luxuries, but also in terms of physical exertions in ensuring that their
child gets that edge in this race. There are mothers and fathers who take their child pil-
lion to the tuition class and back early in the morning, usually to a tuition center several
kilometres away from their house because that center is highly reputed. bring them back
from the tuition, then drop them off to school and go to work themselves. The routine is
repeated post-school to a different coaching class. This killing routine is maintained for
about two to three years! After all this effort, if the ranking falls below the threshold,
the parents are willing to stretch themselves to the extreme to support the education in
a reputed engineering college. These parents often have no idea of the lack of quality in
most engineering colleges. They have the fond hope that if they do their duty of sending
their child to a good engineering college, four years later, the child will get placed in a
multinational and the money will start flowing in.

11 The Great Divide


A survey of some well known Arts and Science colleges, albeit very shallow and based on
the webpage contents, reveals to us that the primary divide between the humanities (called
for some obscure reason as Arts in india) and the Sciences is really solid and in most cases
impenetrable. Arts students go through three years of college with absolutely no contact
with any science courses or even content. This divide is deeper than just three years of
college. If we consider the fact that these students made up their mind in their 10th
standard, to choose the non-science stream means that as adult graduates they would have
precious little notions of science. There is some permeability from the science stream back
into the Arts. Those students who discover later that science is not their cup of tea have
the option of taking up humanities courses, since the admission norms for such courses are
not stiff, and the competition non-exsistant. Economics straddles this boundary between
Arts and Sciences in India. Students majoring in Economics have the option of studying
mathematics (but no other sciences) and pursue mathematics in the post graduate studies
in economics. Admissions to the MA (Economics) of delhi university for example, is very
competitive and the entrance exam sets a high bar in mathematical accomplishments. So
a casual Arts student (other than a major in Economics) cannot hope to pass this hurdle.

26
however, a science student can hope to break through. In fact there is a different option in
the exam meant for science students. In fact, a good engineering graduate, if so inclined, can
crack the entrance exam with some serious preparation. And anyone desirous of pursuing
a MA in sociology or philosophy can breeze in with ease into most colleges offering an
MA, because usually the admission requirement is just ’an undergraduate degree from a
recognised university in India’, which just about covers all undergraduate degrees. The
content of the courses themselves are well within the reach of anyone with interest in the
area and with adequate competence in English. In contrast, a masters in any science
discipline will require several years of science courses and a very competitive admission
process, including a written test, that cannot be overcome by a non-science major. So the
doors of science, engineering and medicine in India are firmly shut for those who did not
opt for a science stream during their 11th grade!
Of course the National Open Universoty (IGNOU) is addressing this massive barrier by
offering a sequence of programs, graduate, postgraduate and also diplomas and certification
programs that allow anyone with any background can move into a desired stream. This
is a welcome development and one hopes more and more of the general population will
pursue this option rather than blindly jumping into streams that are perceived to be ’hot’.

12 The Fine Arts


The most intriguing part of the academic scene is the clear separation between FIne Arts
and everything else. Most universities and colleges have a BA and BSc. The BA almost
never includes the performing arts. These are taken care of by colleges and institutions
which exclusively cater to the Fine arts. Thus in the Indian academic landscape, there are
really four distinct territories separated by strong boundaries: professional (engineering,
medicine and law), science, arts (humanities) and Fine Arts (the Indian term for Studio
and performing arts). The perception among the middle class is that the only ’useful’
degree to pursue is a professional degree. If you cannot somehow make it, then a science
degree is ok. If you fail to get even that, then may be a BA in Economics is ok. Anything
other than these are ’useless’ or ’timepass’ degrees. The bottom of the pile is anyone who
is doing a Fine Arts degree. Of course perceptions are changing in recent times, and with
the moneyed elite, these boundaries or perceptions are irrelevant since their children have
passed the need to earn a degree for a earning a living.
There is not a single university in India which allows a youngster to get a sense of all
of the above four streams of learning in one place, and from teachers who are dedicated
and highly scholarly academics in their field. This is indeed a tragedy, for a country with a
billion people, and a country with such hoary academic traditions as evidenced by Nalanda
in the north and the Tamil Sangams of yore in the south.

