Diffusion of Knowledge within the Tata firms in 1970s and 1980s

Over at FiftyTwo, Chinmay Tumbe has a fantastic article titled Kamla, revisiting the history of IIM-Ahmedabad and correcting it to reflect Kamla Chowdhry's pivotal role in its founding. As the subhead puts it, "She was shunted out of the history of India’s most prestigious business school. On her birth centenary, a researcher redresses the record."

In the section on her post-IIMA life, we find this passage:

Her crusade for gender parity in academia and industry continued outside the walls of the campus. In the June 2013 edition of the alumni newsletter, Savita Mahajan, who graduated from IIMA in 1981, recounted how a recruitment poster appeared on campus that stated that “women need not apply.” This advertisement was for positions in the prestigious Tata Administrative Service management trainee programme. Chowdhry took up the matter directly with JRD Tata, and the rule was overturned the following year.

* * *

This reminded me of another similar episode at another Tata firm; it has Sudha Murthy (Chair of the Infosys Foundation) at its centre; and, it too involves a letter to J.R.D. Tata, the same man that Chowdhry "took up the matter directly with".

Here it is in Murthy's own words (and the link is to the Tata Archives):

It was probably the April of 1974. Bangalore was getting warm and red gulmohars were blooming at the IISc campus. I was the only girl in my postgraduate department and was staying at the ladies hostel. Other girls were pursuing research in different departments of science. I was looking forward to going abroad to complete a doctorate in computer science. I had been offered scholarships from universities in US. I had not thought of taking up a job in India.

One day, while on the way to my hostel from our lecture-hall complex, I saw an advertisement on the notice board. It was a standard job-requirement notice from the famous automobile company Telco [now Tata Motors]. It stated that the company required young, bright engineers, hardworking and with an excellent academic background, etc.

At the bottom was a small line: "Lady candidates need not apply." I read it and was very upset. For the first time in my life I was up against gender discrimination.

Though I was not keen on taking up a job, I saw this as a challenge. I had done extremely well in academics, better than most of my male peers. Little did I know then that in real life academic excellence is not enough to be successful.

After reading the notice I went fuming to my room. I decided to inform the topmost person in Telco's management about the injustice the company was perpetrating. I got a postcard and started to write, but there was a problem: I did not know who headed Telco. I thought it must be one of the Tatas. I knew JRD Tata was the head of the Tata Group; I had seen his pictures in newspapers (actually, Sumant Moolgaokar was the company's chairman then).

I took the card, addressed it to JRD and started writing. To this day I remember clearly what I wrote. "The great Tatas have always been pioneers. They are the people who started the basic infrastructure industries in India, such as iron and steel, chemicals, textiles and locomotives. They have cared for higher education in India since 1900 and they were responsible for the establishment of the Indian Institute of Science. Fortunately, I study there. But I am surprised how a company such as Telco is discriminating on the basis of gender."

I posted the letter and forgot about it. Less than 10 days later, I received a telegram stating that I had to appear for an interview at Telco's Pune facility at the company's expense.

* * *

Recap: The Sudha Murthy episode is from 1974, and the job in question is that of a shop floor engineer at Telco. The Kamla Chowdhry episode is from 1981/82, and it was about a management trainee program at the Tata Administrative Service. Both are entities within the Tata empire led by J.R.D. Tata.

Links

1. Anjali Vaidya at India BioScience: Unaddressed demands remain after research fellowship hike. Uses several quotes from IISc students and faculty!

2. Prashant Nanda in Mint: Govt climbs down, to drop IIM council plan. "The HRD ministry’s change of heart came after the business schools raised concerns, say two government officials".

3. Adam Connor-Simons in MIT News: How three MIT students fooled the world of scientific journals. SCIGen is 10 years old, and this is a timely (and short) profile of the MIT grad students who created it.

4. For the Ilayaraja fans: Rare Photos Of Music Composer Ilaiyaraaja. Look at those bell-bottoms!

Mint: Centre-funded institutes can now hire non-academicians

Prashant Nanda reports in Mint that MHRD has "allowed" IITs and IIMs to hire engineers, civil servants and other such professionals as (adjunct?) faculty for up to 3 years:

The human resource development (HRD) ministry has issued formal guidelines to all central government-funded technical institutes to this effect. [...]

The schools can now hire professionals to fill up to a fourth of their allowed faculty strength, and pay them a maximum of Rs.1.2 lakh a month, two government officials said, citing a circular from the ministry.

