Pallavi Singh in Mint: Wage Woes: Teach at IITs -- Just for the Joy of It.
Paola Giuliano and Luigi Guiso in VoxEU: To trust or not to trust: The answer lies somewhere in the middle:
We argue that the relationship between trust and income is not always increasing – instead, it is hump-shaped. Perhaps surprisingly, not only those who trust too little but also those who trust too much do poorly, economically speaking. The individuals who do the best are those with more moderate opinions about other people’s trustworthiness.
Why? Our hypothesis is that people tend to think that others are like them when forming their beliefs about the trustworthiness of others. This results in two sources of sub-optimal behaviour. On the one hand, individuals who are themselves untrustworthy, because they mistrust, tend to make decisions that are too conservative and therefore miss profitable opportunities. On the other hand, highly trustworthy individuals are too trusting and, because of this, get cheated abnormally often and incur large losses as a result. Somewhere in between these two extremes of trust, there is a “right amount” of trust that maximises individual economic success.
Phil Baty in Times Higher Education: The sleeping giant is rising to challenge global order:
The report, India: Research and Collaboration in the New Geography of Science, says that India lags behind comparator countries in both research investment and output.
But the Indian Government aims to change that. Its five-year plan for 2007-12 includes a fourfold increase in spending on education compared with the previous plan.
In 2009, government spending on scientific research accounted for 0.9 per cent of India's gross domestic product; by 2012, the figure is expected to rise to 1.2 per cent.
The proportion of the Indian population holding graduate degrees rose from 2.4 per cent (20.5 million) in 1991 to 4.5 per cent (48.7 million) in 2005.
Using data from the Thomson Reuters database, the report charts rapid growth in the country's research output.
In 1981, India produced just 14,000 papers listed in the database, rising to barely 16,500 by 1998. But since then, there has been major growth to nearly 30,000 in 2007 - an 80 per cent increase in nine years.
Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation at Evidence, a Thomson Reuters business, described India as a "sleeping giant that seems to be waking".
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Links ...
Times Higher Ed - QS rankings of world universities
Ranking exercises are stupid -- they don't stand up to even the merest of scrutiny. And that's the only kind of scrutiny I can give to the 2009 THE-QS rankings! [Update: If you want a somewhat more elaborate critique, read this article over at Inside Higher Ed.]
Here's what I found:
IIT-B and IIT-D are the only Indian institutions that make it to the Top-200 in the world -- they stand at 163 and 181 respectively. Their overall composite scores are 58.4 and 56.6.
You turn now to the ranking of Asian universities, and look at the IITs. You do find IIT-B and IIT-D ranked at 30 and 36 (no overall scores are given in this list).
But wait a minute: IIT-K is also there at No. 34.
IIT-K is good enough to beat IIT-D in Asia, but not in the World?
/li>How sadly off-the-mark should this exercise be if it ranks IIT-R (Rank: 63) way ahead of IIT-KGP (Rank: 141)?
It's bad stuff. It's not worth any more of our time.
But I do expect one or both of the following:
clueless Indian journalists will go gaga over this list in tomorrow's newspapers.
one or two anonymous commenters will come in and tell us about all the ways in which IIT-R is actually "better" than IIT-KGP.
Annals of Bad Ideas
To make up for the shortfall of doctors in rural areas, an alternative cadre that will work exclusively in villages is in the pipeline.
About 50 students from each state will be selected and taught in a rural setting for most part of the four-and-a-half years degree, to serve in their own district after graduation.
The Medical Council of India (MCI) has the syllabus ready. “We have proposed that it be called MBBS (Rural), with some restrictions, such as the doctors cannot practice in urban areas for the first 10 years,” said Dr Ketan Desai, president, MCI.
After 10 years, the student can apply for a post-graduation medical degree.
If the idea is to encourage doctors with MBBS to work in rural areas, there ought to be simpler ways than branding a whole bunch of people as "inferior" doctors -- because that's what MBBS (Rural) would signify -- and unleashing them on villagers.
This is one case where both the doctors and the villagers deserve a better treatment.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Art imitates life
In three steps.
1. The Indian government says no to demands from IIT faculty for a further (small) raise in salary. During the debate on this issue quite a few people point to the huge salaries in private sector firms. We just went through this debate during the last several weeks.
2. The government's new initiative is to ask private sector firms to rein in executive compensation. It started just a few days ago.
3. Scott Adams presents this Dilbert cartoon. Today.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Links ...
Let me start with the Dilbert cartoon that reveals Asok to be a racist.
Giridhar: Pay Scales at IISc.
Leslie Hinkson: Is "statistical" discrimination a useful concept?.
Flowing Data: 30 Resources to find the data you need.
IISc Council adopts SPC recommendations
Tucked away in a news story about IISc's undergraduate program, is this item:
The academic council has also decided to go ahead with the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations.
