Cost of IIT/Engineering education, simplified!

Kaps, on DesiPundit, said I presented a 'simple' calculation of the cost of education in an IIT/EC (with EC standing for an engineering college). The quotes around the word 'simple' (in Kaps' post) spurred me to write this, with no links and no explanations, no justifications. Let me see how well this works.

The cost of education (CE) per student per year is given by this formula:

CE = P (A + B + C + ...) / N.

There. Simple. Mathematical!

Let me quickly make it un-simple by adding what these other symbols mean, and tell you what I assumed for them in the form of this ordered set (IIT, EC).

A = annual Grants from government (1000 million, 150 million)
B = 10-year amortized cost of infrastructure (500 million, 100 million)
C = total tuition fees (100 million, 40 million) from current students
(A + B + C) = total revenues (broadly defined) (1600 million, 290 million)
P = fraction of total revenues used up for teaching (0.2 or 0.4, 0.5)
N = Number of undergraduate students (3000, 2000)

There you have it. Very simple, no?

Cost of education at an IIT or an engineering college

A quick update: A shorter, snappier version is presented in the next post.

There are many different estimates being thrown about. What follows is my own -- admittedly crude -- attempt to arrive at a figure that I can work with. Please feel free to criticize the major aspects of what follows; in doing it, please avoid minor quibbles. I admit my crime upfront: the estimate is crude.

Let's take some examples, and see what would be this cost under different scenarios. I have chosen these specific examples only because I found some numbers for them recently (and rather easily, through just one article!). The data are all from this interesting Rediff article by Yogesh Upadhyaya.

Let us start with -- what else -- IITs! Yogesh reported that the annual budgets of these institutions ranged from 0.9 to 1.3 billion (90 to 130 crore) rupees a year. Let us take an indicative figure of 1 billion (100 crore) rupees, and assume the number of UG students to be 3000 (all the four years put together).

PG and doctoral students don't count, since their numbers are far smaller and they also pay a far smaller fee. Raising their fee is a non-starter, because it is one sure way of killing the research programs.

This one billion rupee estimate is only the budget allocation for the current year, and doesn't include the cost of the infrastructure that is already there. If you put a value to all that, perhaps you get a figure of 4 billion rupees which, amortized over ten years, is perhaps around 500 million rupees. Add to it the amount the students already pay -- 30,000 rupees per year per student [source: this page on the IIT-M website]. For 3000 students, you get a figure of 90 million ruppees; round it off to 100 million.

Add it all up, and you get a grand total of 1.6 billion (160 crore) rupees as an IIT's annual budget.

The ever reliable Satya, the Oracle of Chennai, has a post about the revenue patterns of four US research universities: Harvard, Cornell, Michigan and UCLA. If you look at the data, some 20 to 25 percent of the revenue of these colleges is derived from UG students -- I am assuming the support from the state government -- for Michigan and UCLA -- to be towards subsidizing in-state students. This gives me a uniform range of 20 - 25 percent of revenues from UG tuition.

Evidently, not all of it is used for UG population. Only a fraction of the budget is 'devoted' to teaching, with the rest of it going into other functions including research.

I am not even going to pretend I know how much of an IIT's budget goes for teaching. What I will do is to use a certain number (which is evidently an underestimate) and use it to arrive at a figure.

In another nice post, Satya has an extract from an old Business Standard editorial in which Prof. Indiresan, an ex-Director of IIT-M, has been quoted as saying that IIT education costs about 200,000 a year.

I am taking it to be 20% (which I think, is a reasonable estimate -- perhaps on the lower side of reality). This yields 320 million as the teaching budget of an IIT. Make it 330 million, and divide it by 3000 students, and you get 110,000 rupees per student per year.

Do a similar exercise for another type of college: an engineering college. The same article by Yogesh Upadhyaya gives a figure of 100 to 200 million (10 to 20 crore) rupees as the annual budget of an institution. I am taking 150 million. Again, I am assuming the infrastructure to be worth some 800 million which, when amortized over some 10 years, results in about 100 million per year. Assume 2000 students paying some 20,000 rupees each, we get 40 million rupees per year from tuition fee. The grand total then is 290 million, rounded off to 300 million.

If you assume that 50 % of these institutions is devoted to teaching undergraduate students, then you get 150 million rupees; when this is divided among 2000 students, you get 75,000 rupees.

