Musings of Dheeraj Sanghi

Why Multiple Entrance Exams

2012-02-17T17:45:00.000+05:30

Directors of IITs are apparently extremely concerned that students in India have to give a large number of tests for admission to engineering colleges, and want to reduce that to one test. This, it is claimed, will reduce stress in the society.

Has anyone asked a question, why students in India have to give a large number of tests. If someone has, then I have missed it in the various reports. Let me clarify the question. We have AIEEE as the "national" level exam for admission to a large number of centrally funded institutions, several deemed universities, many private universities, etc. States, typically, have either their own state level test, or they depend on AIEEE to give a state-level rank as well. Let us assume that most students have to give a state level test as well.

Now, consider a student who has given these two tests. Why should s/he give a third test. Of course, the naive answer is that there are so many universities (including IITs) who have their own admission tests, and if a student wants admission to any of them, then the student has to give the test for that university. Fair enough. But, when I am in the admission market, what am I looking at. Basically, I want to get admission in a university which is the best I can get into based on my "credentials," and sometimes the best is not a clear choice, and I may have some geographical preference, and sometimes I may just fancy a place. If the best that I think I should try for is not equivalent to any university that AIEEE or state level exam is going to give me admission into, then I have to give the admission test of that university. This explains why a lot of people would want to give IIT JEE. The perception (and in my opinion, the reality too) is that IITs are better than any place where one could get admission through AIEEE, and hence one needs to give IIT JEE.

But when we talk about students give 10+ tests, many of those tests are for universities which are similarly placed in terms of their quality, reputation, etc. Why do students give multiple tests for similar quality universities. If I have already given AIEEE and a state-level exam, why do I give tests for those universities which are similar in quality compared to those who admit through AIEEE or state level exam. Again, there may be some specific geographic preference, or a fancy for a particular place. But why 10+ exams.

The reason is that all our exams are one-time exams and a small problem, a slight headache can cause serious reduction in performance. So you want to hedge your bets. If you did not perform in one exam, you should not have to waste one year. If we could somehow bring in a system where I could give AIEEE once, get a score, and if the score is poor, give it again, get another score, and if it is still poor, give it the third time, and the best of the three scores will be used for admission. Immediately, the need for multiple admission tests go away. And when these private universities see that they are missing students, they will start admitting AIEEE students.

So, instead of mandating that there be a single exam (which can be and will be challenged in court, after all, wasn't AIEEE supposed to be that single exam), create conditions that students don't have to give multiple exams.

But for doing this, one will have to follow international best practices. Globally, admission is done during the 12th class (or the highest class of the school) and not after. The admission is provisional subject to you passing the school leaving exam. But we want to do all admission processing - from admission test to counseling to final admission within a 3-month window. And this, the Directors and other administrators believe is sacrosanct. Why is this 3-month window sacrosanct?

Now that a magic formula for normalization has been discovered, it should be trivial to conduct a simpler admission test throughout the year which students can give after 11th class, and admission decision be taken based on those scores subject to specified performance in the school leaving exam.

I am reminded of another government program which is now about 50 year old too - the family planning stuff. For a long time, they focused on delayed marriage, telling the virtues of smaller family, making available contraceptives easily and cheaply, and so on. And then in the 80s, several reports pointed out that all this will have miniscule impact. They explained why focus on health, education and gender equality will have a much bigger impact. India changed the focus of its family planning and the fertility rates have come down substantially in this period. (They still are high because the delivery of health and education services have not improve to the desirable levels.)

In the same sense, the government (with the help of IIT Directors) is solving the problem in the wrong way. One shouldn't mandate that all tests be scrapped, but create conditions that multiple tests of same kind don't help anyone.

There is another reason why students give a few specific exams (does not hold true for all admission tests). A few universities have an admission test which is very different from the traditional PCM test, with equal weight to three subjects. For example, the admissions tests for BITS, Pilani and IIIT, Delhi are very different. Now, a student may believe that s/he has higher chance of succeeding there because there is a better match between his/her skills/knowledge and what the exam is testing.

In the new scheme of things, such innovations and different ways of admitting students will be killed

In the proposed model of admission, if a science institute wants to consider biology for admission, IIT Directors won't allow this. After all, IITs admit students to Bio related programs using PCM only, so why can't all science institutes admit their students using PCM only. (And I have heard the argument: In one of the recent meetings, one of the IISER Directors was called. He did not show up, nor did he send any comments about Ramasami Committee report. So because of his "mistake," all science institutes in the country now have to admit students using PCM marks only.)

