Indian Education System

csaurabh · Post by **csaurabh** » 20 Aug 2015 07:59

About UPTU and other engineering colleges in general..

http://utpatanguniversity.quora.com/

Pay a good deal of attention to what this guy says. Most of it is true.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 26 Aug 2015 01:24

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/educat ... 1508250129

WTF!?!?

can't they do this in India rather?

I am not saying it is a bad idea at large.. but i am missing something here. even if I read in between the lines/ deep impact

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 26 Aug 2015 01:48

They should do in India as well as in the US. They are doing here first so as to get some brownie points with the anti-H1B crowd.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 26 Aug 2015 02:07

make sense if there is a minimum common yak herding program in all these ventures

Amber G. · Post by **Amber G.** » 26 Aug 2015 02:36

^^^ Just for perspective - just two examples -
Deshpande gave MIT $20,000,000 gift. He also gave substantial other sums in the past both to MIT
and his alma mater IIT. Deshpnde offered Rs 1000-crores (fairly respectable amount) to IIT, but GoI refused his condition (he wanted IIT director to have freedom on how to use the money - not some babu in GoI)..This money not used for IIT went to MIT.

Recently while talking to an IIT director in private settings, one of alumni inquired about gift (fairly good amount of money) given by them. The gift, even after years, was still sitting in the bank unused buried in red tape..The director was told that alumni do not care how the money is used (though it would be nice if it is used for specific purpose the money was collected..but when it was given to IIT there was NO strings attached) but please do use the money in any good cause - directly related to education in IIT. (Point was, GoI was putting road blocks even for IIT to use the money - looking suspiciously at "mutu type gift" as some brfites will put it ). The director, who was new, was not aware of that, he did said he will look into it..Hope with the change of govt in center there is less red tape now.

csaurabh · Post by **csaurabh** » 28 Aug 2015 07:50

From Dheeraj Sanghi's blog- research in India

http://dsanghi.blogspot.in/2015/08/rese ... india.html

We had a wonderful celebration of Independence Day at IIIT Delhi today. Besides the flag hoisting, patriotic songs, a cultural program, the students had also organized a discussion on why are people not able to carry out great research in India. And that caused me to write this blog.

There are many responses to such a question. The prominent amongst them are:

Denial: We have great researchers too. Look at Manindra Agarwal. China publishes more, but most of it is of poor quality. We did not believe in Publish or Perish and hence we haven't got into the habit of writing everything we do. The numbers does not tell the whole story. Our number of researchers is small, and so on.

Resources: We are a poor, third world country. What do you expect. The percentage of GDP spent on education is small, and on top of that our per capita income is small. The output per dollar is very high in India. (And this is always per dollar in every discussion, why not output per million Rupees. To me, this indicates that research invariably means solving American problems.) If we are given as much resources as a typical US university gets, we will solve all problems of Amrika India.

Industry: Our industry is low technology. They just want to do simple things. They are interested in buying technology when needed rather than solve their problems through research and innovate. Look at US, how industry works in partnership with universities to solve problems. Of course, people will then quickly add that industry is changing lately, investing in research, interacting with universities, but to get to the US level, it will take some time. (And once again, why US level is the benchmark. I think the top institutes in India are already doing better than US.)

Quality and Quantity of faculty: We have such a shortage of quality faculty. As a result, we are stuck with not so great faculty, and then we ask them to handle 2 courses a semester. How can they do high amount of teaching, take care of academic administration, and also do cutting edge research, when their own scholarship is suspect.

Any description of the problem of lack of research excellence in India will be like a description of an elephant by a bunch of blind men. All of them have some validity but the bigger picture is something else.

And still, as yet another blind person, I will put in another perspective.

The structure of research funding in India is such that research is a huge loss making exercise for the universities that carry out research. If you submit a proposal to a funding agency, you can only charge 16.7 percent overhead for managing the project. And since it is expected that the management costs don't rise linearly with the size of the project, some funding agencies will cap the overhead portion of the budget. In the budget that I prepare, I can not put the salary of permanent employees (like myself), rent for the space used by the project, electricity and other such resources used by the project, and so on. The logic is simple. Another arm of the government (MHRD, AICTE, UGC, or state government) is typically paying for the salary and infrastructure. So why not keep getting money from them and not from funding agency. The problem in this logic is that it is essentially saying that only government institutes must do research. Private colleges should not dream of doing research. Now, if this was the national policy which every one understood loud and clear, it would still be a problem but at least we would understand the source of the problem. But the problem is that other government agencies who are in the business of evaluating the quality of higher education do not believe in this national policy. Your accreditation by NAAC or NBA would crucially depend on your research output. UGC will keep reminding you that every promotion of faculty members should be based on research output.