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12.1 FineArts Colleges
Let us take a quick look at one of the Fine Arts and Performing Arts places. The general
trend in Universities, the established ones, is to offer these courses in separate colleges
affiliated to them. The Karnataka Chitrakala Parishad is a very respected institution for
fine arts. It offers an undergraduate program called the Bachelor of Visual Arts. It is a five
year program, in contrast to engineering undergraduate programs which are ony four years.
Languages and history are integral part of the course. However, as is to be expected, there
is no math, or science, or other humanities component whatsoever. Even in well funded
and thriving private University, like Amity University, where there are separate colleges
for each of these: college of Fine Arts and a college of Performing arts. Each college has
a separate admission process, a course structure and faculty and there is no connection or
interaction between the colleges. The walls separating these four clusters are really solid.

13 Liberal Arts Education in the US


We come back to the plight of the youngster who wants to acquire a liberal education. To
explore and to learn about all four of the major streams from experts in the respective
fields, to analyse and to understand her own aptitudes and talents and inclinations, before
deciding to specialise in a specific area. Such an option is impossible in India today.
Unequivocally so. Compare what is possible in a liberal arts college in the US. Let us look
at a small college like Ohio Wesleyn, where there are no more than 300 students that join
as freshman every year. There are no graduate programs in the college. Every student
is expected to complete a general distribution requirement the purpose of which is stated
thus: ”the requirements for all degrees are designed to enhance students abilities in critical
thinking, writing, and quantitative analysis and to assure exposure to diverse cultures. The
Universitys distribution requirements are designed to impart knowledge and insight in the
areas of the humanities, arts, and social and natural science” The university offers three
degree programs: the Bachelor of Arts, the Bachelor of Music and the Bachelors of Fine
Arts. Let us look at the Bachelor of Arts program in some detail. In India, the degree
B.A has pretty much lost any value it once had. A BA simply allows the person holding
it to claim he or she is a ’graduate’. But nothing more. It has no value whatsoever other
than function as a filter in job specifications. There are so many people seeking jobs across
all categories that to limit the number of people who can apply to a position, the BA
(or BSc or BCom) is specified as a minimum requirement. If an youngster when queried
by an elderly acquaintance about his current studies were to reply, ”I am doing a BA”,
then he will be looked down upon as someone who hasn’t managed to do any better. An
expression that is a mix of pity, condescension, and concern about his future prospects will
be the result. In contrast the BA in OWU has the following requirements: Competency
in English, competency in writing across the curriculum, cultural diversity requirement,
and quantitative reasoning requirement. Each of these is satisfied by taking at least a

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semester-long course from among a set of specified courses.
In addition there is a general distribution requirement for all students pursuing a BA,
irrespective of their Majors. This is specified with a lot of flexibility and there are about
a total of eight courses to be taken from four groups: social sciences, natural sciences,
mathematics and computer science, humanities/literature and the Arts. For example, in
the social sciences group a student has to take a total of three courses, two of which should
be from the same discipline and the third from a different discipline. The disciplines listed
are: Black World Studies, Economics, Geography, History, Journalism, Politics and Gov-
ernment, Psychology, Sociology/Anthropology, and Womens and Gender Studies. Similarly
the student has to take three in the natural sciences, mathematics and computer science
group and three in the humanities/literature group and one course in the Arts group.
Thus even a Physics major would have to do humanities, social sciences and the arts,
in addition to English and foreign language requirements. What makes these requirements
more than just some ticks to be marked of in a list of courses is the quality of the faculty
teaching these courses.

