Odisha HRD

Prof. Ganapati Panda will be the first Vice Chancellor of VSSUT, Burla: Dharitri

Prof. Ganapati Panda’s NIT Rourkela web page is at http://www.nitrkl.ac.in/faculty/~gpanda. It mentions that he is a fellow of National academy of Engineers (FNAE), and fellow of National academy of sciences (FNASc). Here is a picture of him copied from that page.

June 27th, 2009

Issues with Yashpal Committee final report

Update2: The frontline article "University Business" explains why the Yahspal Committee is harsh on the deemed universities and on UGC.

Update: Apparently Prof. Kaushik Basu of Cornell University has issued a dissenting note to this report. Hindu reports on this. Business Standard interviews Prof. Basu.Following are some excerpts.

First, when it comes to higher education, we need to give up our licensing mentality and allow many more new colleges, deemed universities and universities to come up. We tried industrial licensing to manage our manufacturing sector and almost killed it. 

I completely agree with the above. Prof. Yashpal is unnecessarily harsh on the deemed universities. I also agree with the following:

If regulatory bodies like the UGC & AICTE are replaced by a supra body (as suggested by the National Knowledge Commission too), do you believe it will still hinder granting autonomy to colleges and universities?

In itself this means very little. Everything will depend on how we specify the functions of this supra body. At one level this can be nothing but a change of names. At another, by creating such a powerful body, we can risk hurting the autonomy of colleges and universities. This we must guard against.

More excerpts from Prof. Basu’s dissent note is reported in another Business Standard article. Following is one of them.

First, the main report speaks about the need for greater autonomy for colleges and universities. However, one stumbling block for this objective is the huge power vested in the University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). There is need for these organisations to divest themselves of some of this power. Just as India gave up on industrial licensing in the early nineties (and thereby unleashed growth), the reformed UGC and AICTE should give up on the licensing of higher education

I was able to find the final report of Yashpal Committee in the web. A local copy of it is here. There are a lot of good points in the committee report. But I do have some disagreement and discomfort with the report. Here are some of the points where I am not comfortable with what the committee writes in its report.

• I find that the committee discussions and recommendations regarding Deemed Universities to be unnecessarily harsh. The committee also does not talk much about private universities and the only place it does (page 39), it badmouths them. It criticizes private institutions a lot. Most of the criticisms are valid. But considering the need of the country the tone should have been more on how to make them better rather than making them out to be evil. The only way India can have the number of universities that it wants to have in the next 5-10 years is through private participation and that includes deemed universities and private universities. My suggestion would be to have a SEBI like regulatory agency that oversees the financial aspects of the private educational institutions (including priavte universities). The regulations should require audited financial statements made available in the web. (The private universities in the US have their financial statements available in the web. Stanford’s is here.) The regulation should stipulate that all the fees should be mentioned upfront in the institution’s webpage and there should be a hotline to complain regarding any transactions beyond that is mentioned in those pages.
• The committee’s recommendation of eliminating various regulating agencies and creating a new body from scratch is not well developed. In the US there are different accreditation agencies for different educational fields. The current problem is with how the AICTE, MCI, etc. members are selected and how they operate rather than with their existence. In the proposed model, even if there is a single body, there will be still a need for different sub-bodies for accrediting different type of institutions. 
• The committee also criticizes the speciality institutes like IIT and IIMs and recommends that they broaden their scope. Although broadening IITs and IIMs is a good idea, I think the committee misses an important point. Consider the National Law Schools. Prior to their establishment there were law schools in various universities. But the top students rarely thought of going to law school.  It was considered an add-on degree after one does his/her Bachelors or Masters. The national law schools did two things that changed the scenario. (i) They created a brand name and (ii) They created law focused bachelors programs right after +2. So the idea behind some specialized branded institutions should be aplauded rather than criticized. Similarly consider the IISERs/NISER. By their dedicated focus on science research they are already helping in reviving interest in science among students out of high school. India being a vast country with a need for large number of institutions it is a good idea to have some branded discipline focussed institutions that will help create the interest of students on those areas. This interest will indirectly benefit the universities which have comprehensive programs in various fields.  Thus I would recommend creation of Indian Institutes of Social Sciences and/or Indian Institutes of Liberal Arts with programs for students out of high school. Such a brand would attract top students out of high school to pursue liberal arts. We do need top quality students out of high school pursuing social science and liberal arts topics such as Anthropology, Economics, Psychology, Literature, etc. By having branded institutions in those fields it will suggest to interested students and their parents that these fields are worth pursuing. However, as the Yashpal committee suggested after a certain brand is established (like IITs and IIMs) they should broaden to other disciplines; but, IMHO, only after the brand is established.

10 comments June 27th, 2009

Update on J N Tata Technical Education Center in Gopalpur; one more coming up in Kalinganagar

Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard.

Last year all the 121 students who passed out from the centre were absorbed in different companies. The students of the centre’s first batch had received offers from various national and international companies such as Siemens, L&T, Robert Bosch, Maruti Suzuki, Punj Lyod, AMW, Soma Enterprise, OCL, JSW, US-based Transocean Infrastructure and the Dubai-based Al-Shirwai Group.

Out of the total strength of 121 students, 66 belonged to the families affected by Tata Steel’s Gopalpur project. Tata Steel is imparting bridge course training to the members of the affected families to enable them to get admission to the JN Tata Technical Education Centre.

J N Tata Technical Education Center, run by the Bangalore-based Nettur Technical Training Foundation (NTTF), provides a three-year diploma course in Electronics, Mechatronics (mechanical and electronics engineering) and Manufacturing Technology.

The centre was set up by Tata Steel at Gopalpur in 2005 to promote quality technical education in Orissa for improving employability of the youth of the state.

Tata Steel has invested more than Rs 28 crore for setting up the infrastructure of the institute.

The institute is spread over an area of 20 acres with a built space of more than 50,000 sq ft. Tata Steel is now building a hostel for the students at an investment of about Rs 7 crore.

The NTTF site http://www.nttftrg.com/contactus.html shows that one more is coming up in Kalinganagar. The address is:

NTTF Centre, Kalinganagar.

      NTTF Technical Training Centre ,
      At Seyanmarsal Vocational Training Centre
      Model School Complex, Ddabalgiri
      P.O F.C Project Jaipur- 755019 Orissa.
      TELEPHONE : 0 9238715682 

June 27th, 2009