Professor Yash Pal on Higher Education

Professor Yash Pal committee recommendations vindicate my stance on several aspects related to academic processes – particularly on issues related to granting greater autonomy to the individual for various creative pursuits. Here is one article titled "Creating an enabling environment for fostering creativity" written in 2007 for young deemed universities, such as KIIT. Here are few others:

• [2006] Invited article titled "Sensitizing beyond the Science Discipline" Vigyan, The Science Magazine of KIIT Science College, First Edition (April 2006)
• [2006] Invited article titled "Multiskilling the Craftsman" for KUSHALI - The Technical Magazine from ITI, KIIT (February 2006).
  

I have been articulating many of these views even before I joined KIIT in 2005 (some of them are archived in my blog posts: http://sites.google.com/site/kaushiksahu/Home/Weblogs )
The following views (classified under education) were articulated to break the “socio-politico-economic stalemate” that I was sensing in the education sector while at KIIT: http://ksahu.blogspot.com/search/label/Education

I hope India will be able to exploit the opportunities embedded in the Yash Pal committee report with MHRD playing the role of the facilitator.

Here is the full report & The 100 days action plan

Reengineering Indian academic processes

Professor Damodar Acharya’s viewpoints expressed in an article titled “On Growth Mode” (ET Supplement dated 15 June 2009) makes interesting reading - particularly the ones on creating opportunities up in the value chain and a strong bottom-line recommendation for scratching entrance examinations of all kinds. In his capacity as the Director, IIT Kharagpur he says: “Time is ripe to scratch the entrance examination of all kinds, be it for admission to prestigious technical and medical institutions or leading universities in the country.” While it would be interesting to know the details of his recommendations for the admissions process, here is one “out-of-box” suggestion that I had articulated earlier in my blog post titled: “Year of Creativity and Indian Education”

When I was pursuing some links in the Harvard Business Review (June 2009 issue), I came across the following two papers – a must read for these tough times.

As also pointed out in an ET article (by T T Ram Mohan dated 11 June 2009), the first paper titled “The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business School” by Joel Podolny highlights some shortcomings in B-School teaching: (a) Inattention to ethics and leadership (b) A tendency to teach management in “disciplinary silos” instead of offering a holistic view (c) A focus on theoretical models that do not clarify how organizations actually work and (d) An obsession with school rankings that, in turn, leads to a focus on jobs and salaries in place of the greater good of society. Some of these points I had highlighted earlier in my own blog post titled “Value-Oriented B-School Curriculum”(http://ksahu.blogspot.com/2009/03/value-oriented-b-school-curriculum.html)

The second paper titled “How to be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy” is a good one for creating a just and humane work environment. The author, RobertI. Sutton, is a professor of Management Science and Engineering atStanford University, where he cofounded the Hasso Plattner Institute ofDesign. Interestingly, though my proposal for establishing the “KalingaInstitute of Design (KID)” brought me close to KIIT in 2005, it is yet to be a vibrant reality in the erstwhile state of Kalinga (Orissa).

Musings of a foreign returned Oriya

Today’s editorial titled “Buffalo’s gain, Bangalore’s loss” in the new Indian Express (7 May 2009) took me down memory lane. Read on..

When I moved out of US in 1992, it was because of some early recessionary trends that I found quite disturbing. The trends were based on a few perceptions that I had picked during my stay. One was that of my grandfather who was vehemently against Indians underselling themselves in the US job markets. The second was my experience as a research scholar. Though I eventually got a full assistantship, my first one was a shared one (I don’t remember whether it was a half TA or 1/3rd TA). I silently worried – is this not underselling? Subsequently, thereafter, I worked hard to earn my full assistantship so that I could finish my doctoral research in four years (with the fourth being the most productive in terms of papers). This year also got me a job prospect with GE Kentucky sending me air tickets to finalize a possible job offer. However, before I could proceed, there was a hiring freeze. The GE official was profusely apologetic in requesting me to return the air tickets - which I did immediately. I heaved a sigh of relief because of two reasons – the first one related to my concern for Americans being sidelined in their own country and the second, my own low hassle tolerance limit in going through the immigration formalities for staying in USA on a work permit (which might have tempted me to go for a green card). I badly wanted to return to India. The first reason, however, was more significant. More so because I had seen the emotional conflict faced by some quite tolerant American graduate students during campus recruitments (where Indian students on study visas were taking away the jobs meant for Americans). Corporate America was not showing any concern for these job losses.

Postscript: Some may want to know – How does a person with such a low hassle tolerance limit continue to handle the hassles in a state like Orissa? A state which loves to ignore its own talent for outsiders?