On the other hand, if a university decides that for admission to a computer applications program, they don't want to test Chemistry, but give more focus on Physics and Maths, they can't do this. The scores of ISEET (Indian Science and Engineering Entrance Test) will be sacrosanct. You can only play around with the weights of three components - 12th class board marks, aptitude score, and PCM score. Within each score, you don't have any flexibility.

Today, in the country, mediocrity has become a much bigger virtue than excellence, since mediocrity is misunderstood as equality, and excellence is misunderstood as discrimination. And instead of leading the society, IIT Directors (as part of IIT Council) have decided to follow the society.

Legal Problems in Changing JEE

2012-02-16T16:38:00.000+05:30

There have been a lot of debate in the newspapers as well as on my blog (1, 2, 3) on the Ramasami Committee report, the desirability of considering board performance in engineering admission, and the problems of the boards, etc. One aspect that has not been considered is the legal process that needs to be followed for bringing about any change in the system. Who has the authority to decide that there will be no JEE tomorrow.

Let us start from the Institutes of Technology Act, which forms the legal basis for setting up IITs. Relevant parts of the Act, which deal with admissions are reproduced below (thanks to my colleague Neeraj Misra for pointing this out):

28. Subject to the provisions of this Act and the Statutes. The Ordinances of each Institute may provide for all or any of the following matters, namely:-

 (a) the admission of the students to the Institute;

29.

(1) Save as otherwise provided in this section, Ordinances shall made by the Senate.
(2) All Ordinances made by the Senate shall have effect from such date as it may direct, but every Ordinance so made shall be submitted, as soon as may be, to the Board and shall be considered by the Board at its next succeeding meeting.
(3) The Board shall have power by resolution to modify or cancel any such Ordinance and such Ordinance shall from the date of such resolution stand modified accordingly or cancelled, as the case may be.

33.

(1) It shall be the general duty of the Council to co-ordinate the activities of all the institutes.
(2) Without prejudice to the provisions of sub-section (1), the Council shall perform the following functions, namely:- Functions of Council

(a) to advise on matters relating to the duration of the courses, the degrees and other academic distinctions to be conferred by the Institutes, admission standards and other academic matters.

Reading the Act, it is amply clear that admission to IITs has to be done as per their respective ordinances, and that ordinances can only be made by their respective Senates (with some power to their respective Boards to modify and cancel any proposed ordinance).

Now, let us look at the Ordinances of IIT Kanpur (and I would assume that other IITs would have taken a similar decision for admission to under-graduate programs). The Ordinance 3.2 says:

3.2 The Admission of Indian Nationals to the B. Tech., B. Tech.-M. Tech. (Dual Degree) and M.Sc. (Integrated) Programmes shall be made once a year on the basis of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) conducted jointly by all the IITs.

The Ordinance is very clear how the admission has to take place. As far as spirit of the Act is concerned, any significant change in JEE should be first approved by Senates of all seven IITs, but that spirit was lost long time ago. As far as the letter of the Act is concerned, changes to admission process can be done by those conducting and managing JEE (that is Directors, Chairpersons and Vice Chairs of JEE), but only as long as the exam name remains Joint Entrance Examination, and it is conducted jointly by all the IITs.

In the proposed set up, the examination name is being changed to ISEET (Indian Science-Engineering Entrance Test), and its conduct will be the responsibility of an external body. How would this stand a legal challenge. If any stake holder, any student, any potential student, any parent, were to challenge such a decision (as and when it is announced) in any High Court of the country, getting a stay should be possible. And since ISEET would be discriminating against those who are giving board exams in 2012, it really should not be too difficult to at least get a stay order (though I must admit that I am not a legal expert).

The way IIT Council has operated so far, it is not just assuming the power of Senates of seven IITs, it also seems to believe that it has the power to decide admission policies for all other colleges and universities in the country. It has no problem in deciding that admissions to all engineering colleges should be on the basis of ISEET and board marks. Why is IIT Council discussing admissions in NITs, IISERs, IIITs, and other places. Does it believe that it has the legal mandate and that those systems can't think for themselves. Interestingly, the minutes issued by the Ministry for the September 2011 meeting initially said,

"the Council appreciated efforts and accepted the broad principles indicated in the report. It asked Dr. Ramasami to submit the final report, which was to be placed before CABE and State Education Ministers for a final decision."

The revised minutes for the meeting say,

"the Council decided that for admission to undergraduate programmes in Science and Engineering weightage be given to the marks obtained by the students in class XIIth board examination after scientific statistical normalization. It was also decided that the report, which has been accepted by the IIT Council would also be placed before the CABE and State Education Ministers so that the new system could be put in place by the academic session 2013-14."