Can we have DST/DBT/DEITY and other departments funding research sit jointly with UGC/AICTE/MHRD/NAAC/NBA and others involved in maintaining and judging quality of education and decide for once and for all whether the research is supposed to be done only by government universities or also by private universities. (And let us not forget, a vast majority of higher education is in private sector today.) If private sector should do research, can we have an overhead that can pay for the part salary of faculty and for the infrastructure needed to carry out the research. (It would mean doubling or tripling of the overhead. For a 100 rupee project, the overhead should also be close to 100 rupees.) On the other hand, if they agree that the vast portion of higher education system should not be expected to do any research, NAAC and NBA types of bodies should stop asking questions on research output.

If I have to do research, someone got to pay my salary. If research funds can not be used for the same, then the project is a loss to the college. Someone got to invest in the buildings and other infrastructure. All that is loss to the institute. So what is normally done. To an extent, we will inflate the budget - if I need one server, I will write two or even three, just to give an example. So the tuition will pay my salary, and some of it will be recovered through fraudulent invoicing, which every project monitoring committee will be aware of. But of course, you can commit only so much of a fraud. The rest of the research money comes from tuition. Now, tuition in India is already very low compared to the cost of providing quality education. So we anyway have very poor quality of education in most of our colleges and universities. If you declare that the cost of research should also be borne from the tuition, well, the consequences are for all to see.

Paying only a portion of the costs for research projects also mean that there is typically very little accountability for the research output. If the funding agency gave 50 lakh rupees, and the cost of salaries, and infrastructure is also 50 lakhs, then the funding agency can not dictate, at least not morally, that the output of the project should be commensurate with an investment of 1 crore rupees.

The second problem is Measurement of Research. The best way to measure research is through peers. However, our regulatory bodies are only interested in numbers. This has created such a racket in the country of fake journals, and fraudulent conferences. If we will keep insisting on numbers, people involved will be happy to game the system to get all the goodies (promotions) that the system will give to those who are performing well as per that metric. Of course, this problem is not just restricted to poor quality colleges. Even at the top level, there are cliques. If my friend applies for a grant, he gets it even if the quality of proposal was poor and the CV of the friend (the proposed Principal Investigator) was poor. And in all this, people who are expert in one area will gladly decide the quality in areas where they have very little knowledge.

The other major problem is Cultural. If we have a problem, we want to solve it quickly through a low-cost innovation which will solve our immediate concern, but may generate other problems. Studying all aspects of a problem, and figuring out all solutions, comparing them, considering their side effects, and so on is too boring for us. Also, we are not respectful of intellectual property. School teachers will tell the students that it is ok to copy from wikipedia or any other Internet resource. If we don't value intellectual property, it would be very difficult for us to be motivated to create intellectual property. Research also means looking at multiple options and having a belief that any of those options could be the best. This mindset requires one to be open to new ideas, new theories, and the possibility that what we have believed all along may turn out to wrong. Do we have such a mindset today. Do we accept criticism of our beliefs easily. Another cultural factor that I heard today in the discussion was being risk averse. Poor people are generally risk averse and 99 percent of people in India would consider themselves in a bracket where they want some stability in income, and would not take risks. If this is the background of most people, is it rational to expect that people who get into either a researcher's career or are into research management would take risks.

So, if we want to be a research powerhouse, we will have to do a serious introspection about our cultural upbringing, which means a major responsibility on all educational institutes, including K-12 schools, and not just institutes of higher learning. And we will have to bring in the management practices that ensure that research is not a hugely loss making exercise.

here is an example of fake papers/fake journals/conference.
http://smritiweb.com/navin/education-2/ ... ion-system

gakakkad · Post by **gakakkad** » 28 Aug 2015 08:13

^^ something similar was done by MIT a decade ago..

Melwyn · Post by **Melwyn** » 28 Aug 2015 09:32

Carnegie Mellon University Gets Rs 231 Crore from TCS

Carnegie Mellon, a top US-based research university has received $35 million (Rs 231 Crore) as a gift from Tata Consultancy Services.

The donation to Carnegie Mellon University will be used to build a new 40,000 square-feet facility -- Tata Consultancy Services Building and to fund student scholarships at the university, TCS said in a release on Tuesday.