Links

1. Cat Ferguson, Adam Marcus, and Ivan Oransky in Nature: Publishing: The peer-review scam. "When a handful of authors were caught reviewing their own papers, it exposed weaknesses in modern publishing systems. Editors are trying to plug the holes."

2. Matt Kutner in Boston Magazine: How to Game the College Rankings. "Northeastern University executed one of the most dramatic turnarounds in higher education. Its recipe for success? A single-minded focus on just one list."

3. S. Rukmini in The Hindu: 40 % faculty posts vacant in Central varsities. "Faculty vacancy in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) was 40 per cent as of July this year, most acute in Varanasi, Roorkee (above 50 per cent), Kharagur and Delhi. Vacancies were highest for OBC faculty. ...In the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), faculty vacancies stood at over 20 per cent, highest in Indore (52 per cent) and Ranchi (48 per cent)."

High Level Hires from Abroad

The non-resident Indian scientist [Shreemanta Parida], appointed two years ago as chief executive officer of a government vaccine research programme, resigned last month and returned home to Berlin, saying India’s science bureaucracy had prevented him from working.

Scientists familiar with Parida’s plight say his 25-month stay in India is a tale of how an entrenched science bureaucracy stonewalled a newcomer, senior administrators failed to curb the harassment, and good intentions deteriorated into bitter acrimony.

There's a lot more on this train-wreck in G. Mudur's report in The Telegraph.

* * *

Some observations:

1. Mudur's report reminded me of another very high-profile train wreck: the disastrous tenure of Nobel Prize winner Robert Laughlin at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. WSJ carried a detailed analysis of that episode by Nicholas Zamiska in May 2007 [linked in this post].

2. Way back in 2002, Prof. Shobo Bhattacharya, who was then a scientist at NEC Research Center in Princeton, New Jersey, was chosen to head the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. While Prof. Bhattacharya completed his full term with no untoward incident, his appointment was used by some bigwigs of Indian science establishment to tut-tut about the lack of home-grown science leaders in the next generation. Do read the article in Science [requires subscription, though]; it has some truly juicy quotes!

   The article in Science, and the worthies behind those juicy quotes, received a stinging rebuke from Prof. P. Balaram through an editorial in Current Science.

3. Just a few days from now, Prof. Ashish Nanda of Harvard will take charge as Director of IIM-A [see his early views on his new job here and here.

   Let's wish him luck!

* * *

One final thought. Any resemblance between the contents of this post and these famous first lines in a textbook is purely coincidental!

“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the same work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously.
-- David Goodstein, in States of Matter

Links

1. Ram Guha on intellectual dadagiri:

   By tradition and temperament, Indians are extremely deferential to those older, richer, and more powerful than themselves.

   This is so even in the realms of science and scholarship. Once an intellectual has achieved a certain status, he uses it to mark out a clear hierarchy between himself and those younger or less well known. [...]

   Accustomed to displays of loyalty and servility, India’s most distinguished intellectuals often fall prey to self-love. When CV Raman left the Indian Institute of Science to start a new research centre, he named it after himself.

   Thirty years later, a distinguished agricultural scientist did exactly the same thing. India’s most celebrated chemist presided over the naming of a scientific centre and even of a road junction named after him. India’s two most famous economists have allowed the naming of fellowships and prizes, and even professorships, after themselves.

   Guha does talk about a couple of truly exemplary leaders: Prof. Obaid Siddiqi at NCBS, and Prof. V.K.R.V. Rao at the Delhi School of Economics.

2. Anubhuti Vishnoi in The Financial Express: For the new IITs, IIM faculty, the question: what will our spouses do?

3. Seema Singh at The First Post: How IIT-JEE is becoming the stronghold of CBSE, urban students.

4. Akshaya Mukul in ToI: Now, collegium of scholars to select higher education institute's chief:

   To deal with this chronic problem, the HRD ministry has decided to establish a collegium of scholars that would prepare a directory of academics for leadership positions like vice-chancellors or heads of institutions of central educational institutions. There are more than 100 autonomous educational institutions under the HRD ministry. Earlier, the provision of having a collegium was part of the National Commission for Higher Education & Research Bill. But since it looks improbable that any of the HRD bill would get Parliament's nod, the ministry had decided to take the executive route.

