Links ...

1. Nobel Laureate Vekatraman Ramakrishnan will deliver the IISc Centenary Lecture on the 5th of January, 2010 on From Baroda to Cambridge: A Life in Science.

2. International Student Admission at IISc:

   ... IISc is happy to announce that fellowships will be awarded to the most promising students who are selected for admission to one of these programmes.

3. Pallavi Singh in Mint: Innovation universities may have fiscal freedom:

   The 14 innovation universities that are being planned as centres of excellence along the lines of Harvard and Oxford may be kept outside the purview of the nation’s top audit body so that they are financially independent, which would make them unique in the country.

   [An MHRD note] ... states that the innovation universities will frame their own rules on academics and the qualifications needed for teaching positions, and get to decide their own fees, curriculum and rules for the appointment of faculty.

   With regard to financial autonomy, the ministry says funds spent on research or teaching will be kept out of the ambit of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, or CAG, a constitutional body that audits and assists state and Central institutions with accounts and accountability.

4. Samantha Stainburn in NYTimes: The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor. The scene is pretty grim in the US:

   In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make. The recession means their numbers are growing.