"The new facility, a stand-alone structure, will support education and research at the university and will provide space for TCS staff to interact with CMU faculty and students"

The donation is the largest-ever gift given by any corporate to the Carnegie Mellon and is also highest-ever donation it has received from outside of US, the university said on its website.

"TCS is proud to invest in this landmark partnership with CMU to promote market-driven innovation and accelerate advancements in technology," N Chandrasekaran, chief executive officer and managing director of TCS said while announcing the donation.

Carnegie Mellon is a private research university in Pennsylvania and was ranked 24th among global universities by the Times Higher Education (THE) magazine in its annual publication of university rankings.

"CMU is one of the few American universities to offer a degree in bagpipes and it counts at least 16 Nobel, 41 Emmy and four Oscar winners among its alumni," the magazine says.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 28 Aug 2015 09:50

gakakkad wrote:^^ something similar was done by MIT a decade ago..

Actually prof. Kabra used MIT's SCIGen program. Are you talking about that?

member_28638 · Post by **member_28638** » 01 Sep 2015 12:45

What poetry has to do with math

Written by Rohan Murty

Published:August 31, 2015

We stand to gain much from developing an understanding of ancient India, its deep and diverse ideas.

Over the past year, I have heard my friend, mathematician Manjul Bhargava, give several public lectures on the deep connections between poetry, Sanskrit and mathematics. Like many other mathematicians before him who have written or spoken on this topic, Manjul gave an array of examples that demonstrate the tremendous depth and contributions made by ancient Indian (for the purposes of exposition, stretching perhaps from present day Afghanistan to Burma) philosophers and poets to mathematics, often before their counterparts in Western societies did the same. Manjul’s quintessential example is from roughly 11th century India, when Gopala and Hemachandra discovered a delightful connection between the number of syllables in Sanskrit poetry and mathematics. The answer, it turns out, is what we now call the Fibonacci series (also appears in the number of petals in certain flowers in nature), which was eventually rediscovered by Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, about 50-80 years later.

That there should be an inherent connection between the number of syllables in Sanskrit poetry, a product of human thought, and the number of petals in flowers in nature must startle any reasonable person. Another extraordinary example that Manjul highlights is the discovery of the binomial structure hidden in Sanskrit poetry, as discovered by the ancient Indian poet Pingala, roughly in 200 BC. This was about 1,800 years prior to the French mathematician Pascal’s Traité du triangle arithmétique, which we today learn as Pascal’s triangle. Other examples include the use of techniques that resemble modern error-correcting codes, synchronisation, and formal language definition in Sanskrit poetry and prose. These are all modern inventions (or reinventions, in some cases) that impact almost every aspect of our lives, from computer languages to wireless communications.

It would, of course, be foolhardy to claim the ancients invented or knew of computer languages or wireless communications. That would be like claiming Copernicus built space ships to fly to the moon. Rather, what these examples do highlight is that a long time ago, in or near the region we live in today, there existed a thriving civilisation that produced extraordinary intellectual thought and ideas which continue to have fundamental connections with the way we live today. We appear to have lost knowledge of this ancient past through the vicissitudes and vagaries of time. And with it, a significant source of pride and the ability to influence modern Indian identity. Few people of my generation appear to be aware of these facts.

Part of our ongoing ignorance of the past appears to be structural. Case in point: At my high school in Bangalore, as part of the ICSE syllabus, we read Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, works by Wordsworth, Tennyson, James Joyce, Dickens, etc. We even read Walt Whitman wax eloquent about the end of the American Civil War and Abe Lincoln’s death in “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done”. Never mind the fact that none of us in class knew what a civil war was at the time, or that America had one, or how or why Lincoln died. We read the tremendously uplifting lines from Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”, all while lacking the context of ancient Greece or even knowing how to say “Ithaca” (we learnt it as EYE-THA-KA). We had little or no context for these strange ideas, words, phrases, stories, heroes and worlds.

And yet, we read these poems, short stories, novels, and wrote essays about them to pass our school exams. This was an enjoyable experience and I would do it again. However, such an educational experience and exposure was severely stunted in its diversity of thought and ideas. What strikes me as odd is that we students never read any classics that originated in this part of the world — that is, ancient India — despite having a cultural advantage of perhaps being able to understand the context better. We knew of no texts, poems, plays, great prose, science, mathematics, civics, political life or philosophy from 2,000-plus years ago from ancient India. My friends and I, stereotypes of the urban educated populace, remained entirely unaware of the intellectual contributions of this past. The most we seemed to know were a couple of random dates and trinkets of information on the Indus Valley civilisation, Ashoka and Chandragupta Maurya, all of which seemed almost perfunctory and without any depth in the manner we read them in school.

