Hans Rosling on Washing Machines

Nine minutes of magic.

Kakodkar Committee Report: Part 7. Our awesome junior faculty will take NITs up the quality ladder. In just 15 days! Satisfaction guaranteed!!

The Kakodkar Committee works within a paradigm of absolute superiority of IITs over almost all other institutions -- including the NITs, the IISERs, the NISER and the IIITs (but excluding the IIMs). So, when it talks about these other places in Chapter 8, every single word in it is dripping wet.

With condescension.

Here's how it all starts:

... While a lot has been done to improve the quality of these institutions, they still need a push to go up the quality ladder. The Ministry of Human Resource Development is willing to provide generous funds; but that alone will not improve the quality. The quality of the faculty needs to improve and the culture of these institutions needs to change.

These institutions need to be nurtured in order to take them to the next level of quality in undergraduate education and research. Only so much can be done from within these institutes. ... [My emphasis throughout]

At this point, I was looking for recommendations that might go like, "the IITs are doing well because of X, Y and Z, so we should create an environment that allows these institutions to get X, Y and Z (in the next 10 years or so)." [where X, Y, Z might be autonomy, generous funding, low student/teacher ratio, etc].

No such luck.

The Committee's is so drunk on its own patronizing tone at this point, that it goes totally berserk.

... There has been some attempt in the past to get IIT faculty associated with NITs, but this has not helped much. The primary reason for this has been the association of established senior faculty of the IITs who have very little time on their hands to nurture these institutions, even if they wanted to. In recent times, the IITs have occasionally attracted some very high quality young faculty. They have the energy and will to change the education system. The proposal is to involve such exceptional faculty in enhancing quality at these identified institutions. Now, even though they are young, they have their goals cut out and hands rather full with building their research groups at the IITs and, maybe, developing relationships with industry. Since they would not ordinarily involve themselves with identified institutes, the proposal has to be different in order to attract them.

It is proposed to identify 5 youngsters (about 35 years in age) for association with each of these identified institutions; the identification will be carried out in consultation with the Director and Chairman of the Board of Governors (BOG) of the identified institute. They will be inducted into the BOG and Senate of the institute and tasked with helping drive excellence in these institutions by leveraging their association with the IITs. One would expect them to:

• Help an NIT Director take the institute to the next level of quality

• Build relationships with the young faculty at NIT, and encourage and guide them to take their institute to a higher level of quality

• [And on. And on. And ...]

[My emphasis throughout]

The Committee expects all this.

From . Newbie . IIT . Faculty.

Who would spend all of 15 days in a year at "their" NIT.

If this doesn't define surreal, I don't know what would ...

Financing College Education: Human Capital Contract

An important part of the recommendations by the Kakodkar Committee is about financing college education -- which we discussed here and here.

In the second post (and in the comments), I expressed my preference for a 'post-paid' model in which students repay the cost of education through a higher tax on their income. I like it especially because of the insurance component -- if you, somehow, end up with a low income, you are not burdened with a hefty repayment obligation.

This is a government-funded program in Australia, and a variant has just been introduced in the UK.

A couple of recent articles in NYTimes by David Bornstein talk about an essentially similar scheme, but implemented by the private sector:(a) Instead of Student Loans, Investing in Futures, and (b)A Way to Pay for College, With Dividends. Here's an excerpt from (b), where this scheme is given a nice name -- Human Capital Contract:

If you were a student looking for financing to pursue a degree in social science, would you accept an offer of $16,000, in exchange for paying 4.5 percent of your income for 10 years after you graduate?

... In exchange for the financing they receive, the students commit to repayment schemes along the lines of the one outlined above (the terms vary). After the time period elapses — it’s always 10 years or less — the obligation expires, no matter how much has been repaid. [...]

... [H]uman capital contracts are not a new idea. The Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman proposed them in the 1950s. Decades ago, Yale University experimented with a program through which students could postpone tuition and repay it later as a fraction of their income. The idea was abandoned after the introduction of federally subsidized loans. Australia allows students to pay for college through a special tax after they graduate, which operates in a similar fashion. And in 2009, the U.S. government introduced income-based repayment for federal loans, which are available to students whose debt is high relative to their income. What’s common to these programs is that they all try to lessen the financial burden of a college education by shifting from fixed loan obligations to payments that fluctuate based on income.