14 Teaching in US Liberal Arts Colleges


The typical freshman year in a good liberal arts college is one of deep competition. From
the faculty of diverse disciplines to attract the new batch of students to their speciality.
Typically a large percentage of incoming students declare themselves as ’undecided’ regards
their major. And even those who declare a major are looking out to validate their choice
of major during the first year. The general requirements of the undergraduate program
provides a framework for these incoming freshman to explore new disciplines. The key
factor here is that freshman courses are taught by faculty who are passionate about their
fields and do their best to convey the intellectual challenges in their field, while at the same
time ensuring that they do not scare away by making it too complex.
In OWU, most teachers of the introductory courses are PhDs and active researchers in
their fields. The students have four semesters to declare their majors and till then they are
encouraged to keep an open mind. There is a grading option called Pass or no credit which
is to enable experimentations in new courses without the pressure of the GPA and grading
coming in the way. If you enjoy the new course and do well you get a Pass, otherwise
it does not show up in your transcripts at all and you have explored a new topic and
have discovered that you don’t enjoy it! Valuable learning. Many students come in with
pre-conceived notions of disciplines and many change their declared majors after finding
out that they actually enjoy and are better at subjects other than their originally declared
majors. The option of doing a dual major (and in some cases, even a triple major) allow
for the student with multifaceted interests to acquire expertise in more than one discipline.
Dual majors range from conventional physics and mathematics or economics and political
science to as diverse as astro phyiscs and music, or computer science and creative writing.

29
When a student declares a major and enters the junior year, there is a faculty adviser
from the major department guiding him or her through the rest of the program. If a
student comes in with a declared major and has struck to it, then he would have had a
faculty advisor from his major department right from day one to the date of his graduation.
For others, a faculty adviser is assigned from the department which reasonably matches
whatever background the student comes from and when the student declares a major a
suitable adviser from the major depratment is assigned. This faculty advise on a one-on-one
and whenever needed basis is a powerful component of a liberal arts college.

14.1 Cost
The flip side of this flexible scheme is evident if the student is not motivated to pursue a
quality degree. In such a case, it is possible to select courses and majors and work one’s way
through college with the barest minimum qualification. However, here is where a critical
difference between the Indian system and the US system weighs in heavily, the cost of an
undergraduate degree from the OWU is roughly about US$ 200,000! This made affordable
by a combination of scholarships, work-study plans and loans which are computed based
on the students’ (and their parents’) ability to pay. There is a very clear and transparent
formula that is used to arrive at the expected family contribution (EFC) for a student’s
education. Most universities in the US, including private and state universities use the
same formula and make their best effort to provide the student with the resources needed
beyond the EFC. This makes the percentage of frivolous students in colleges very small.
If the student comes from very well to do families and need not earn a living by getting
an undergraduate degree, then they pay the whole cost of their education which is used to
partly underwrite the costs of less wealthy students. These students are not given admission
without a certain level of accomplishments in high school, especially in the most sought
after colleges. Such students, if they take an easy option of doing the minimum work for
getting a degree, it causes no harm or loss to anyone. On the other hand, if the student is on
a scholarship, there are strict academic performance norms for maintaining that scholarship
and hence they cannot afford to take the academic work lightly. Most students work their
way through college, ranging from work in the college cafeteria, to stacking books in the
library, to being assistants in the administrative office. Thus students value the education
that is provided by a college like OWU since they are paying for it by working very hard
for it, both in academics and in earning to pay for the education.
In contrast, the misguided policy of free higher education in India has made education
cheap. When you pay next to nothing for a degree, you value it as much. And hanker
after degrees and certificates which cost a bomb. The mushrooming of private educational
institutions is a result of this mixed-up policy on higher education in India.
As pointed out earlier, no private institution in India offers quality undergraduate
education, as per the parameters described by me. However, the cost of obtaining a degree
from many of these places is comparable to the costs of a degree in the US. We have enough

30
parents wanting to give their children ’the best’ who pay huge amounts of money to these
private institutions with the fond hope that they have given a big leg up to their children.
Managements of private institutions have clearly understood this trend among well-to-do
middle class parents and are tapping this gold vein across the country. They build five-star
infrastructure for their campuses, use well-oiled marketing machinery to drum up visibility
to their institution, and match the hype with high fees. Gullible parents, the same ones
that equate free education with low quality, promptly equate high-cost with high quality
and pay through their nose. They do not know enough to understand what quality higher
education means since they have not had the opportunity to experience it. And their
wards also go through the same non-experience, but they are worse of, since they now are
convinced that what they have got is high quality education!