As students, we were well versed with Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Copernicus, Newton, Leibniz, Pascal, Galois, Euler, etc, and their tremendous contributions to mankind. And yet, most of us had never read about Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta, Pingala, Kalidasa, Hemachandra, Madhava, the Nyaya or Mimimsa Sutras, or the Therigatha.

But why bother with any of this? After all, we were never part of these accomplishments and they were so long ago, by a people so far removed from today’s reality, that attempting to create any link to the past is surely irrelevant. But I would argue this discovery of the past is no less relevant than what we already study and acknowledge in the earlier cited examples in our schools and colleges. Besides, these sources of knowledge from ancient India are products of creative human thought and hold genuine value for the world, irrespective of where they come from, or geographic affinities. For example, any child on this planet will find mathematics far more amenable when learning parts of it through poetry, as opposed to the dry, dull methods espoused by most mathematics pedagogy today.

While national identity is a complex phenomenon, perhaps in some proportion it relates to the intellectual contributions made by societies to help advance knowledge and improve the human condition. Newton is a hero to many like me, who read in wonder about how he unravelled the basic laws of the universe. Great literature and philosophy from Western societies have helped us reflect on the human condition. Such examples from the Western world have magnified our respect for societies that could harbour, enable and encourage such curiosity. In the same vein, we stand to gain much from developing an understanding of ancient India, its deep and diverse ideas, which are no less extraordinary than those we have come to marvel in Western civilisations. I am not suggesting we lose respect for contributions made by other societies or civilisations, or that everything of note was discovered in this part of the world. Rather, we ourselves have much to gain when we dispassionately discover, examine and acknowledge the intellectual history of ancient India. We may be surprised to find it was perhaps a more open, tolerant and diverse society than even the one we have lived in since Independence. If you need more convincing or inspiration, look up Manjul’s talk on YouTube. Or try reading the Therigatha.

The writer, junior fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University, is founder, Murty Classical Library of India.

- See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinio ... LhwXj.dpuf

gakakkad · Post by **gakakkad** » 01 Sep 2015 15:53

vayu tuvan wrote:
gakakkad wrote:^^ something similar was done by MIT a decade ago..
Actually prof. Kabra used MIT's SCIGen program. Are you talking about that?

AFAIK even before that , someone managed fooling people on purpose...there was a conference that spammed people with unsolicited requests for paper and it was supported by IEEE...Someone in MIT got pissed and sent a SCIgen produced paper and handed the h&d of the conference...

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 01 Sep 2015 23:35

There was also ~~Sokol effect or some such thing~~ Sokal affair. Here is from Wikipedia.

Sokal affair

Sokal affair
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the Sokol affair involving the company Berkshire Hathaway.
The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax,[1] was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University and University College London. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural studies. The submission was an experiment to test the journal's intellectual rigor and, specifically, to investigate whether "a leading North American journal of cultural studies – whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross – [would] publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions".[2]
The article, "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity", was published in the Social Text spring/summer 1996 "Science Wars" issue. It proposed that quantum gravity is a social and linguistic construct. At that time, the journal did not practice academic peer review and it did not submit the article for outside expert review by a physicist.[3][4] On the day of its publication in May 1996, Sokal revealed in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, identifying it as "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense ... structured around the silliest quotations [by postmodernist academics] he could find about mathematics and physics."[2]
The hoax sparked a debate about the scholarly merit of humanistic commentary about the physical sciences; the influence of postmodern philosophy on social disciplines in general; academic ethics, including whether Sokal was wrong to deceive the editors and readers of Social Text; and whether Social Text had exercised appropriate intellectual rigor.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 01 Sep 2015 23:39

Dr. Rohan Murty seems to have turned a corner or so one hopes. I hope this change in PoV will spur him to devote more resources to these causes form his foundation rather than that classic library.

People like Manjul Bhargava are the right people to have in ones friends' circles rather than head shaping religion/theology/devinity professors of hAvaD and UChicago.

csaurabh · Post by **csaurabh** » 02 Sep 2015 05:49

vayu tuvan wrote:Dr. Rohan Murty seems to have turned a corner or so one hopes. I hope this change in PoV will spur him to devote more resources to these causes form his foundation rather than that classic library.

