Friday, January 1, 2016

Higher Education, Everyone getting High on-2010 Reposted

Higher Education, Everyone getting High on

Sibal is one of the best you got, He means action. He knows controversy and can handle it very well. Probably if you were to evaluate the value that is going to be created from/through his decisions in the education ministry, he could be called Kuber (The king of Wealth). He is convincing. He is clever, bright, intelligent, smart, knowledgeable, quick, witty, brainy, he is on the ball, he is sharp, He is thick (Antonym). Clever is first and all other following words are researched Thesaurus words to describe Sibal including the antonym. There has never before been a breeze of change like this before in the education ministry and the sector.
That is the reason the education sector is the discussion of this blog “Are you looking for a change”.
India, with one of the highest percentage of young population in the world, Sibal has got a solid mandate on hand to play, long term, mid-term and short term. The policy changes that are made in the past few years and the ones that are going to made and implemented in the coming few years will shape, what a nation, we will be. Sibal unlike his predecessors has a clear mandate, broad understanding and the political will power and support. Unlikely that he will make too many enemies, all likely that few policies will favor friend or to whomsoever the policy favored become friends. Structural changes are a must.
There are tiers of education system each with its brand of issues. Sibal has his mandate clear for the primary and secondary education systems, has got few aces up his sleeves now armed with few research findings, privatization is one clear mandate, and he will bring about in the professional education set up, an approach that will benefit the education sectors and hopefully the students.
No examination is another area that Sibal is trying to adapt at various levels in secondary education, with a system of grading, may be an idea worth its time to be tried, observed. Standardization
Foreign Universities is his ace for Higher education without any business interests, kudos, the idea is great. The foreign universities have already been taking a lot of higher education students abroad, close to around 1 lakh students go abroad for their higher education, spending an average of 10lakhs per year, The arithmetic is large, let me look for a calculator, which can accommodate more zeroes.
Look at some of these,
1. There were around 5,00,000 students appearing for the IIT exams competing for 9500 seats at the IITs, It must be one of the fiercest battle for knowledge/talent supremacy that you may come across in the world. The market size of the coaching spend for the IIT/AIJEE is Rs. 2,500 crores, some put the figure to be even higher, If you to put an arithmetic to it, In the coaching costs we may be able to establish few more IITs in the country every year. At this rate, the most lucrative offer that an IIT graduate could have would be from a coaching institute, who trains for IIT, because, he has been there, done that and recently. The coaching classes would easily compete with a MNC for a placement of an IIT graduate. If the objective of the IITs is to generate more scientific inquiry, have more IPs, more research work done, none of these objectives are being met. After the all the tech study, the students prepare for IIMs, join them and then move to US to join a Lehman Brothers.
2. Over 1200 Business Schools, over 1,00,00 MBA passing out every year, Ranking of MBA institutions is another big thing in the higher education field today. Newspapers, magazines are ranking MBA institutions by their best devised methods, much akin to a movie review with rating stars. The published report and its subsequent reprints are of great interests to the institutions. There will definitely be increase in copy sales and in a competition like that MBA institutes are facing, their advertisements budgets are swollen and can accommodate advertisements with many newspapers and glossy magazine covers. Fair and square inches.
3. The state can also play a role in education, sometimes Sibal and his official bandwagon may be too much for someone to handle at the centre, play it safe, get an University it from state anyway, it’s easier to play boss with local politicians and officials.
4. Azim Premji transfers his shares worth US $ 2 Billion towards education.