Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburg is one of the top universities in US; especially its Computer science department is ranked among the top 5 (sometimes in top 3) in US. It offers Masters programs in Software Engineering in partnership with various international institutions. One such partner is SSN School of advanced software engineering in Chennai. Following is an excerpt from their overview page:
The SSN School of Advanced Software Engineering (SSN SASE) has been established by Padma Bhushan Dr. Shiv Nadar – Chairman, HCL Technologies Ltd., to bring world class education to India and make it available to meritorious students of all economic strata.
The home page of the institution says the following:
Despite the Recession, all of MSIT students got jobs – At an average salary of US $95,000! Living expenditure in CMU reduced by Half.
Carniegie Mellon also has another program that students from India can take. Following is an excerpt from a report in redherring magazine.
At an Internet cafe in Delhi, India, up to 80 students sit pensively studying their computer screens. For some, it’s just like any other Internet cafe, but for others it’s a virtual university where they can take computer science courses offered by Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
The new educational initiative is a collaboration between Sterling Infotech, an Indian Internet service provider, and Carnegie Technology Education, a subsidiary of the university, and is part of an ambitious program to train more than 100,000 Indian computer programmers at 100 locations over the next three years.
It also gives us a glimpse of the changes rippling through education. Universities with expertise in one area can now prepare, monitor, and grade courses given under local supervision in an entirely different location.
"The education model is more like, say, a Microsoft, Novell, or Cisco certification program than a traditional university course," says Allan Fisher, president and CEO of Carnegie Technology Education. "We build computer-based training courses drawing on the intellectual resources of the university, but local instructors [in India] monitor, administer, and assist the students."
The courses offered range from the basic, like software engineering, to the advanced, like object-oriented programming. "However, unlike software vendor training programs that would offer courses in Visual Basic or Java, we teach students how to work with any object-orientated language," says Mr. Fisher.
…Unlike many online education institutions, Carnegie Technology Education not only designs the course but also trains and certifies the instructors and monitors both the teachers’ and students’ progress.
Carnegie Mellon computer-science faculty members design the courses and personally select and train the local tutors who will teach the students at the partner institution. "The tutors then go back to the partner institution and teach the courses; we monitor their progress, and they have access to our computer-science faculty member to assist them with any difficulties," says Mr. Fisher.
If the student completes five courses successfully, they get a Carnegie Technology Education certificate in computer programming; if they complete ten courses, they get a certificate in software engineering.
But it’s not cheap. Each course module costs the Indian student $180, nearly three months’ earnings for those on minimum wage. However, Sterling Infotech offers students their money back if they do not get a job within three months of completing the course.
September 13th, 2010
Following is an excerpt from an article in New York Times by Vir Singh.
Georgia Tech says it is planning to set up a research facility in the southern city of Hyderabad in partnership with Infosys Technologies. According to a statement, the university hopes the passage of the proposed legislation will allow it to start offering master’s and doctoral degrees in India.
Carnegie Mellon University is helping the northern state of Punjab to plan courses at a new university, while Virginia Tech and Schulich have lined up Indian partners and have announced plans for new campuses near Chennai and in Hyderabad, respectively.
…The British University of Wolverhampton, for instance, is reaching out to working professionals — junior to midlevel managers who have a few years of experience. It plans to teach business courses through its Indian partner, Bishop Heber College, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and is happy with this arrangement.
The Schulich School of Business also started out with an Indian partner. In January of this year, it started a joint master of business administration degree program with Mumbai’s S.P. Jain Institute of Management Research. But even as it began this partnership, it was in advanced talks with the GMR Group, a consortium of mostly infrastructure companies, to set up an independent campus in Hyderabad.
Ashwin W. Joshi, executive director of the Schulich M.B.A. Program in India, says there is strong demand in India for a top-quality M.B.A. program, which the school plans to start offering by 2013.