It is extremely interesting that IIT Council accepts a report which is not even submitted at that time. Someone also decided between the initial minutes and the revised minutes that IIT Council indeed had the power to force this way of admissions on everyone, and they don't need to talk to State Education Ministers for a final decision.

People who reach at the top should be humble. Unfortunately the minutes of the IIT Council do not express that humility.

Where I Disagree with JEE Change Proposal?

2012-02-09T01:35:00.001+05:30

I had an interesting discussion with a colleague on the proposed changes to the admission process of IITs (and other Centrally Funded Technical Institutes).

He asked me several pointed questions, and that helped me in really thinking through all options and figure out what is a major problem and what is a minor problem in the whole story (in my opinion - your mileage may vary).

The first question was, how I feel about including a test on aptitude in the admission process. I certainly feel positive about it.

The second question was, would it be alright if NITs, other CFTIs, and may be other colleges and universities start using JEE performance for admission. I see a small issue with this. If everybody starts using this performance, the the number of candidates become 10-15 lakhs, and it will have to be outsourced. May be there will be pressures from other stake holders to changes the exam in ways that we don't like. But, then these are minor issues. Any one anyway has a right to use the performance of a public exam in any way they deem fit. So we can't stop it anyway. And IIMs have shown that even though CAT is used by many and it is given by large number of students, they maintain complete control over its content. So, even if IITs have to outsource JEE, they can still retain adequate control.

The third question was, whether it was alright for a professional body like ETS to conduct the exam. Well, the answer is yes, if they are only going to conduct the exam, but if they determine the syllabus, they determine the pattern and style of the exam, they determine the level of difficulty, then there will be concerns. Over the last several years, many changes have been brought in in the conduct of JEE. Many of those changes were not because of the wider discussions at IITs, and were not very positive. In fact, the complaint has been that IITs are not proactive in making changes. But a body independent of IITs will really not be independent. It would be far easier for the MInistry to force changes in the admission process through this so-called independent body. So, we are going from a system of resisting changes to a system where ministry and not academicians will decide the changes. Does not seem like an improvement.

The fourth question was, do I believe that current JEE has negative impact on school education and a way has to be found to encourage school education. Yes, I do. Current JEE has contributed to lowering the quality of education in schools.

Then, am I not agreeing with everything that the new plan is doing or trying to achieve.

Sorry, no. The devil is in the detail. I strongly believe that there are alternate ways of encouraging school education. Considering the normalized board marks (assuming that the committee has found a good-enough formula for normalization) for eligibility would have an equally strong impact on school education, without adding to the stress of the students. By considering school marks in such a cut-throat competition, they are increasing stress, and incentivising unfair practices in the board exams, and it is next to impossible to bring down the unfair practices when there are 25-30 lakh candidates giving 5-10 tests each. What is more, there is nothing one gains by including 12th class marks in the admission process. The goal is to ensure that students preparing for admission to IITs (and other fine institutions) should take school education seriously. This will be achieved by having the 12th class marks as eligibility criteria, without the negative side effects.

Further, the proposal does not talk about the biggest problem of all: stress due to an exam on a single day. The ISEET exam is proposed to be conducted twice a year, but nothing has been said whether a student is allowed to give it both the times and show only the higher performance to the admissions committee. Even if it does, we need to go further and have this exam through out the year.

Third, it does not consider the problems of conducting a large test.securely. The problem that we find with board exams will slowly creep into any large test. One way to control the problem was to have 2-stage selection process. This made sure that even if someone could get through to the second stage by unfair means, the security in the second stage would be so tight that it won't be able to use unfair means at that time. If having the first stage in December was a problem, then the solution was not to cancel it, but to hold it earlier, may be even six additional months in advance (and indeed hold it multiple times, with option to repeat them).

Fourth, I see the process wrong and giving rise to suspicions. In the past, so many people have given so many suggestions from within the IIT system as well as from outside, and what do Directors do - dump those suggestions, citing ministry pressures, or some other "practical" problems. Now suddenly many of them are on an overdrive in supporting a proposal which is opposed by most stake holders. As Abi would say, does not pass the smell test.

Questions on JEE Changes?

2012-02-05T11:46:00.001+05:30

Just a few days ago, I wrote a blog post on whether JEE was going away. I was reading about it in the media, and had not found anything on Ministry's website. But now, it is confirmed that there was indeed a meeting held in January, in which a small group of Directors met the Minister, Dr. Ramasami, a few ministry officials, etc., and in-principle agreed to hold another national level exam, Indian-Sceince-Engineering-Eligibility-Test (ISEET), which along with the board marks will become basis for admission to IITs, NITs, and other centrally funded technical institutes (CFTIs).