Links ...

1. Academic Destinations. A collection of articles, pics, personal narratives, infographics on quite a few (non-US) countries. While India merits just a brief sketch, Germany gets a much more extensive coverage.

2. Jane Brody in NYTimes: A good night's sleep isn't luxury -- It's a necessity.

3. Andrew Gelman on The "cushy life" of a University of Illinois (@Chicago) sociology professor

4. Johann Hari in The Independent: It's not just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The IMF itself should be on trial: "Imagine a prominent figure was charged, not with raping a hotel maid, but with starving her, and her family, to death."

Jairam Ramesh of the Day

Prof. C.N.R. Rao, a couple of days ago:

Referring to the demand for sophisticated equipment for research labs, Professor Rao said in a lighter vein: “Shortage of equipment will make brains work better.” Referring to the premier IISc., he said, “The IISc. is characterised by very mediocre research mainly because they have a lot of facilities.”

This cuts a little too close, so I'll have to restrict myself to just this, rather obvious, point: Coming from someone whose institution boasts some of the most awe-inspiring pieces of equipment (including this beauty, alleged to be among the most expensive phallic symbols in the world), this is a bit, well, rich.

Shashi Tharoor of the Day

Not quite surprisingly, Jairam Ramesh does it again:

Jairam Ramesh, India's minister of environment and forests, suggested the middle-class 'English-speaking women' who usually attended conferences on biodiversity and other green causes were useless compared with tribal women who had waged successful campaigns.

Speaking ahead of an event to mark World Environment Day, Mr Ramesh said educated ladies were "not required anymore."

"Sitting inside Vigyan Bhawan [New Delhi's main conference venue] and listening to well-drafted speeches yields no results. This year we have invited about 100 tribal women from all over the country," he said.

Links ...

With all that stuff about Kakodkar Committee Report, it has been a while since I did one of these. There's a lot to link to, but this will have to do for now:

1. Winners of the Worst PPT Slide Contest

2. A great infographic on Arab Spring [h/t: Chris Blattman]

3. If you use Google, here's some advice from the company on ensuring your information is safe online.

4. The Bilingual Advantage. Claudia Dreifus of NYTimes interviews Ellen Bialystok, a professor of psychology at York University, Toronto [On strong recommendation from Mark Liberman of Language Log].

5. Gary Taubes in NYTimes: Is Sugar Toxic? Scary story about the true badness of sugar (more specifically, fructose, which forms a big part of sugar, and sugary drinks). Caution: will change your behaviour -- just as it did mine -- in the presence of sweet stuff.

Kakodkar Committee Report: Part 6. Forget Ranking, Let's Do Some Re-Ranking

Chapter 2 of the Report has a section entitled "IITs and Global Scene in Engineering Education" in which the Committee considers where the IITs are in the rank list produced by QS World University Rankings. It turns out that IIT-B is the first Indian entry in the list, at No. 187, followed by IIT-D, IIT-K, IIT-M, IIT-KGP, University of Delhi, IIT-R, University of Mumbai, etc.

Now the Committee tries some innovative spin:

[University ranking and the methodologies] need to be used wisely in order to derive benefits. The following simple scenarios bring out certain interesting observations. Many of the top-ranking institutions have a Medical School. QS has classified all IITs to be without a medical school, which is accurate.

You know what they did? In their own words, they "[looked] at institutions that are classified by QS to be focusing on all 5 areas but do not have a medical school." In other words, they just dropped all the universities with a medical school, and re-ranked the universities! And the result is ... [Drum roll, please]

IIT-B is now at No. 21!

Fabulous, isn't it?

The Committee doesn't produce the full list produced by their innovative re-ranking exercise. But, going by its description of what it has done, its "new, improved" list would not include the University of Michigan, UCLA, and UCSD because they have a Medical School. Nor would it include Cambridge, Cornell, or Stanford!

Clueless? Disingenuous?

You decide.

Kakodkar Committee Report: Part 5. Gender Equity

In Chapter 3 which is devoted to "IITs as Research Institutions," we find a couple of sections on UG students. One of these sections is essentially an expression of concern that women form such a small minority among the UG students.