Links

1. Extra points for the fairer sex at IIMs to encourage "gender diversity"

   Only 28 per cent of students in IIM-Kozhikode’s last year batch were women. This year, 54.29 per cent are women. IIM Rohtak’s present batch comprises of 47.6 per cent women compared to 9.6 per cent of last year; IIM Raipur – 35.2 per cent compared to 24.1 per cent and IIM Kashipur – 20.8 per cent compared to 2.5 per cent of the previous batch. The other top three IIMs, namely Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta, have 20.8 per cent, 26.8 per cent and 23.2 per cent women in their 2015 batch respectively.

2. No director, IIT-Kharagpur teachers fast in protest.

3. Alan Jacobs: Do As the Technologists Say, Not As They Do

4. Andrew Gelman: “Meritocracy” is not what you think: don’t forget about the “ocracy”:

   In short, when people talk about meritocracy they tend to focus on the “merit” part (Does Kobe Bryant have as much merit as 10,000 schoolteachers? Do doctors have more merit than nurses? Etc.), but the real problem with meritocracy is that it’s an “ocracy.”

5. Finally, McSweeney's Short Imagined Monologues: Your first short story speaks:

   Look at me. Look at me. I’m a mess. [...]

   It’s going to take some time to realize how to fix me, and even more time to realize I shouldn’t be fixed. I should be thrown into a dumpster. I should be deleted in one of those dead blue-screen catastrophes your second short story is wishing for. ...

Indian HigherEd Links

1. UGC has announced the rules governing the operation of Indian campuses of foreign universities. Here's a short excerpt about which institutions are allowed to set up shop in India:

   ... Only those education providers placed in the top 400 institutions as per the world university rankings by Times Higher Education or World University Rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) or Academic Ranking of World Universities by Shanghai Jiao Tong University would be allowed. Education providers who have been in the field of education for more than 20 years in the parent country and are accredited there would be allowed to set up campus in India.

   Applications would have to be endorsed by the embassy or high commission of the institution's home country in India.

2. IIM-Ahmedabad is getting a new director: Prof. Ashish Nanda, an IIM-A alum who is now a professor at the Harvard Law School (to which he moved after over a decade at the Harvard Business School). His personal website is here.

What's new(s) in Indian higher ed

1. Basant Kumar Mohanty reports in The Telegraph on the fairly steep fall in the number of Indian students going abroad. Since the number includes both undergraduate and graduate students, it's not clear what this trend signifies -- for example, the fall in the number going to the US has shown relatively smaller decline than that for the UK and Australia. And most of the students who go to the US are grad students.

2. Anubhuti Vishnoi reports in The Indian Express: Faculty attrition hits IIT Rajasthan, 23 leave in 3 years.

3. Basant Kumar Mohanty in The Telegraph: IIM director turns down fresh term - Request to appoint Boston teacher. Prof. Pankaj Chandra of IIM-Bangalore has apparently "declined a government offer to reappoint him to the top post of the institute." The second half of the news story speculates about some of the possible reasons.

4. The Times of India reports that IIT-Hyderabad will receive a huge loan -- over 175 million US dollars! -- as development aid from Japan.

5. K.C. Deepika reports in The Hindu that the Bangalore University has suspended its 4-year BS program this year due to "declining student response and lack of infrastructure and faculty." [Noteworthy primarily because of our Institute's 4-year BS program (which is doing quite well, thank you), and also because of the birth pangs of a similar program at the Delhi University.]

Links

1. Gordon Marino in The Stone: Try a Little Tenderness.

   The philosophers, the lovers of wisdom, have pondered and written a lot about love, even erotic and romantic love, but they have given a cold shoulder to that offshoot of love — tenderness. Indeed, I don’t believe I have ever heard a member of the Socrates guild even mention the lovely word in a remotely philosophical context.

2. Kate Clancy at Context and Variation: 5 Ways to Make Progress in Evolutionary Psychology: Smash, Not Match, Stereotypes.

   The biggest problem, to my mind, is that so often the conclusions of the bad sort of evolutionary psychology match the stereotypes and cultural expectations we already hold about the world: more feminine women are more beautiful, more masculine men more handsome; appearance is important to men while wealth is important to women; women are prone to flighty changes in political and partner preference depending on the phase of their menstrual cycles.

3. Noor Brara at India Ink: In India, a Rise of Private Universities and Liberal Arts Programs.

   A number of new private universities with liberal arts programs have sprung up in India. There were fewer than 20 such schools in 2005, and there are more than 100 now, according to a report by Shiv Nadar University. [...]