What is worrisome about this plan is that not only the stake holders know anything about the test and how board marks will be normalized, even this group does not know how this will be done. So, a decision has been taken to normalize board marks and a deadline has been decided to implement this, without knowing how that normalization will take place. Apparently, there is some proposal in Ramasami report, which it is hoped will be found to work with all boards, etc. But why not make this formula public, and let experts and stake holders also check if this will have any problems. Why this secrecy, secrecy, secrecy di?

It is hoped that the testing of the formula in cooperation with all the boards of the country will be completed by April. But what if the testing reveals a flaw. The students who have been preparing for JEE 2013 will be told in February about the changed system, and again in April that sorry, we are going back to the old system. Why can't the decision wait till that so-called formula has been tested. Why can't it be implemented from 2014. Why this urgency, urgency, urgency di?

There is a hope that all boards will agree to announce their results by beginning of June. Why make a major change in the hope that everything will work out fine. Why not have a dry run this year, ask all the boards to announce the results by 1st June, and see if they actually deliver on their promise. What will happen next year, if a board announces the results after 15th June. How will IITs complete their counseling, and two or three rounds of admission process, within a month. Currently, we complete our admission process in about 7-8 weeks, after JEE result is declared. Remember, the boards are currently required to announce the results only by 30th June.

It is understood that the current system is not working well, and there is a need to encourage students to perform in schools. But, nowhere in the debate, is one mentioning whether there are alternate mechanisms of encouraging performance in schools. For example, many of the stake holders have often argued that school performance should be used as a minimum cut-off. That 60 percent requirement for IIT admission is ridiculous. The only reason for not increasing 60 percent is how to normalize performance across the boards. But, well, if there is a good enough normalization algorithm that these wise men have come up with, and this is so great a mechanism that it can be used as a weight in the admission process, then certainly it is good enough to be used as a cut-off for eligibility.

And using the board marks for eligibility has a significant advantage. Many people have talked about cheating in the board exams. If the marks are used only for eligibility, the incentive for cheating is less, and cheating by even several thousand students does not change eligibility of an honest student. But if the marks are directly going to be used for admission, then every single student who gets high marks based on cheating is affecting the career of a large number of honest students.

The other problem that this exercise is trying to solve is the stress due to multiple exams. But what the wise men have not been able to figure out is that with this change, they are actually making more exams count. Every mark in every subject test of the board exams now count. So are we increasing the number of exams that count, or decreasing the number ?

I find the response of one of the colleagues interesting. We should probably not worry about under-graduate education any more, and put our efforts in improving graduate education, where the interference of the government is less. We should work with the industry to make sure that they prefer our MTechs, and let under-graduate education be a volume game, no worries about quality. Students who are really serious should do an MTech. But then we will only be inviting political interference in our graduate programs.

Telecom Licenses Cancelled

2012-02-03T20:03:00.000+05:30

This post is only about remembering the past, and no ideas or opinions are presented here.

Yesterday, Supreme Court decided that all 122 telecom licenses issued by the government after Jan 2008 should be terminated as it found the process illegal. It was an unexpected decision. Many experts were of the opinion that collectively, these 122 networks were too big to be allowed to fail, a customer base of about 70 million, and an investment of more than 5 billion dollars. So, even if the process was illegal, the courts may find a way to penalize the licensees (like asking them to pay a much higher price of the license). But that was not to be. I am sure we haven't seen the end-game yet. The telecom companies will definitely seek a review by a larger bench.

About 10 years ago, a similar case was being fought in TDSAT. Reliance Infocom had been charged with violation of license conditions. They were effectively offering mobile service with the basic service license, which allowed something called, "limited mobility." The problem was that this case had caused an uncertainty in the market, and the fresh investments in the telecom sector were difficult to come by. The telecom industry was not growing at the pace it was expected to or should have. Everyone wanted this case to be disposed off quickly.

I recall that IIT Madras had organized a workshop around 1st February, 2003, as part of National Communications Conference, titled, "201 million connections by 2010." The workshop goal was to identify research challenges and strategies to solve them so that telecom equipment cost comes down to a level where it becomes affordable to a common Indian, and we could have 201 million connections by 31st December, 2010. A lot of telecom experts were there, and so were economists, sociologists, who gave us all kind of data about disposable income, income distribution, the value that a poor or middle class Indian has for voice, and at what price point, such a person will become a subscriber to the telecom service. We were told about the standards that China was creating, the research its companies were doing, and so on.