15 The Tenure System


A major factor in the high quality , commitment and passion of faculty in the us universities
is the tenure system. Fresh PhDs start as tenure track faculty in most universities (after a
couple of years of post- doctoral training being mandatory in several disciplines). Typically,
about 4-5 years of research, teaching, publications and research fund raising is needed before
coming up for evaluation for tenure and promotion. This is a period of intense effort in all
aspects of academics. The evaluation is also done by well defined peer- review processes.
At the end of the review, either tenure is granted and the faculty promoted to an
Associate professor, or tenure is denied. Tenure is serious business. A tenured faculty in
major universities hold the faculty position for life. It is almost impossible to fire a tenured
professor. Key university decisions are debated and voted on by tenure-track faculty. In
return for this academic security, the university professor is expected to live true to the
title: profess his academic discipline freely and fearlessly, encourage youngsters to pursue
that discipline qnd be a thought leader in that area. University professors are the upholders
of academic freedom.
Though there are many difficulties and drawbacks with this system, the high bench-
marks set by the US university systems is principally due to the quality of the faculty
nurtured by the tenure system.
It is as ad fact that in India there is no such system in any university. A similar
extensive and elaborate and stringent peer review process is followed at the IISc for faculty
promotions. Two such reviews are done in the case of a faculty. Once roughly 5-7 years after
being recruited as an assistant professor and again 5-7 years later to determine promotion
from Associate to full Professor. However the review is only for promotion. Not tenure,
which is almost guaranteed as soon as the initial one Year probation period is over. One
year is too small a period for a fair evaluation in many fields and so very rarely is a faculty
asked to leave after the probation period , which means entry is the biggest barrier,not
tenure. After the first year an I I Sc faculty is equivalent to a government employee in

31
terms of tenure: cannot be kicked out till the retirement age or death. The situation in the
IIT’s Is similar. All other universities once hired, the tenure is similar, but the promotion
reviews are far less stringent. In private universities, the hiring, promotion and tenure are
completely at the will and pleasure of the owner- management. Given this state, there is no
wonder that research and scholarship is woefully inadequate, both in quality and quantity.
The downstream result is that there are no quality teachers in the next level universities.
This clearly impacts the possibility of providing a liberal Education in any of the Indian
universities or colleges. As discussed earlier, even when there is an attempt to introduce a
course from a different discipline , the teacher of that course is not a scholar in that field.
Just someone holding a job. A good example is the Management course that is mandatory
in an engineering curriculum. Usually there will be one teacher permanently assigned to
teaching that single course for every batch of students in the degree program. He is not
expected to teach anything else, or do research on his own. As for peer interaction there
are no peers for him to interact with. He is usually a one man department. Similar is
the fate of humanities courses taught to science students. So students are not exposed to
quality scholars at any time during their undergraduate years and go out not even knowing
that they are missing something!

16 Caveats
It is not the intention here to paint a rosy picture of US higher education. There are many
problems hounding the higher education system in the US as well. Chief among them are
the reliance on tests like SAT, AP exams, and the excessive emphasis on college rankings
like those published by US News & World report. And the quality of accomplishments of
students in the second tier Universities, the cost of access to good quality higher education,
are all topics hotly debated in the US. The take away for us in India is that there are debates
about these topics involving a cross section of stake holders.
The reason for spending time on the details of US liberal arts college is to highlight
what good quality undergraduate education can be. Such an education is beyond the reach
of any in India simply because there are no UNiversities offering such a program. hence
many youngsters in India go to the US for accessing such education, paying huge fees,
which given the quality of the education on offer, is certainly worth the expenditure.
Given the bleak scenario of higher education in India, where can one begin to change
it for the better? is it possible? if so where do we start? What do we do? It really is a
daunting task with many barriers with circular dependencies in the path.