After identifying this as something about which "We Must Do Something," the Committee suggests two possible ways to "encourage women to seek entry into IITs":

• When there is a tie in total marks in JEE, the rank is decided by marks in individual subjects. It is recommended that whenever there is a tie in total marks, women may be ranked higher than men. Individual subject marks may then be used to rank within men and women as before. This will help women get better choices of branch. Also, some more women at the bottom of the merit list may benefit from such a system.

• Women, who get admitted and are required to pay a fee, may be reimbursed 50% of the fee amount by the Government.

The Committee's audacity to appear to be addressing this issue are just too overwhelming!

Kakodkar Committee Report: Part 4. Catch'em Young

A bold plan for a 10-fold increase in PhD graduates within a decade demands equally bold plans to get PhD students into the IITs in the first place.

One of those plans involves "attracting youngsters working in industry to join part-time PhD programmes" [my emphasis], and the Committee feels that the IITs should be able to admit 2500 of these candidates every year.

Here's another idea from the Committee:

Admitting bright undergraduate (UG) students for PhD at the end of their 3rd year undergraduate engineering programme from any institute in India. The IITs would have to take up a programme to identify such students purely on the basis of their academic performance of the past 3 years, recommendations from their teachers and evaluation of their research potential as identified through an interview (conducted by the IITs). Once identified, these students would be admitted immediately in an IIT and would complete their B.Tech programme as well as their PhD in about 5 years’ time. The UG degree could be awarded by the institute they came from and the PhD in due course by IIT. The IITs should aim to take 2500 such youngsters for PhD programmes from this stream every year. [My emphasis]

* * *

Anyways, this suggestion reminded me of what is said to have happened in another elite research institution a long time ago ...

Kakodkar Committee Report: Part 3. The Vision Thing

Even if you don't feel like reading the rest of the report, you really ought to check out Chapter 3. IITs as Research Institutions. Just look at the bold plans proposed by the Kakodkar Committee:

1. A four-fold increase in faculty strength in the next ten years -- from under 4000 now, to about 16,000.

2. A whopping 10-fold increase in graduates -- from about 1000 now, to about 10,000 by 2024.

3. The intake at the BTech and MTech levels will also go up to 20,000 each.

4. By 2024-25, the total student strength at the IITs will be 160,000 [80,000 BTech, 40,000 MTech and 40,000 PhD students] spread out, possibly, over 20 IITs!

As the Committee says:

We recommend that the IITs should strive to increase the number of PhD graduates from the currently less than 1000 PhD students graduating each year, to 10,000 research scholars graduating every year by 2024–25. As a PhD student would normally take 4 years to complete the programme, 10,000 PhD scholars need to be admitted to the PhD programme at IITs by 2020–21. This is the minimum number that would be required to meet the country’s requirements. For 20 IITs, it would mean an average of 500 PhDs. The stablished IITs have to strive to reach a number of 800 to 900 PhDs graduating each year, so as to provide leeway and time to the newer IITs to gear up.

The first reaction of most would be that such a scale up is not possible. While it would not be an easy task, we would suggest the means to ensure that such numbers are indeed achieved. There is little doubt that such numbers are required by India. [My emphasis]

I love the way the Committee has chosen to back up the bold plans with even bolder assertions. There's little doubt! Minimum for our country! 10,000 PhDs! All from IITs!

As I said, this is the most amazing chapter -- filled with what former US President (1989-92) George HW Bush called "The Vision Thing."

Fashion Industry's Culture of Copying

Awesome talk by Johanna Blakley at TEDxUSC-2010.

In case of embed fail, hop over to the TED Blog.

Kakodkar Committee Report: Part 2. What else is wrong with the proposal to hike tuition fees?

Here is a summary of why I don't like Kakodkar Committee's recommendation for a hike in tuition fee hike:

1. In my previous post, I said the fee hike implies a change in the character of IITs from public institutions serving a public purpose into essentially private institutions that can, potentially, go on to institute a regime of exorbitant tuition fees just "because we can," or "because the market can bear it."

   [There are two indications in the Kakodkar Committee Report about the possibility of even higher fees: (a) it presents a dubious computation that implies that Rs. 200,000 represents only 30 % of the real cost of education at IITs, and (b) it has another section on autonomous governing boards with powers to set the tuition fees. The zeal with which the Committee goes about its business is truly scary!]