   One of the newest of these private schools is Shiv Nadar University in Noida, a suburb of Delhi. The university, when it opened its doors last year, offered programs in engineering, math and natural sciences to its first batch of 274 students. This year, it began its School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the student population has risen to 574. As at liberal arts schools in the United States, students at Shiv Nadar University are required to take a core curriculum of varied subjects, regardless of their major.

4. The Telegraph: Govt open to higher pay for IIM heads.

   "[HRD Minister] M.M. Pallam Raju today said the government should have no problems if the IIMs offered a higher package to new directors from their own funds"

(Some) IIMs Want a More Diverse Set of Students

And they are willing to take appropriate steps [via Dheeraj Sanghi] to get more women and more non-engineers in the next incoming cohort:

For years, every class at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) was boringly uniform. Students were mostly boys, with only a sprinkling of the other sex. In class, these young men thought similarly, used identical logic and took decisions that were alike, for they were all hardwired to behave in a certain fashion at the engineering campuses they came from.

In a strange correction to break the monotony of these two singularly large constituencies that cornered seats for years at the IIMs, the management schools have decided to award special marks to girls and non-engineering students.

All the six new IIMs and the ones at Lucknow and Kozhikode feel it`s time to rebalance the gender scales in office spaces. So while IIM-Rohtak will give 20 marks to each girl and another 20 to a non-engineer, IIM-Raipur will add 30 marks to the overall scores of each girl-non-engineer. IIM-Lucknow has decided to grant five marks to each girl and two to non-engineers. [Source: this ToI story by Hemali Chhapia]

The bit about non-engineers is interesting, but I'll restrict my observations to the issue of gender disparity in our top institutions:

1. This is a great move by these eight IIMs, and I can't think of a better application of their autonomy. After articulating the need to promote gender diversity, they have done well to tailor their admissions policy towards that goal. It looks like the older IIMs (and, of course, the IITs) will be flaunting their studly smugness for some more time.

2. This real, meaningful attempt by (some) IIMs to promote diversity should be contrasted with the recent announcement from the IITs that they have abolished the JEE application fee for women [Update: link, link].

3. Leaders of our leading institutions keep talking about their desire for greater diversity; but they plead helplessness by pointing to their system of entrance exams -- as if that procedure is so sacrosanct that even thinking about changing it is a crime against the Constitution.

4. Note also how Hemali Chhapia's ToI article tries so hard to de-legitimize (some) IIMs' steps to ensure a more diverse cohort: the headline talks about "Grace Marks for Girls" and the text talks about "a strange correction" by awarding "special marks." I guess we should be grateful that Chhapia refrained from use of the word 'crutch' ...

5. It's not funny at all to see some people blame Big Bad Society (and its lousy attitudes) for the under-representation of women in the IITs; they urge parents to shed their gender bias (!) and send their daughters to the best cram schools -- even if it means the said daughters should spend endless weeks and months ruining their adolescence at Kota.

   What these guys (and it's almost always guys) are saying, essentially, is this: "Our institutions are perfect, and so are our entrance exams! Now if only the stupid people can be goaded into doing the right things, ..." I think a good response would be this [said in a different context]:

   ... [A} system that for good outcomes requires that people act in ways people do not do is not a good system — and to blame the people rather than the system is to commit a major intellectual error.
   -- Brad DeLong [via Cosma Shalizi]

OBCs to get the full benefit of reservation at the IITs

The Supreme Court has spoken:

Other Backward Classes (OBC) students will qualify for admissions if they have 10 % less marks than the eligibility level fixed for the general category students, the Supreme Court has ruled. The apex court Thursday clarified that 10 % relaxation being given to OBC students did not mean it will be 10 % less than the last student admitted under general category.

Since the IITs were following the second policy (which now stands quashed), the fraction of OBC students among this year's JEE-qualified students was just about 20% -- as opposed to the 27 % they were eligible for.

Thanks to today's SC verdict, OBC students will start getting the full benefit of the reservation policy from next year (this year's admissions will not be affected).

All in all, a welcome clarification from the Supreme Court.

* * *

Update (19 August 2011): J. Venkatesan's report in The Hindu has all the crucial details. In particular, the SC order prohibits re-allocation of OBC seats to the General Category as long as there are OBC students who meet the (relaxed) eligibility criteria.