The problem is not with Rohan Murty. The problem is that he has given a whole bunch of money to Sheldon Pollock and his ilk, who firmly push the agenda of Sanskrit = caste oppression, etc. ( Check Rajiv Malhotra's columns ). What 'translations' they will come up with are anyone's guess..

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 05 Sep 2015 21:49

Among the newer IIT campuses only Gandhinagar seems to have built up their infrastructure. Being in a seismic zone, they have not ventured into out of the ordinary looks.

IIT Indore seems to be trying bolder designs for their buildings.

Among the old IITs, the one in Madras has the most ugly frugal architecture chosen to compensate for its most beautiful natural surroundings. Wonder who came up with those designs.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 06 Sep 2015 06:31

the exposed red brick architecture of iit kanpur is in keeping with the local style of construction, and along with good vegetation, looks really good imo. iit dilli uses typical dilli sarkari style concrete architectures.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 06 Sep 2015 19:12

Not many pics of IIT-Kanpur widely distributed. IIT-Delhi has some iconic buildings at least. IIT-B too like IIT-M does not have much to show around...till the new hostels got built on donations from famous alumni.

I fervently hope the newer campuses like Tirupati, Palakkad, Goa, Hydbad do a better job going forward, so that we are not stuck with ugly and uninspiring structures for another century or more.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Sep 2015 21:45

bade, is this http://ahalia.ac.in/ now IIT palakkad temporary facility?

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 06 Sep 2015 22:02

Yes, that is the temporary one. No one knows if the new campus will be even half as good. I am hoping all the new ones get some serious architects involved and not cut corners. I have checked the IIT-Mandi site and it is not encouraging. These campuses need to grow and accommodate 30k to 50k students each down the road.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Sep 2015 22:37

you mean it is the campus location? what i see from chacha maps is like way distance from the city, NE/kanjikode direction on the banks of walayar river of nh 47. area looks good, like all they need is to build a trail right into the forests.

i wish they use the traditional kerala building architecture style

like http://www.somakeralapalace.com/php/pho ... php?lid=13

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 06 Sep 2015 22:50

As much as I like the KL architecture, for a university campus to house 10k+ students it may not work well. Maybe an admin building can use this style.

The exact location of the Palakkad campus in the future can be found on their official website (not the one you linked) and it is ways away from town.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 06 Sep 2015 23:03

where there is a will, there is a way! 10K can be accommodated in style.. externally traditional, internally way too modern. they need to think hard.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 07 Sep 2015 07:46

library of iit kanpur
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7018/6695 ... d3a3fb.jpg

admin building
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... Kanpur.jpg

panoramic view of the depts area. admin blg and library are in middle. on extreme right is new comp sc & general computer center bldgs i think. left side is lecture hall complex...ground floor is on stilts permitting lot of cycle parking. large cluster on bottom is chemical engg and some other depts. behind the admin building is electronics, mechanical, various labs and workshops, aeronautical dept.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NiYaCdUIugA/T ... opview.jpg

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 07 Sep 2015 17:30

With regard to using older architecture styles for campuses and for them to look good and be of use to accommodate in thousands, the original aspect ratio needs to be preserved. What looked nice for a two level 10,000 sq ft floor plate will not look great when one adds ten more floors to it.

In the context of a college which means, one has to build a massive structure at the get go with a very large floor plate. This requires advance planning, and cannot be done in phased manner increasing student strength from 120 to 1200 to 12,000 and more.

SaiK · Post by **SaiK** » 07 Sep 2015 18:29

agree.. given an architecture style, what best we can! but effective design is important. also, we should not assume the vertical space is the only way to accommodate 10k.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 10 Sep 2015 00:26

Now people can have a degree from Dharwad even if Harvard is too far.

IIT for Dharwad: residents in celebratory mood

What will happen to Goa's allocation now next door. IMO, Mysore-Blur would have been a better location.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 15 Sep 2015 21:03

Since the Goa campus is in the doldrums, better cancel that allocation for now as Hubli is not far and Goa is a too small a state. The initial allocation was purely decided by politics. I would say the southern region will need two more campuses. Just as the erstwhile AP landed with two one in Hydbad and now at Tirupati, there needs to be one allocated for Bengaluru/Mysore corridor (closer to Bengaluru perhaps) and another one towards Kanyakumari side. Madurai might be in contention too, but placing it between Nagercoil-Trivandrum at the border will serve it well. As of now the southern states are under represented in the number of campuses. This can be done after a decade or so, as the demands will not subside for more campuses and seats for admission to get a quality education.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 15 Sep 2015 21:10

Four southern states were underrepresented initially as well. Only iitm. If one argues Mh is south (of vindhyas) even then 3 to 2 split.