   And worse, all this could happen while the institutions keep taking a lot of money from the government! This . is . just . wrong.

2. Again, as I pointed out in the previous post, the fee hike proposal still leaves the IITs dependent on the government for a huge bulk of its budget. Thus, it certainly doesn't solve the specific problem which, as identified and articulated by the Committee, is the IITs' quest for "financial independence" as a prelude to their autonomy.

3. IITs are not just another set of academic institutions. As India's leading institutions, they also serve as a benchmark. A 200,000 rupee tuition fee would send the wrong signal to the wrong sorts of people -- businesspeople, crooks, thugs and muttheads who run some of our shadiest self-financing colleges. It will only end up giving a license to every unscrupulous Rai, Pai and Chaudhuri to stiff their students even more.

4. The idea of a "National IIT Scholarship Programme" exemplifies what I call the doctrine of "IIT Exceptionalism." This doctrine not only refuses to see the IITs as a part of India's larger system of higher ed, it wants to keep the IITs separate and exclusive (The demand to keep JEE in addition to any other national test flows directly from this doctrine; so does the demand for maintaining a salary differential for faculty.).

   [Aside: There is a case to be made for a national scheme to help students go to college -- it could take the form of direct grants (like the Pell grants in the US) or a system of post-payment (by way of a slightly enhanced tax rate on one's income, as in Australia). But such a scheme must be created for all students.]

5. The Committee recommends a loan scheme, "so that no student is deprived of education because of want of means." It doesn't seem to acknowledge some of the bad consequences of saddling graduates with loans (which may now start at, say, Rs. 800,000, but could get much stiffer in future if the governing boards choose to go aggressively after revenue from students).

   What about students who drop out? What about idealistic students who join an NGO, a non-profit, a charity? What about enterprising ones who choose entrepreneurship over a steady, cushy job? What about those who go for jobs in the government sector where salaries are oh-so-low? What about students who want to pursue a PhD (e.g., in the IITs themselves -- something that the Committee so eagerly desires; more on this in another post)? Is it right to burden them with a (potentially crushing) loan?

6. A nasty consequence of the Committee's blinkered IITs-only view is this: whether they deserve it or not, IIT students are seen as among the best, not only by the society at large, but, as a recent episode reminded us, by people in the government as well. How can the government justify making India's "top" students pay Rs. 200,000 (or more), while their "less-than-top" cousins get educated in other colleges at a fraction of that cost?

To me, (1) is paramount. The IITs, together with some of our central and state universities, represent the very best of what is possible when our government chooses to do the right thing. They are a slap in the face of all those who like to go on and on about the irredeemable badness of the public sector. For all the rhetoric from industrywallahs about the glories of the private sector philanthropy, they can't cite even a single private college / university that comes even close to what these fine institutions have achieved. To the crowd that has drunk the Kool-Aid of private sector superiority, IITs are anathema; they would use every opportunity to "take IITs private."

I see the fee-hike proposal as a thin edge of the wedge. And that's why I want our government to stand firm against attempts to change the very public character of these very public institutions.

So, here's my request to our HRD Minister: Just say "No!" to the fee hike proposal.

Kakodkar Committee Report: Tuition Fee Hike

Last month, the Kakodkar Committee issued its report, available for download at the MHRD website [pdf; 8MB]. The report bears the title "Taking IITs to Excellence and Greater Relevance." [Yeah, really. Taking them to Excellence! Don't tell Jairam Ramesh about it ;-)]

Sidebar

If you wish to read it in smaller chunks, I have the individual chapters in my Posterous blog.]

* * *

I read somewhere that MHRD has opened the report up for public discussion; here's my contribution.

The topic I want to look at first is the tuition fee hike, which is covered in Chapter 4. Governance, Autonomy, and Finances.. The specific recommendation is for a four-fold increase in the tuition fee for UG students from Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 200,000 [PG students also face a hike, but it's treated differently in the proposal; see below].

Let me come right out and say I don't like this fee-hike recommendation. At all. In this post, I deal only with the facts and figures as presented by the Committee. In the next, I'll go beyond the figures to explore the proposal in a wider context.