Bottomline: If you are in an IIT, the 'real cost of your education' is in the range is 100,000 to 200,000 (1 to 2 lakh) rupees per student per year (depending on whether you want the lower figure of 20 % or a higher figure of 40 % as the proportion of your institute's budget used for UG education.

If you are in an engineering college, it is in the range of 75,000 to 150,000 rupees per student per year.

Well, you may quibble with my numbers and methods. If you are an accountant, you can include the exact impact of interest rate on the amortized value of infrastructure. You may also quible about whether hostels, faculty housing, messes, shopping complexes, gymkhana, etc, should be included. And so on. I am sure you all have your own pet number for the percent of an institution's time and money that go into undergraduate education. Your perceptions are also likely to depend on whether you are a student or a teacher!

Spychips

Boston Globe recently had a story on the RFID technology, that has companies like Walmart salivating. Sure, it has a great potential for being very useful. But the potential for invasion of privacy is pretty great too.

Just one look at all the things enabled by this technology was enough to spook the reporter out completely. The title of the story says it all: "you need not be paranoid to fear RFID".

Blog quake day

Today is Blog Quake Day. Please do donate in any way possible. If you need suggestions for where to donate, the post on DesiPundit has lots of them.

Rosa Parks

Via both Clifford Johnson (Cosmic Variance) and P.Z. Myers (Pharyngula): I just found out that Rosa Parks, one of the sparks to light up the modern American Civil Rights Movement, passed away. Clifford points to this Wikipedia entry on her.

She will live in our memory, and in history books for a very long time.

What is good for GDP must be good for ...

..., I don't know. But, Dilip has a curious post about GDP, presenting some evidence to -- um, ... let me think a bit here and choose an appropriate word -- indicate what is wrong with a focus on GDP as an important indicator of a nation's well being.

Dilip's argument goes like this: Inefficiencies such as voltage fluctuations in electric power supply cannot be bad; in fact, they are good for GDP, because they create and sustain an industry (such as the one that makes voltage stabilizers) that mitigates the effect of inefficiency. He ends it with this threat:

Postscript: Meant to say, I will follow this up with some more exploration of the GDP and possible alternatives.

Perhaps he will start the next post with a few more examples like the voltage stabilizer industry. Will he, won't he? It doesn't matter; in any case, we are here to lend a helping hand. So, let me start off with a small list of things he can use in his next post.

• Disease cannot be bad. After all, it created, and now sustains pharmaceutical companies that produce drugs (which have side effects, for which there is some more medicine...). Thus, it contributes to GDP.
• Death is an even more interesting example. Yeah, it does end fun, but it is also the lifeblood(!) of businesses involved in cremating and burying the dead. In fact, death is good twice over. It contributes to GDP, and also to GDP per capita.

Let me stop here before I turn into a morbid mush.

Enough of this bullshit. Do read this Foreign Affairs review of The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth by Benjamin Friedman of Harvard. The review is by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel winner in economics.

nanocar

Rice University scientists have constructed the world's smallest car -- a single molecule "nanocar" that contains a chassis, axles and four buckyball wheels.

[...]

The nanocar consists of a chassis and axles made of well-defined organic groups with pivoting suspension and freely rotating axles. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece. The entire car measures just 3-4 nanometers across, making it slightly wider than a strand of DNA.

Go read the entire press release issued by Rice University. It even shows what the car looks like! Bethany Halford has a write-up about the nanocar. The website of the researcher driving the nanocar, Prof. James Tour is here.

Physics of Superheroes

Remember this post, where we read about a wonderful popular physics book that uses superheroes to introduce physics concepts? Well, it will be a while before we in India will get to see the book, Physics of Superheroes. What we can do in the meantime is to enjoy a few nuggets of the book available through articles and blog posts.

Boston Globe carried a lovely little interview of James Kakalios, the author of this book. You get short discussions of two ideas in comics books that are consistent with physics, and one that isn't. Quite enjoyable.

Google Blog features creator of GMail

[Even if you are a GMail user, do read his post at least for the interesting bit of trivia at the beginning; and, no, I am not giving it here!]

I am sure many of you use GMail, and have been impressed by it. Paul Buchheit, the Google engineer behind this great product, has a nice post up on Google Blog. He recounts some of his ideas with which he started working on GMail. And, he promises more useful features.