17 Philanthropy in Higher Education


Given the impossibility of acquiring a decent liberal undergraduate education in India, the
rational behind Ratan Tata’s large gift to Cornell University makes sense to me now. In

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October 2008, Tata Education Trust announced a US $50 Million endowment for Cornell
University (http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct08/tataGift.html). Half of the fund
was earmarked for research in food and nutrition in developing countries and the other
half was for bringing Indian students to Cornell undergraduate program. At that time my
thought was, why is Tata so generous to a US university and not provide similar generous
grants to Indian Universities.
But in view of my new learning about liberal education in India and the state of the
Indian higher education system, it is clear that getting about half a dozen Indian students
immersed in a liberal education program every year as offered by Cornell is a significant
contribution. Given that the next decades are the ’India decades’, it is likely that a large
percentage of these students will return to India. The numbers are miniscule, compared to
the population of India. There are hundreds of Indian students who pursue undergraduate
education in the US, many among the top Universities. And many of them are from the
wealthiest families in India. A small fraction do get financial support (full scholarships
in many cases) from many Universities. And a large percentage (much larger than the
percentage of students who first go to the US for graduate degrees) return to India, to take
care of family businesses.
(A point to note is that many of the statements made in these articles lack credible data
to back them up. And as pointed out earlier the lack of social scientists and systematic
social science research in India means that such data is hard to come by.)
The Tata’s have the most impressive record among any industrial house in India in
setting up very high quality research and educational Institutions in India: The Indian
Institute of Science, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Tata institute of Social
Sciences are outstanding examples. But in the past 50 years, no significant investment in
higher education in India has been made by the Tata group. The reasons for this are worth
pondering. The gift to Cornell is among the largest to a US university by an international
donor, and I am reasonably sure that no single individual or a corporate house has made
such a large donation to any Institute of higher learning in India in the past 50 years.
A possible reason for this change is that in the beginning to mid parts of the 20th
century governments did not stand in the way of philanthropists investing in education. In
recent times governments operate on the assumption that any investment in education by
the private sector is purely for commercial motives. There is an irony here: by the present
Indian laws, education is clearly in the not-for-profit sector. In other words, no for-profit
entity can start a college and get recognition for their degree programs. However, many
in the past several decades, especially in the past 10-15 years, have started colleges purely
for commercial reasons: though no profits can be distributed to share holders, like in a
commercial enterprise, there are indirect ways in which these entities extract benefits. First
is the power and influence one wields as the Chairman of a Board of a College. Second, huge
amounts of moneys are collected for admission to professional courses, which are completely
out of the accounting systems and hence syphoned off to the promoters of the Institutions.
The regulatory bodies in the central and state governments, as well as the Ministry of

33
Human Resources Development (MHRD), the central government ministry responsible for
all higher education, and related entities like the AICTE and UGC have failed miserably in
ensuring that a semblance of focus on academic and research excellence in the institutions
of higher education in India. Nepotism, corruption and political influence have wreaked
havoc across the board. The recent attempts at reforming higher education in India by
MHRD should be viewed in this perspective. That reform is the crying need is denied by
none. Whether the proposed higher education bill is the panacea for this ill, no one is
certain. As earlier discussed, I do not hold any high hopes from this initiative.
Given this miasma, it is no wonder that serious philanthropists have stayed away from
funding higher education. May be Ratan Tata was voting with his money the lack of
confidence in any near-term reform in the higher education sector in India?

18 Next Steps?
We have looked at all that ails our education system, particularly, higher education system.
Most of these problems stem from equally hard problems plaguing our school education.
The question is what can we do? Where do we even start? Or is it one of those ” everything
is messed up. You can do nothing about it, I know what is wrong but I will do nothing
either” kind of situations.
I believe we need to start from the core of the reason for higher education, and go from
there. Let us start from the well researched and drafted document of the AACU on the
goals of a liberal education in the 21st century. Use this as the basis and see how we can
attain these goals in the context of the Indian scenario.

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