1. The Committee prefaces the fee hike proposal with the following (p. 73 - 74, Section 4.2):

   The root of the autonomy challenge lies in the inability of the IITs to be financially independent. [... huge snip ...] Without attaining financial independence, true autonomy will not be a reality. [...] Towards the objective of taking IITs to the level of world-class institutions, it is recommended that the IITs become independent of any non-plan (operational) budgetary support of the Government [...]

   We have just seen the first thing that's wrong with this argument: Autonomy is possible only with financial independence.

2. The Committee's specific recommendation is that the IITs begin to "recover the recurring part of the cost of education through fees levied on undergraduate (B.Tech) and postgraduate (Dual degree/M.Tech/MS/PhD) education" (p.76).

   That part about "Dual degree/M.Tech/MS/PhD" made me jump! I said to myself, "Wow, that's really radical! How the hell are they going to make masters and PhD students pay tuition fees?"

   A little later, the Committee comes clean. They don't quite mean that the postgraduate students will actually pay a stiff tuition fee; the government would pay it for them! Specifically, the Committee "recommend[s] that a National IIT Scholarship programme be instituted." Not only is his scheme meant for PG students, it would cover a nearly half of the UG students as well.

   Assuming, as the Committee does, a UG-to-PG ratio of about 1, tuition costs of nearly 75 % of all the IIT students would actually come from the government!

   Now, that is real financial independence!

3. The Committee then presents a table in which it estimates, for the seven "establised IITs" [i.e, IIT-KGP, B, K, M, D, R, G], the increase in the income from student fees for the year 2011: in the new regime, it would go dramatically up by Rs. 775 crores (from Rs. 103 crores to Rs. 878 crores). The government's contribution to the operating budget would come down equally dramatically from Rs. 1112 crores to 333 crores.

   This is misleading. As we already discussed, the government would still foot nearly 75 % of the the tuition bill; thus, its real contribution is not 333 crores, but 993 crores (333 crores + 75 % of 878 crores).

   In the new regime, its saving is not nearly 780 crores (as the table implies), but just about 120 crores -- which would translate into far less than 10 percent of its current contribution to the IITs' capital and operating budget.

All of which leads us to the following questions:

1. Should the government agree to a scheme that would change the very character of its flagship institutions, while having such an underwhelming financial implications?

   Make no mistake: under the new regime, the default position of the IITs would be that everyone should pay for their education -- except those who are covered by a government-funded scholarship. This is a huge change indeed, because it transforms IITs into, essentially, private institutions.

2. Looking at it from the IITs' point of view, their "dependence" on government funds has probably come down from about 80 % to about 70% -- and this doesn't even include the capital costs, all of which is taken care of by the government. In what way -- and in which parallel universe -- could this be called "financial independence"?

Isn't it better to acknowledge the fact that the government will continue to be a big source of funds for the IITs -- and remember, we are not even talking about the research grants a huge chunk of which is also from the government? Isn't it better to de-link autonomy from this mythical entity called "financial independence"?

The Committee has only created a false dichotomy between "autonomy" and government funding -- without realizing that the latter is the very life-blood of academic institutions. And it has failed utterly in its effort to find a viable path to greater levels of autonomy (and accountability) without destroying the public character of the IITs.

Why IITs should scrap JEE: Two more data points!

Memo to the IITs: Wake up, People! You are losing the battle.

1. Mainstream media have started comparing IIT faculty to cram school faculty. And, guess what? It's the cram school guys who get the "World Class" tag!

   While comparing the calibre of the students of the Indian Institutes of Technology versus the teaching faculty there, Jairam Ramesh left out one crucial element in the equation: the coaching classes. Even if the much-vaunted tech schools' teachers do not match up to the environment minister's exacting world standards, our tutorial networks certainly do.

   I checked, and checked again: there's no indication (on the website) that this story is in the "Humour" section of that newpaper.

2. Mainstream media have also started celebrating reporting on the "success" of school shirkers [Many IIT faculty would tell you in private conversations that these students bring this attitude to the IITs]:

   [Student X] echoes a dominant trend among students these days, an increasing number of whom are paying little attention to HSC exams, and are instead concentrating on entrance tests for medicine and engineering colleges, since professional courses have their own entrance tests.