… Earlier this year, Columbia University in New York opened its fourth global center for research and regional collaboration in Mumbai, even though it does not have plans to open a separate campus in India. “We’ve created a center that’s independent of any joint degree program,” said Kenneth Prewitt, Columbia’s vice president for global centers. However, the university’s experience suggests that an initial step like this one might lead to joint degree programs, he said, adding it was a possibility that the same could happen in India.
September 13th, 2010
Following is an updated version of http://www.orissadiary.com/ShowOriyaColumn.asp?id=21178 with permission from the author Rinkesh Pati.
It’s not been long since the major automobile giant Tata moved out of West Bengal and relocated its new Nano plant to Gujarat after facing stiff opposition from the Trinamool congress party in the Bengal state. Whatever be the stand of the Trinamool party on this matter, the final outcome was that West Bengal lost a great opportunity of aggrandizing its industrial growth that could have brought several benefits to the Singur locality and the state in terms of jobs, per capita income, infrastructure development, etc. The vested interests of few political leaders forced the Tata company to ultimately move out of the state and look for other favored locations. I fear Orissa doesn’t face the same fate with the Vedanta University project.
It is quite obvious that whenever a new industry or any other major construction is going to be set up in a place, there will be issues like displacement, rehabilitation, fertile land acquisition, environmental issues, and concerns of indigenous tribal communities and farmers, followed by opposition to such developments. This is quite natural and it happens everywhere. But these are not issues which cannot be addressed and resolved amicably. The real problem arises when political parties jump into the matter and leave no stone unturned to gain every bit of political mileage out of the issue. They mislead innocent villagers with false stories and try to give them an impression that the development work is going to affect the area’s cultural values and environment.
Their stories may be partially true, but such concerns can be resolved amicably by peaceful and constructive discussions among the concerned parties. In this fight, everyone forgets the bigger picture, i.e. the greater objective behind the development plan. An institution like Vedanta University will definitely change Orissa’s image in the world. Not only will it help Orissa prosper in the field of education and research, it will also bring plenty of opportunities for the state and its people. A big university spreading across 4000 acres of land will bring unimaginable benefits to the economy of Orissa. It will create plenty of job opportunities, scope for new businesses and infrastructure development, and will help improve the living standards of the people of the adjoining localities. This will also help alleviate problems like poverty, unemployment, illiteracy in the state. If Vedanta University turns up the way it has been planned, Orissa will definitely be able to pride for decades and centuries for housing a university of such magnificent stature.
Despite being announced several years back the university project has witnessed only zero progress as it has always been surrounded by controversies. Initially, it was the stiff opposition by the local political parties and the misled villagers who started displaying vehemence against the project staff. Then there were environmental concerns over the proposed project. The project was first granted the environmental nod as well as the CRZ (Coastal Regulatory Zone) clearance by the MoEF (Union Ministry of Environment and Forest) in April this year. However, the clearance was suspended just one month later. Now the MoEF alleges the OCZMA (Orissa Coastal Zone Management Authority) of not producing sufficient information. I am not overruling the possibility of valid environmental concerns, but I believe these concerns can be addressed if all the political parties and government agencies adopt a balanced developmental approach.
My apprehension is that, the continuous hurdles before the university project in Orissa have opened doors of hopes for other states. Chief Ministers of states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have already started wooing the Anil Agarwal Foundation for shifting the project to their states. Other states will very soon line up in the race and will offer guarantee of facilitating favorable environment for the giant project. The irony is that major political parties like Congress and BJP, which are running their governments in AP and Karnataka respectively, have been strongly protesting the Vedanta project in Orissa since the very beginning. If the circumstances in Orissa do not change, Vedanta may one day shift the university to some other state.
My views are not pro-vedanta, they are rather pro-development. This is the need of the time that all political parties rise above politics and take steps forward to ensure that the gridlock created before the university project gets cleared soon. With Bhubaneswar being a fast developing city and an upcoming industrial and educational hub, a gargantuan project like Vedanta University will definitely accelerate the momentum and will help in the progress of the state.
[Writer Rinkesh Kumar Pati, from Bhubaneswar, currently staying in Arkansas, USA, users can contact him by adding comments here.]
September 13th, 2010