This is how Buchheit describes the email experience in the pre-GMail era:

I rely on email, a lot, but it just wasn't working for me. My email was a mess. Important messages were hopelessly buried, and conversations were a jumble; sometimes four different people would all reply to the same message with the same answer because they didn't notice the earlier replies. I couldn't always get to my email because it was stuck on one computer, and web interfaces were unbearably clunky. And I had spam. A lot of it. With Gmail I got the opportunity to change email – to build something that would work for me, not against me.

Those of us who got our accounts on GMail have slowly stopped using the other email addresses (or give them to websites, such as the Business Standard's, so as to be able to avail their services). If you are not with us in being able to admire this wonderful product, don't be a 'have-not' any more, just join the 'haves'!

Stunning science pictures

Via Slashdot: This year's winners of Visions of Science Photographic Awards have been announced. The winners, runners-up and highly recommended photographs in 10 different categories are all available on the official website of this contest. Larger, better quality pictures of the prize-winning entries are posted also at the BBC and National Geographic websites.

A great debate on intelligent design theory

Do read it. It is short, and very persuasive.

Caution: It has some violent content (but no picutures), so make sure children are not around. ;-)

The saga of IIPM vs. Bloggers: Mainstream media get into the act

Slowly, but surely, the mainstream media and non-blogger journalists are getting into the act of investigating IIPM. Because of their established position in the media scene -- not just in India, but everywhere else, too -- they get access to the innards of IIPM. This allows them to offer some new perspectives. I give here just a quick list of such pieces. DesiPundit is aggregating links to MSM pieces on this issue.

What I will do instead, is to point to one of them, which is very good. The Business World's Aditya Khanna and Aarti Kothari have done a reasonably thorough story [requires a free registration]. They actually probe further into the veracity of the claims made by IIPM in their ads (many of the others, sadly, stopped at just reporting it at the level of "IIPM vs. bloggers"). Interetingly, the BW reporters were 'promised' complete access to IIPM. This is what the BW story states about the access they actually got:

Meanwhile, "Professor" Chaudhuri decided to pay a visit to the editors of various media houses to present his side of the case. He visited Businessworld and invited it to conduct its own examination of the IIPM facilities and his credentials. He promised to provide all documentary evidence to prove the veracity of his claims. However, he also pointed out that his advertisements were models of careful wording. [the quotes around the word 'Professor' are in the original.]

Businessworld's investigation: At the outset we must confess that despite his claims of providing us with all help, neither Chaudhuri nor his head of corporate communications, Amit Saxena, provided us with the details we had asked for. Among the things BW had asked for were specific details on companies that come for campus recruitments at IIPM, salary details of the people placed, details about its faculty and facilities, as well as details of its study tours and other advertising claims. What we got from them by way of reply was a one-page letter full of generalities about liars (Bansal and Sabnis presumably) and the "inferiority complex of the pampered students of the IIMs".

The rest of the story is about the information they have gathered, presented in a dry journalistic style, without trying to sound judgemental. They really had to try very hard, as can be seen from this passage.

The IIPM faculty: Well, the bulk of the IIPM faculty is made up of former IIPM students. You pass out and promptly start teaching. Average age of permanent faculty: 27. Research conducted by faculty: no verifiable data that we could get our hands on. IIPM refused to cooperate. Chaudhuri has this to say: "Other institutes use people who have studied psychology and economics to take their classes. We are the only ones who have MBAs. And we extensively use Planman Consulting staff who have vast consulting experience." It is a nice example of vertical integration. You join IIPM. Pass out and join IIPM as faculty or Planman Consulting as a consultant. If you are a consultant, you also teach at IIPM. The loop is complete.

Of course, this excellent article would have been even better if it had used some of the interesting information (I am trying to be non-judgemental here!) unearthed by a whole lot of bloggers. In particular, the following are absolute gems in terms of grassroots journalism: Arzan, Gawker, Transmogrifier, Thalassa_Mikra, and Thalassa_Mikra again. The last two, in particular, are the very best of what Michael calles Google journalism.

Thanks to Kaps for the e-mail alert.

A quick update: T.R. Vivek (of Outlook) has a nice news story on this issue. It is short on its own investigation of IIPM's advertised claims. But it mentions -- and discusses -- bloggers' discoveries about IIPM. It even has screenshots of some of the blogs -- most notably, Rashmi's, and Gawker's.

Do read the BW story. It is (still) the best out there so far. Do read both the stories. Together, they are the best out there so far.

Breaking news: IIPM faculty pages have not been changed!