OT: Look at railway network too. South especially the mp, CG, TS "hinterland" or "interior" has very low density of rail network.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 15 Sep 2015 21:45

Yes, MH deserves one more two. Nagpur already has an NIT, so it is out of luck from the patterns observed so far. Pune can be in serious contention too with its industrial base as well as the existing college town brand. Since the Powai campus is all hemmed in and constricting its further growth, the natural thing to do is expand in Pune where land availability should not be an issue.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 15 Sep 2015 22:12

Pune University's COEP is a worthy challenger. Engg. College, AU, Vizag was invited to be made into IIT along with Univ. College of Engg, OU. Everybody turned up and submitted the documents but AU never did. OU pulled out too. I came to know later that AU, OU etc. have quotas for locals (just like NITs) and local people did not want to cede their quota to all. Then IITH was setup. So sometimes it is as simple as short-sighted gains for a class of (elite but with reservations under various categories) citizens that win over all round development and even distribution (read merit based) distribution of scarce resources

AU, Kakinada, and Anantpur UGs will continue to go to IITM, IITK, IITKGP in large numbers for PG just as they were doing for years.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 15 Sep 2015 22:29

AU (Andhra Univ) as well as JU (Jadavpur) I believe is on the list to be converted to IIEST along with Cochin Univ (CUSAT). It all depends on how the experiment with BESU (Bengal Engg College) goes I suppose, which was given IIEST status last year, the first campus to be converted so far, with a corpus of Rs200+ crores promised for each campus.

Bade · Post by **Bade** » 16 Sep 2015 01:47

IIEST: 100 seats vacant for facility lack
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150904/j ... _40686.jsp

IIEST no to state plea, sticks to 5yr-course plan
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1140605/j ... 463456.jsp

These two articles captures the growth pains of IIEST shibpur and how the state agencies still try to put their hands in the cookie jar to the detriment of the institute.

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 18 Sep 2015 18:25

Bihar: Village of IITians struggles with a new equation.

You can hear the clatter of looms from a distance. And as you make your way through a narrow lane that cuts through concrete structures, there are no noticeable signs of affluence. But Patwa Toli is no ordinary Bihar neighbourhood.

While the din of looms is a sign of good business, the children here have been weaving a dream, too, every year: cracking the entrance exams for top engineering colleges, including IITs. Prem Narayan Patwa, who heads this weaving community of 1,400 households, says they have sent 180 students to IITs; 30 families from here now live in the US. “One family has seven IITians. If you count all our boys and girls in engineering colleges, the number will be 800,’’ he says.

Today, the chatter at the looms and street corners is all about the elections. Residents say they have traditionally supported the BJP but this time, they are not quite sure.

“The government has never done anything for us. This community has got everything through hard work. But we have been BJP supporters for long. We started supporting the BJP because of Ishwar Choudhary,’’ says Patwa, who heads Vastra Udyog Bunkar Seva Samiti, an association of weavers. He is referring to the well-known BJP MP from Gaya, who was murdered in 1991.

“There are 48 booths of Wazirgunj constituency in Patwa Toli and they used to be called ‘BJP booths’. No one from any other party would even come here,” he adds.

Patwa says there are two major reasons for a debate this time. “Our BJP legislator Virendra Singh has never come here. On the other hand, the Nitish Kumar government decided to move Bunkars (the weaver community) from OBC to EBC (extremely backward),’’ he says. “I have been involved with the BJP for a long time. I am not saying people won’t vote for the party, but there are serious questions this time.”

Patwa says they had written to BJP president Amit Shah with a request for “a good candidate, who is ready to soil his shoes, walk on these narrow lanes and understand our problems”. But in its first list, the BJP gave the Wazirganj ticket to Virendra Singh again.

“The government has done nothing for us. We are taken for granted because we are BJP supporters. We don’t want any doles. In fact, 35-40 villages nearby are dependent on us for employment. There are 1,600 units in the neighbourhood and 80 tonnes yarn is woven into cloth every day,” adds Patwa.