I don’t have the answers yet. Perhaps a meet with the incumbent chief minister will unravel the answers (his late father was my late grandfather’s acquaintance and the above experience was possible because of their respective powerful personalities). Like any other common man of the day, it is not easy to meet the chief minister - more so when our political ideologies are so different [BJD taking a left turn definitely can’t have the same ideologies as that of a BJP supporter (i.e., moderate though progressive right-of-center and not the extreme right)....Please see the footnote inserted on 26 Aug 2009]. However, the only thing apparently common is transparency – but then TRANSPARENCY is a relative term. [Read my blog on Transparency in the Private Sector & How transparent is Transparency International India]

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NB (26 Aug 2009): The recent happenings in BJP are rather quite disturbing. They must be open to dissent and agree to disagree. Accepting constructive criticisms is healthy in a democracy.

Year of Creativity & Indian Education

The Year 2009 has been dedicated as the Year of Creativity by some nations. For instance "The goal of the European Year 2009 is to promote creativity and innovation among the general population". (Click here for the details). Similarly, in Australia: "In 2009, the Department of Education, Training and the Arts is focusing on celebrating and developing creativity within Queensland schools". (Click for details)

Our country needs to do some serious out-of-box thinking to foster creativity in the Education sector. Though Government of India sponsors several Technology Business Incubators to promote creativity, it needs to be even more imaginative with its education system. Here is one suggestion mooted @KIIT University before the visiting DST representatives in February 2008. The e-mail communiqué (dated 28 Feb 2008, Thu) to Prof. Phatak, IIT Mumbai, has been reproduced here:

Dear Professor Phatak,
It was indeed a pleasure meeting you along with the others from DST. It was quite heartening to note your observation about our current rigid educational framework which builds diffidence into the system and does not recognize failures. Also about an examination system that destroys team work and leaves hardly any scope for adopting innovative methods of pedagogy. I am myself a supporter of radical reforms in education.

The efforts taken by Mr. Mittal and his team in setting up TBIs are quite commendable (i.e., by looking at the returns). Since time was short I could not sharpen my suggestion related to "scaling-up" of TBIs. I want to place it here in perspective for consideration whenever possible.

The suggestion for "scaling-up" does not call for any additional financial support. It only requires providing "SEZ" (Special Educational Zone) status to some Universities/Institutes. Under SEZ status their educational environment could be reengineered to overcome the difficulties cited in your talk. This would not be possible in older Institutes as they have spent decades in establishing their several "core competencies" within a rigid framework. As a result it becomes difficult for their faculty to move freely out of their own turf. Young start-up Universities (like KIIT) have the advantage of providing clean-slate design opportunities for trying out various models of coopetition with active industry participation. It may be, therefore, possible for DST to get greater returns by considering the whole University/Institute as a single TBI.

This, however, requires the Ministry of Science and Technology recommending policy changes through the MHRD for some of these Institutions. Even though it is a difficult alternative, it has the potential of unleashing creativity by ensuring that innovation becomes an integral part of the academic process.

My other suggestion was related to reengineering the admissions process for one of the IITs (which can come under this SEZ). That is, select interested applicants at random (not through JEE) and then develop them into engineers. I chose IIT-Kharagpur (i.e., IITK) because it has years of experience which could be utilized for coming up with innovative pedagogic models that the country can use for meeting the inclusive growth demands for quality higher education. Please take your time to send your response.

Regards.......K. Sahu

Value-oriented B-School Curriculum

An American B-School student posed a question to one InternationalAdvisory Board of a well known European B-School: "Whether B-Schools had caused the economic mess that America and the world was in?"

This refers to the editorial opinion by Arun Maira titled “Reorienting Business Leadership” (ET, 19 March 2009, Thu). He says: "The global economic meltdown and erosion of trust require business schools to examine the fundamentals of the education they provide". Access the following link for the complete article: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Editorial/Reorienting-business-leadership/articleshow/4284491.cms

We certainly need to do something in our own respective B-Schools and examine the values we are imparting to our students. The existing curriculum regulated by AICTE is highly domain specific (locked within self-centred functional areas) and is driven towards the goal of "making more money using other people's money". As Maira says: "The financial services industry ballooning into a world of exotic derivatives.......unfortunately bringing the global economy down...".

Courses like Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility are important subjects that need to be over-emphasized. And, if I may suggest once again, we need to do something about de-emphasizing the role of specializations in B-Schools. However, a balanced "value-oriented" core course foundation is an absolute must for the MBA program.

Holistic measures of goodness are needed to counter the media hype surrounding wealth-oriented “lifestyle statements”. This requires B-Schools reengineering their academic and placement processes. Here is another related link written long ago (I wish timely steps had been taken by the stakeholders): Corporate Governance.