Five working days after I posted some comments on the faculty pages of IIPM, nothing has changed.

That's all.

PS: On some reflection in a sober state, I realized that I really got carried away in an earlier version of this post!

The rapidly falling quality of Current Science editorials

Current Science is India's premier science journal. It is rather like Nature and Science in scope, but focused a lot more on the scene in its native country than the other two.

Current Science is also the only general purpose science journal that carries discussions about government policies regarding science education and research. It has some of the top scientists in India on its editorial board, and it is published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore. Because of these reasons, people sit up and take notice when its editorial takes up an important issue involving science and technology in India.

Since 1998, Prof. Balaram wrote (pretty much) all the editorials. In July, he became the Director of IISc, and his farewell editorial [pdf] in June marked the end of an era.

Since then, Current Science has been publishing guest editorials by various people; I read a couple of them earlier, and since they were of indifferent quality, I stopped. So, I was surprised when a colleague asked me to read the editorial [pdf] in the latest issue. He did warn me about its contents, I too warn you: it's utterly bad. Its badness starts right from the title: "Where have all the young ones gone? The coolieization of India". It's written by Gangan Prathap, the Scientist-in-Charge at the CSIR Centre for Mathematical Modelling and Computer Simulations (C-MMACS), Bangalore.

Why would I want you to read this rant of an editorial? Because it shows that we have in India high-ranking people who decry the country's recent progress in the services sector, and IT sector in particular. They see it as a very bad thing. They see it as recruiting bright people and making them do some mundane work, and bingo! they are coolies. They also see it as stealing bright people away from 'more fruitful' activities like working for 'real' engineering companies like L&T, developing indigenous technologies, teaching and doing science (!), and yes, working for CSIR labs.

The editorial quotes extensively from a recent interview by A.K. Naik, the CEO on L&T. Now, this guy -- I mean, Naik -- seems to think that India owes his company a steady supply of bright engineers at 'reasonable' salaries. It doesn't occur to Naik that if he is really interested in bright engineers, why can't he pay them better salaries and provide them with better working environments? I am not talking about air-conditioned rooms here, I am talking about empowering employees, and about giving them challenging work.

I can go on and on; but let me just make two more points about Prathap's editorial. One is that it is downright insulting to refer to Indian's work in any industry -- be it IT or BPO or Auto or Accounting or Janitorial or Urban Sanitation -- as coolie's work. It betrays a mindset that disrespects 'dignity of labour'. Second, this article has serious inconsistencies. For example, early in the article, Prathap says all IT employees are doing low-level jobs. Later, he says, "The capital stock internationally (read the West) is getting increasingly more sophisticated and the West is not producing enough highly skilled workers to keep it functioning." What the hell does it mean? Surely, our engineers cannot be doing low-level work if they are keeping the sophisticated 'capital stock' of the West functioning.

Finally, why is Current Science peddling such nonsense as its editorial?

Consistent performance ...

[Link to the IE story via Animesh]

... as opposed to one-off performance. Indian Express reported recently on an internal study conducted by the IITs.

Apparently, this study found that good academic performance in IITs correlated better with the students' academic performance in school than with the JEE rank.

It doesn't surprise me at all; more importantly, if this finding is confirmed by studies on larger samples (for example, a state-wide study in Karnataka, or an expanded study in IITs including the data from several decades), it would undermine our system of selecting students based on some one-off exams (offered just once a year!).

I am glad this study has been done. I would like more such studies on the IITs and IITans. There is a great gold mine of information sitting in the vaults of IITs -- if tapped by a skilled sociologist, we will know a great deal more than what we know about the 'creamiest of the cream' of science-and-tech-oriented students in India.

Wouldn't you like to know -- I mean, really know -- about other correlations among things like their school records, JEE ranks, their background, their parents' income and education levels, parents's occupation, urban-rural divide, whether they went through coaching classes, proportion of women and dalits (among JEE takers and in the incoming class), where the students go, and on and on. As I said, all this information is just waiting for a major sociological study. Since such studies have not come to light, it means either the IITs are not interested in parting with the information, or the sociologists are not interested in studies of this kind.

I don't believe the problem lies with sociologists' lack of interest. The argument is quite simple. The Indian society (and, more recently, the entire world) has shown an enormous interest in knowing more about these great institutions and the geeky subculture that thrives there. Anything that you say or write about IITs will sell, and sell enormously. Just ask Sandipan Deb and Chetan Bhagat.