One factor that’s keeping voters from going with Nitish is his alliance with Lalu Prasad. “We don’t remember Lalu’s time with fondness. There was a lot of goonda gardi. We are business people and don’t like disruptions. If Nitish had gone alone this time, there was no doubt everybody here would have supported him,” adds Patwa.

It’s not as if the entire village has turned its back on Lalu. “His rule may not have been great but he has played a major role in whatever good has happened here,’’ says Arun Kumar, another resident. “Lalu gave us a voice. Before him, no one from the middle and lower castes could muster the courage to say a word,’’ he adds.

And so, the debate continues. “What has the BJP done for us? Bunkars are spread across Bihar but there is no member from our community in the BJP’s central committee on Bihar or in the state unit,” says Patwa.

Residents say the community will take a joint decision regarding their vote.

Patwa Toli’s newfound voice isn’t linked solely to the spike in business. The transformation began in 1991 when Jitendra Prasad became the first in the community to crack the IIT entrance. “He became the inspiration for our children,’’ says Patwa. “He went to the US later but by then other children had cracked the exam. Each year, the number kept growing and the seniors set up an organisation called Nav Prayas to help students. They would come during their vacation and set up coaching classes.”

Villagers recount the story of Tej Narayan Prasad. His father, an illiterate insurance agent, had sent him to school to study English so that it could help in his work. He ended up as an electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur. “Bekhraj Patwa’s household has seven children in IITs, six boys and a girl. Jitendra’s family has four in IITs. The son of a local mafia don, too, is in an IIT,” says Patwa.

Then there’s Dhanraj Kumar, son of Lalku Prasad, who declined to join IIT Kharagpur because he had “a better option”. “He was among the 54 students selected in the highly competitive SCRA (Special Class Railway Apprentice) exam,’’ says Lalku Prasad, a weaver himself. “One of my daughters is in her third year at NIT Bhopal. Another daughter will appear for her IIT entrance in 2017. I am sure she will get into an IIT.”

Prasad is sitting with a group of weavers at the home of a neighbour, Amit Kumar Patwa, whose daughter Deepa qualified for an IIT but chose an IT course at Jadavpur University instead.

Before Jitendra showed the way, there was hardly a graduate in the neighbourhood. “We would study till matric or intermediate at the most and become weavers,’’ says Prasad. “Our women were illiterate. Today, more than a dozen of our daughters are studying engineering.”

Prasad says the biggest problem in Bihar is that MLAs are chosen more on the basis of caste than competence. “An illiterate person is as good as a buffalo and we get illiterate candidates,’’ he says.

Rather than helping students who crack prestigious exams, the Bihar government had even suspended the OBC scholarship scheme, claims Prasad. “They would give Rs 15,000 to a student a year which is nothing. It took me dozens of trips to Patna to convince them to release this scholarship for my daughter. I am not complaining though. We would sell everything we have to fund the education of our children,” he says.

The problem with governments in Bihar is that any scheme they announce takes 4-5 years to start, says Amit Kumar. “Around a dozen of our boys who completed their engineering course returned to their family business. But while the government announced a subsidy on electricity, they never got it,” says Amit Kumar.

One of his nephews, Chandra Kant Pateshwari, 26, is preparing for the civil services. He says there has been a lot of change during Nitish’s tenure. “He built a lot of roads. He did small things that aren’t visible unless you have lived here,’’ he says. His uncle interrupts: “But whatever Nitish did was while he was in an alliance with the BJP.”

The debate is back to square one as Amit Kumar gives credit for the community getting EBC status to the JD(U)-BJP coalition. “We like Nitish. But we loved him when he had an alliance with the BJP. The choice is very tough,” says Patwa.

Vipul · Post by **Vipul** » 21 Sep 2015 17:25

AICTE to cut number of engineering college seats by 600,000.

India’s technical education regulator is looking to cut the total number of undergraduate engineering seats by as much as 40% over the next few years by shutting some schools and reducing student intake in some others, as it seeks to stem a decline in the quality of education and address the issue of vacant seats.

“We would like to bring it down to between 10 lakh and 11 lakh (one million and 1.1 million) from a little over 16.7 lakh now,” said Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). The capacity should come down for the betterment of all—students, education providers and employers—he added.

Student intake at the undergraduate level in engineering colleges started picking up from 2006-07. From 659,717 engineering seats in 2006, it jumped to 1.22 million in 2010 and more than 1.67 million in 2015. India has more than 3,470 engineering colleges.