Shashi Tharoor of the Day

On his Ministry’s decision to have a joint venture with Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to set up a National Centre for Marine Biodiversity in Jamnagar, he said the decision was taken as a world class research centre cannot be built in a “Governmental set up” and can never attract young people. Let us understand our experience in the last 60 years. Government research institutions can never attract young talent. [My emphasis]

This is not from some random libertarian loon; it's actually from a Union Minister, who appears to have decided to play Shashi Tharoor for a day.

To me, that comment about government-run R&D labs is far more jarring than his arrogant, self-serving nonsense about the IITs. [JEE is worth junking just for keeping such ingrates out! ;-)]

Unfilled faculty positions in India's elite institutions

Altogether, IITs have a sanctioned strength of 4,712 teaching posts, but only 3,148 are filled. The vacacny stands at 1,564 posts. IIMs have a combined faculty strength of 555 teaching posts, but only 455 are filled. There is a vacancy of 100 posts. National Institutes of Technology have 4,632 posts, but there is a vacany for 1,522 slots. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has 150 vacancies. Out of 518 posts, only 368 are filled.

These details are from the information given to the Lok Sabha by HRD Minister of State D. Purandeswari.

Links

1. Let's start with a cartoon about an insomniac programmer (Abstruse Goose).

2. IIM-K becomes the first IIM to breach the 30 percent barrier for women in an MBA class. Its class of 2012 has 100 women and 200 men.

3. T. Vasu Babu: One Night @IISc. Spooky!

4. Delhi University enters the 21st century -- but only selectively -- by introducing the semester system for its science courses.

5. In a move similar to the one it took when scandal and fraud hit Satyam, the Government of India has effectively taken over the Medical Council of India.

6. Let's end with a cartoon on successful blogging (xkcd).

Sweeteners

Using information unearthed under the RTI Act, The Telegraph's Charu Sudan Kasturi has been digging into IIMs' choice of Prometric for conducting the glitches-galore CAT-2009:

1. Immunity clause for IIM test provider

2. Out: IIM doubts on inexperienced Prometric

3. Sweetener in IIM pact

The picture that emerges is not pretty. I just want to highlight this from the third article:

Global testing service provider Prometric sweetened its bid proposal to the IIMs for the contract to computerise CAT with an offer to support a research chair — a matter unrelated to the examination.

The firm, which won the contract to conduct the computerised CAT for five years, made the offer in its final proposal to the IIMs, which swung the deal for Prometric and away from three other contenders.

The research chair at the IIMs would be named after Prometric and its parent firm, the US-based Educational Testing Services, says the firm’s proposal, accessed by The Telegraph from the B-schools through the Right to Information Act.

On the topic of sweeteners, here's a post about those offered by a textbook publisher to an American professor teaching a large class.

Foreign universities

First few links are euphoric or alarmist. As it stands, the Bill doesn't deserve either reaction, because its impact on India's higher ed system is more likely to be puny than punchy. As brand name universities stay away, those that do show up here have neither the high quality nor the size required to make an impact.

1. Needlessly Euphoric: Associate Chambers of Commerce is being either ignorant or dishonest in claiming that the entry of foreign universities will "help [India] save outflow of about $ 7.5 billion of foreign exchange per annum as large number of Indian students go abroad to receive higher education."

2. Needlessly Alarmist: Daily News & Analysis executive editor R. Jagannathan thinks the entry of foreign universities will "kill the IITs and IIMs."

For a reality check, I suggest you check out Ram Mohan's post. In this DNA report, Philip Altbach says a lot of sobering things. See also this opinion piece by Venkatesan Vembu.

Here are a few more links:

1. As I said in this post, foreign universities will need lots of assistance from the locals. I gave the example of NYU which received 50 million dollars from Abu Dhabi. Here's an excerpt this Hemali Chhapia story about Singapore's experience:

   ... INSEAD ... received $10 million for research, land at a third of the market price, soft loans, housing access, etc. [Kris] Olds notes that the University of Chicago-Booth School of Business also received several million dollars in subsidy via the renovation of the historic House of Tan Yeok Nee building, their Singapore campus. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) also benefited from subsidies upwards of $80 million.

   Even so, within months of being set up, UNSW folded up citing its “unsuitable financial model’’. Three years ago, the John Hopkins Centre, which received $52 million in funding since its 1998 arrival in Singapore, also closed down as it did not meet the performance benchmark. And the UK’s Warwick University, which was to set up a full campus in the real sense of the term, backed out at the last minute.

   Ten years down the road, as Singapore draws up a balance sheet of its expectations and realities, experts say there is a yawning gap between the two.