The pay revision notification for Indian Institute of Science, along with IITs, was issued last month by the HRD (Human Resource Development) Ministry, triggering much protests across the nation.
Under the new pay scale, the starting salary for an assistant professor on contract will be Rs 37,000, a Rs 52,000 for regular a assistant professor, and Rs 59,000 for a professor.
The other numbers look about right, but professors' salaries start at just under Rs.80,000 a month (without house rent allowance), or just under Rs. 1 million per year.
How do you define 'elaboration'?
Or how, for that matter, do you write short notes on 'fallacies and pitfalls'?
What do you do when you are a student seeing these questions in a university examination in a course on Computer Organization and Design?
I'm sure you are wondering which university produced these gems.
* * *
Hat tip: Pramod (and later, Arun via his comment)
* * *
Many sites compile howlers by students. If there is one for howlers from clueless faculty, these questions would fit right in.
Monday, October 05, 2009
Rate departments, not universities
Several commenters have raised serious questions about ranking of Indian universities suggested by Gangan Prathap and B.M. Gupta in their article in Current Science. More specifically, the authors' use of SCOPUS as the source of their data has come in for criticism, because SCOPUS's coverage of humanities and social sciences is not as extensive as its coverage of the sciences.
Now, I have very little experience with SCOPUS, so I am not able to comment directly on this specific issue.
But I do have some things to say on this topic.
In general, ranking of universities is not a good idea -- especially if such an exercise is going to use just one criterion -- research output. Universities do have this other important mission: education. The commitment to teaching and the quality of teaching should matter too. So should the number of graduates.
Even if we accept a research-focused ranking exercise, there is this difficulty: certain fields are better represented in databases, and institutions that have a larger weight in those fields end up enjoying an advantage. In the work of Prathap and Gupta, their choice of SCOPUS appears to privilege sciences over humanities and social sciences.
Even within sciences, there are significant differences between fields. For the same number of faculty, a department of mathematics is likely to produce far fewer publications than, say, a department of biomedical science. The number of citations per paper, too, tends to be lower in mathematics than in biomedical science.
Then, there is computer science, where conference proceedings, rather than journals, are the preferred destination for research publications.
Bottomline: Relying on one source of data is a bad way of measuring research effectiveness of whole institutions. Rankings based on this kind of analysis are misleading. In the hands of a clueless bureaucrat looking for a 'rational' funding methodology, such bogus quantitative data may even be dangerous!
Clearly, the above criticism points to a solution: rate the research performance of individual departments. Like what my colleagues M. Giridhar and J. Modak have done for chemical engineering. Even though publishing and citation traditions within different subfields of chemical engineering may be different, it is far more fair to compare departments than to compare universities.
Ratings for each university can be computed from the scores received by each of its constituent departments. Needless to say, this is a lot more difficult and intense task. Ideally, each department should do such an exercise and each university should display the results on its website.
Accreditation bodies are meant for doing precisely this task: rate departments on several different metrics, and issue a composite letter grade. While the letter grade is prominently displayed on department websites, the detailed evaluations are not available in the public domain. They should be.
Finally, these one-off exercises don't mean much to me. Sure, it is interesting to know that a chemical engineering department in University X is ahead of that in University Y in year Z on some metric. But I am more interested in trends over time, which I think are way more important and useful than static data.
I would love to see how a department's per-faculty numbers of publications and citations have been changing over time. [In order to smooth out the (possibly) wild year-to-year swings in the data, one may use five-year moving averages (i.e., publications from the previous 5 years is plotted against each year).]
Such trend lines would show which departments are growing and which ones are in decline. They contain far more useful information, and should be of interest to potential graduate students and faculty applicants.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Prathap and Gupta on ranking Indian universities
Just like they ranked engineering and technology institutions sometime ago, they have now ranked Indian universities (pdf), based on research publications indexed in / by SCOPUS. [Hat tip: Seema Singh]
Just like the previous exercise, they use p-index as a composite measure of quality and quantity of publications. p-index is defined as [C2P](1/3), where P is the number of publications in a given period, and C is the number of citations in a three-year window immediately after the publication date.
The top five (along with their p-index values) are:
University of Hyderabad (37)
Delhi University (32.7)
Panjab University (32.7)
Jadavpur Univerisity (30.3)
Banaras Hindu University (27.6)
Some observations:
The p-index is not normalized by the number of faculty. Thus, it privileges bigger institutions with larger faculty strengths.
In the top 25, one finds an interesting mix of Central Universities (UH, DU, BHU, JNU, AMU ...), State universities (Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Jadavpur, Anna ...), medical institutions (CMC, Sanjay Gandhi PGIMS), and a science and tech university (Cochin U of S&T).
Tamil Nadu has five institutions in the top 25: Madras, Anna, Annamalai, CMC and Madurai Kamaraj.