Theo_Fidel · Post by **Theo_Fidel** » 21 Sep 2015 20:15

^^^
Honestly who comes up with this foolishness. It is one thing to try and gradually raise standards, quite another to arbitrarily set limits on number of applicants. I bet next thing up will be state wise quota's, followed by more corruption and babu power trips. Parents should protest this, and if necessary do a show of force in front of these folks who are consistently wrong. Will we ever let the market decide anything. Students know what their degrees are worth and how to get jobs, tell these babu-giri types to butt out and let the market decide...

SanjayC · Post by **SanjayC** » 21 Sep 2015 21:47

^^^ Restricting supply is an old Babu trick to increase the importance of their jobs. AICTCE should just set minimum standards, and leave the rest to market forces.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 21 Sep 2015 23:13

Oh They are losing lots of money. They always envy MCI which rakes in crores, no matter which govt is in power.

rohitvats · Post by **rohitvats** » 21 Sep 2015 23:48

Theo_Fidel wrote:^^^
Honestly who comes up with this foolishness. It is one thing to try and gradually raise standards, quite another to arbitrarily set limits on number of applicants. I bet next thing up will be state wise quota's, followed by more corruption and babu power trips. Parents should protest this, and if necessary do a show of force in front of these folks who are consistently wrong. Will we ever let the market decide anything. Students know what their degrees are worth and how to get jobs, tell these babu-giri types to butt out and let the market decide...

May be, it would help if you have a more closer look at the situation than go ballistic at first instance?

Do you know how ridiculously easy it is to open an engineering college? There is a reason why we have so many engineering colleges spread across the nook and cranny of this country. So, theoretically, you've all this installed capacity but it is worth nothing. But that does not stop many of these so called colleges from getting admissions - because in this large population of ours, someone, somewhere would fall for few of these 'colleges'. Who are more bothered about your ability to pay than your grades. And where infrastructure is abysmal, to say the least.

Coming to the demand and supply part - get this: Maharashtra technical education department had formally asked AICTE to NOT sanction any more engineering or MBA colleges as up to 30% or higher seats were going vacant during counselling sessions. But that does not mean that these colleges have ZERO admission. As I said earlier, they will manage to fill some seats. But since the business model is not healthy, these students get short-changed by of lack of infra and academic staff. Frankly, many of these should not be in an engineering college to begin with! But since seats are available at ridiculously low cut-off level and parents want their kid to be an 'engineer', you arrive at a this kind of situation.

But did AICTE do that? NO. They went about their usual business. Now, a question arises as to why would AICTE do this? Reason - we've been chasing a statistic called as Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), which IIRC is a ratio of number of youths undergoing UG to total number of youth in age bracket for UG courses. So, idea is to sanction more and more colleges and get more people into the UG education stream.

Most of these engineering colleges are technically dead - they're strutting along making idiot out of few students they get because they can't close down. It will actually help the cause of this country if these shams which pass of as engineering college are shut down.

Edit 1:

From the same report - market forces at play!

AICTE will only “facilitate the closure of engineering schools” entirely or in parts to achieve the target, said Sahasrabudhe, who took over as chairman in June. He, however, added that engineering colleges will not be forced to shut down.

However, the large number of vacant seats is already taking a toll on engineering courses. As many as 556 engineering courses or departments have closed down this year alone, according to data available with AICTE. That number is, however, less than half the 1,422 applications that the regulator received seeking permission to shut engineering departments or courses.

chaanakya · Post by **chaanakya** » 22 Sep 2015 00:09

I am sure you know the minimum marks required to get admission into an engineering college. And if seats are vacant , otherwise, then naturally students are aware of the quality or job prospects or infra availability to not to join these colleges. And If others are joining they would have the required marks in +2 to become an engineer. Now you don't blame Aicte for such a low cut off and assume that whoever got below the cutoff of competitive exam is not good for engineering whatever they may score in +2. In a country of 125 crores we need more colleges and universities. just read Knowledge Commission's report. And see Namo's emphasis on Skill India which , if implemented, would be a game changer and stress more on skills than on engineering education is getting jobs etc.

Vayutuvan · Post by **Vayutuvan** » 22 Sep 2015 03:47

By the way Dr. Anil Sahsrabuddhe was director of COEP for 10 years and also a PhD from IISc. COEP counts Moskshagundam Vishveshvarayya and Prof. Tom Kailath among its alumni and a few others who have done amazing things in their scientific life.