2. T.T. Ram Mohan has a good post From the UAE, there's yet another report on their not-so-stellar experience with foreign universities that were set up in "free zones" outside the purview of education regulators.

3. In case enthusiasts like Kapil Sibal and Assocham (or even alarmists like Jagannathan) need reminders about why they should tone their expectations down, here's Rahul Choudaha in University World News (this article also appears in his Choudaha's blog, Dr. Education):

   ... Some of the off-shore campuses of foreign universities in the Gulf are finding it difficult to fill classes. In addition there are big names who have had to shut down their operations in an embarrassing manner. For example, the University of New South Wales closed down its Singapore campus in 2007 in what The Australian newspaper wrote was one of "the higher education sector's worst business failures", for the reason of enrollment shortfall.

   Top reputed universities are now even more cautious about their brands and look for substantial financial support and autonomy to be present for an off-shore campus. In the Indian context, government is not in a position to provide any financial incentives nor it could ensure complete autonomy from socio-political influences. Overall, this makes the case for reputed institutions entering in India quite weak.

Bad day for the IIMs?

India Today:

The Common Admission Test (CAT) that was supposed to go paperless from today has been rescheduled at some centres as the servers developed some glitches.

Reports are pouring in from several places in the country that because of network problems, the CAT examination has been put off.

At centres in Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Indore, Pune and Bhopal the test has been put off.

Meanwhile, IIM authorities, have denied reports that online exam servers crashed. They have told the HRD Ministry that the exam was not cancelled but has been rescheduled at some centres.

The situation in IIM-Shillong

This story has little that we didn't know (from Rashmi Bansal's report), but I just wanted to highlight two things which, taken together, paint a rather grim picture:

1. IIM Shillong started its first session in July, 2008, with 13 faculty members. At least six of them resigned recently, though some officials at IIM Shillong said some of them were asked to leave.

2. IIM Shillong chairman RN Datta, however, has defended the director. Datta told Financial Chronicle, “There is nothing extraordinary or abnormal in people leaving or joining any organisation. ..."

Meanwhile, on the cram school front ...

Sunday Tribune has a longish story on Kota's cram schools. Here's an excerpt from the section that talks about the nexus between the cram schools and 'regular' schools:

Another interesting aspect of the IIT aspirants joining coaching classes in Kota is that a majority of them prefer to get enrolled in the local schools, as it saves them the hassle to return to their native place to appear in Plus II exams. Surprisingly, none of them appear in these exams as a private candidate. Then how do they fulfill attendance criterion of the schools amid immense pressure of IIT-JEE coaching? "There are schools which give some relaxation in attendance to these students," says Sharma from Resonance. Though he ruled out any nexus between coaching classes and schools, he said some schools, which don’t have adequate infrastructure and fail to meet the parametres set by the CBSE or the state education board, are happy to get more students even if they are not attending the school. However, a student of Resonance told on the condition of anonymity that almost all the coaching classes have a tie-up with some private schools and they persuade the parents to admit their wards to these schools in lieu of which they get commission from the schools. These schools, he said, are affiliated to either the CBSE or the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education (RBSE). About attendance, he said though these schools tell such students to attend classes thrice in a week, but the latter do the same in a month. "All the students who get relaxation in attendance pay more to the schools while those who don’t want to attend school at all have to shell out more money," he added. According to him, the coaching classes also get a cut from hostels and other such facilities. In view of such activities, the CBSE has tightened the noose around its affiliated schools in Kota and has asked them to admit students in Class X and XII only if one has a "strong reason"for seeking admission in the town.

* * *

And this ToI story from Neha Pushkarna is positively scary:

FIITJEE for instance will be starting a course for class VI students from 2010 session to train them for competitive exams, admissions for which, will begin in January.

* * *

Over at Midway, blogger L (who teaches at a college) calls these schools 'concentration camps'; here's her comment about how they manage to beat the life out of their students:

Students after their spell in these Intermediate college/concentration camps, don't even joke amongst themselves. Many have forgotten how to laugh, I think.

Only normal youngsters are those who went to CBSE/ISC schools without the engg/medical coaching.

* * *

We have noted that China has a nationwide entrance exam for university admissions. Now, a prestigious university in that country is experimenting with a new system of admitting some of its students through a different route -- recommendation from school principals:

One of China's top higher education institutions, Peking University, last week released a list of 39 high school principals nationwide recognised to recommend students to be enrolled without taking college entrance examinations...