Prathap and Gupta say, "... no private university has made it into this elite list." While Annamalai U and CMC Vellore may not be 'private' universities, they are not 'government' universities either.
The contribution of the top 25 universities to the research output from India has remained roughly the same during the two five-year periods: 17.5% during 1999-2003 and 18.3% during 2004-08. From the data given by them, we can back-calculate the average number of publications from India during these two periods: about 25,350 during 1999-2003 and 41,000 during 2004-08.
Links ...
A bunch of fun links:
The Ig Nobels were awarded sometime ago, well before the real Nobels are announced (later this week). Here are a couple of reports on the event. My favourite?
PEACE PRIZE: Stephan Bolliger, Steffen Ross, Lars Oesterhelweg, Michael Thali and Beat Kneubuehl of the University of Bern, Switzerland, for determining — by experiment — whether it is better to be smashed over the head with a full bottle of beer or with an empty bottle.
Scott Jaschik has a story on Corrupted-Files.com, an online "service" that has a great USP for college students:
Corrupted-Files.com ... sells students (for only $3.95, soon to go up to $5.95) intentionally corrupted files. Why buy a corrupted file? Here's what the site says: "Step 1: After purchasing a file, rename the file e.g. Mike_Final-Paper. Step 2: E-mail the file to your professor along with your 'here's my assignment' e-mail. Step 3: It will take your professor several hours if not days to notice your file is 'unfortunately' corrupted. Use the time this website just bought you wisely and finish that paper!!!"
Using this story as a launching pad, commenters at Crooked Timber revisit the topic of hilarious excuses offered by students for not handing in their work on time.
Two links from Faking News, an Onion-esque site specializing on India-related topics:
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Academics on pay hike protests
Just a few links to blog posts. They all predate yesterday's meeting, though.
But, before that, some of you might be interested in the White Paper issued by the IIT Faculty Associations (alternate link). In this document, they offer a response to what they call "myths / misconceptions" about the faculty salaries at IITs as well as about the recent protests.
T. T. Ram Mohan: Sibal takes on the IITs.
M. Giridhar: One more post (yeah, I know I have already linked to it; it's worth another link!).
Niket Kaisare: Faculty salaries at IITs and IISc.
Ansumali: Open letter to the prime minister.
How the media reported on yesterday's meeting ...
... between HRD Minister Kapil Sibal and IIT FA representatives. I have used bold emphasis quite liberally.
The month-long impasse between IIT faculty and HRD ministry was resolved on Friday with minister Kapil Sibal offering a face saver to the protesting faculty.
Without rolling back guidelines set out in the September 16 notification, Mr Sibal has offered IITs 'flexibility' in interpreting the order. ...
Without changing a word from the government's September 16 pay notification and by just using the word `flexibility', HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Friday assuaged the IIT faculty that has been protesting for nearly six weeks against the pay structure and autonomy.
DNA:
While Sibal agreed to "re-look" the contentious issue of promotions, including a 40% cap, to senior grade, he refused to concede their other demand for better pay. [...]
Ashok Jhunjhunwala of IIT-Chennai, however, said the minister said or offered nothing new. "Most demands were met earlier when our directors met the HRD minister. [... ] The teachers were looking for an escape route to wriggle out of this situation, which Sibal provided," he said.
... Federation president M. Thenmozhi said [that] ... the Federation has been told that amendments would be made in the September 16 notification on pay revision of teachers in Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTI) to remove minor irritants.
In which I learn about emoticons for sarcasm ...
Giridhar says I should have relied on something more than "Ah, this victory must smell so sweet!" to convey how hollow I thought IIT FAs' "victory" was.
Evidently, the "Ah" at the beginning just doesn't cut it as a verbal marker for irony / sarcasm / snark. The comments indicate that several people just took the outcome of yesterday's meeting as a real victory for the IIT FAs. Perhaps they have other, independent evidence to think that way, but I certainly think of it as a hollow victory devoid of any real, substantive concessions.
In addition to being nebulous, autonomy and flexibility are also so cheap that they could be dished out during the course of a broadcast interview!
* * *
I have received three pieces of advice on how to avoid that kind of blogging FAIL:
Just use plain language to convey what you feel.
Use explicit markers (something like [snark] ... [/snark]).
Use emoticons such as :d or :-J. (This is from Giridhar).
Friday, October 02, 2009
Fairness in SPC pay hikes for university and college teachers
A month ago, I asked how fair the SPC pay hikes have been at IIXs and universities. I tried to answer this question by looking at the ratio of the 'raw' salaries in December 2005 (before SPC) and in January 2006 (after SPC).
At IIXs, the pay hikes are roughly the same at all levels -- right from assistant professors all the way up to full professors (let's leave OCAPs for the moment, as they have just been created).
However, this is not so for the faculty in our universities: while pay hikes for professors are in line with those at IIXs, they are far lower for the lecturers and readers. [see that post for the details].
This led me to conclude that, if anything, it is the university folks -- especially the junior faculty -- that had a greater right to go on strike over the SPC implementation. But we never saw our university faculty rising up in protest! Why?
We have an answer now. Over at Kafila, Sunalini Kumar discusses the politics of SPC pay hikes, and what they mean for junior faculty in our universities and colleges. There's a lot in that post, but let me excerpt the key section on the divide between junior and senior faculty [with bold emphasis added by me]:
... he recent Pay Commission has greatly redressed the issue of pay, a fact that has been repeated ad nauseum in the media, but the little known fact is that the substantially higher pay applies only to senior faculty (those who in government parlance are called Pay Band 4), whereas younger faculty in Pay Band 3 have seen only a marginal increase in pay. More disturbingly, the arbitrary and punitive service conditions introduced by the UGC make promotions dependent on acquiring a certain number of points in your career, which in turn are dependent on conditions that are for the most part only very remotely concerned with college teaching and academics, and more importantly, nearly impossible for the average college teacher in India to fulfill. Explaining the full contours of this awful new monster the UGC has created, and what it will do to a profession I love more than anything in the world will require a full-length post in itself.
The main point here is, as far as the government is concerned, the combination of the sudden yawning gap between Pay Band 3 and 4, and the new service conditions together add up to a political and financial masterstroke. By giving a huge bonanza to Pay Band 4, the government has ensured their full support and acquiescence, and created a difference of interests between them and younger faculty. This was important from the government’s point of view, since it is the senior faculty who have been the most vociferous in the teachers movement, given their greater bargaining power and experience. Not surprisingly, they have dominated teachers’ unions in order to unanimously agree to the new pay package offered this time. As for service conditions regarding promotion especially, most Pay Band 4 teachers are past their final promotion, and many near retirement. So it is difficult to imagine that they would be unduly concerned; so effectively, those affected by the new service conditions are new and younger teachers in Pay band 3. The younger teachers have always been more vulnerable; most have taught as ad hoc or temporary faculty for many years, a humilating and debilitating experience…more so if one is in a state university, where contractual employment is very common. They will be rendered even more vulnerable and fragmented by these new conditions (one of whose principal effects will be to pitch individual teacher against individual teacher in order to acquire points for promotion). Hence, they will find it difficult if not impossible to mobilise themselves politically in unions to oppose any unjust moves by the government. The long term calculation of the government seems to be this – get rid of the political threat represented by the older faculty by giving them more than they expect, then bring in near-impossible conditions for promotion, so that very few of those currently in Pay Band 3 make it to Pay Band 4, ensuring that the loss of revenue incurred in the dramatically increased salary of Pay Band 4 will be more than offset in coming years with these older faculty retiring, and most of the younger faculty languishing at Pay Band 3 for the remainder of their careers.
However, none of these facts will ever make it to the front pages or the television scenes. Because, hidden beneath upper class and middle class notions about teaching as a noble profession and of ‘becoming behaviour’ and so on is scant understanding of the real reasons for the rot in education in this country and barely concealed contempt for college and university teachers. [...]
There you have it: the faculty unions' most vociferous members -- senior faculty -- shortchanged the interests of their junior colleagues.
* * *
I once ranted about resource-hogging senior faculty in our elite institutions -- basically, IIXs. If the situation is bad in IIXs, it's far worse in our universities, where senior faculty also enjoy enormous power over their junior colleagues.
Thus, Sunalini Kumar's version of events doesn't surprise me at all.
HRD Minister says IIT-HRD stand-off is resolved
Here's the report:
The guidelines issued on pay structure are only norms, he said, adding that the "IIT system has the flexibility to deviate from the norms in exceptional cases. We are prepared to re-visit any of the guideline in case of exceptional cases."
and
"If in a particular discipline faculty is not available as per the existing norms, the IITs can relax the norms to absorb any person," Sibal said.
In another report, Sibal invokes Gandhi Jayanti:
“On Gandhi Jayanti, I want to give good news to the nation. Now, there is no issue between the government and the IITs," Mr Sibal said after an hour-long meeting with IITs faculty federation here. Though there will be no change in the salary structure of the IIT faculty, the government is flexible on certain issues where there is a need for exception.
So, how did the IIT FA reps react?
Prof M Thenmozhi, President of All India IIT Faculty Federation, said they were happy with the discussions with Sibal. "The Minister has assured us about IIT retaining flexibility and they can relax norms. This will help IITs move forward," she said. [source]
Ah, this victory must smell so sweet! I can almost hear the popping of champagne corks from Guwahati to Mumbai, from Ropar to Chennai.
I wonder what they do at Gandhinagar to celebrate ;-)