Almost at the end of the deliberations, I requested that I be allowed to speak for a few minutes, which I was. My point was simple. If Reliance wins the case, and TRAI were to force free incoming calls (recall we had to pay for incoming also till 2003), then we will have 201 million connections by 2008, without any additional support by the Government. My argument was roughly the following. We are looking at 17-18% tele-density in 2008. When did China achieved 17-18% tele-density. What was the per capita income of China at that time. At 6-7 per cent growth rate, when will India have that per capita income. And from the numbers that people from economics background were giving in that workshop, I estimated that year to be 2008.

But this will happen ONLY if the regulatory environment in the two countries is similar, and the business confidence is at a level where some one is willing to invest in the sector. For boosting business confidence, the Reliance case had to be solved. And the regulatory issue was to have free incoming.

I also thought about another issue which I was too afraid to speak out that day. The telecom equipment prices had crashed in this period. So India should achieve 17-18% tele-density at a lower per capita income than China did, and I wanted to say that India will achieve 201 million connections in 2007, but felt that people will not take me seriously if I were to say that. Not that many took 2008 seriously. There was an uproar, a lot of personal remarks. What did I know about socio-economic factors. China had more equitable distribution of wealth compared to India. The cultures are different, they value voice differently. They have their own telecom standards. And, here I was, without understanding anything about either economics or technology, based on some rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, "challenging" all the experts. I must have also been anti-research.

(And just for the bragging rights, very soon the Reliance case was solved, and TRAI made the free incoming, and India did have its 201st millionth connection in 2007.)

There was one gentleman in the room, who was from DoT, and who sensed that I might be right. We started talking. He gave me an interesting perspective. If Reliance won the case with 3-0 margin, government would be under political pressure to challenge the verdict in Supreme Court. If Reliance were to lose the case 3-0, then they would obviously go to SC, and politically, government would not be able to engage them in an out-of-court settlement. So the best solution would be that the case is decided by a split verdict, and then government engages Reliance in some negotiations, and they agree to pay a few thousand crores, which they will, rather than fight it out in Supreme Court, and continue with an uncertain business and policy environment. (This is exactly what happened.)

My back-of-the-envelope calculations were of so much interest to him that he arranged my meetings in Delhi with the Minister (Mr. Shourie), Secretary, Department of Telecom, and Chairman, TRAI. (I don't know why he wanted me to directly explain to them that paid incoming and the Reliance case were the bottlenecks in the growth of telecom industry. He could have done it himself. And, in any case, there were enough people in the country who were saying the same thing.)

But the sense I got from this gentleman and other bigwigs was that everyone believed that Reliance was too big to fail. That notwithstanding Reliance's legal position, which apparently was reasonably strong, courts would be sympathetic with a 10,000 crore investment.

And based on that feedback, 9 years ago, I was expecting the court to be sympathetic with Rs. 25,000 crore investment, and find a way out to legalize the process, if they found it illegal. While an individual license was small, but as a sum total, these 122 licenses were assumed to be too big to fail. But predictions by non-experts can only come true once in a life time, not twice.

It would be interesting to watch, what next.

Is JEE Going Away

2012-02-01T00:02:00.000+05:30

In the last couple of days, there have been numerous articles in media (Hindustan Times, Business Standard, Indian Express) that IIT JEE and AIEEE will merge into one exam in 2013, that the weight of this exam will not be 100 percent, but 50 or 60 percent, with remaining weight being given to 12th class marks. That there is some formula that has been created for normalizing 12th class marks across all boards.

Media tells us that MHRD officials are very secretive and tightlipped about the details. It also tells us that most IIT Directors are willing to say only little and that too on the condition of anonymity. Apparently there is a meeting of IIT Council on 18th February, where the detailed proposal will be presented and approved, and it will be implemented with admission cycle of 2013 (since admission process for 2012 is already on).

I hope the media is wrong, and all this is just rumor.

While I have been arguing in this blog that there are many things wrong with JEE, and that IITs need to do something about the problem of students not paying attention to the school education, doing changes in such a secretive fashion is likely to create more problems and not solve existing problems. Solutions must be available in public. People should be able to debate those changes and give their feedback. IIT Council, in its wisdom, may ignore that feedback, and decide what it collectively believes is best for IITs (and the society). But not giving anyone a chance to opine is simply not cricket.

Ministry is keen to reduce the number of entrance exams. Is this a real problem. Putting everything in one basket causes stress. A big reason for reforms was to reduce stress. If ministry really wants to reduce stress, it should see to it that entrance exams (including JEE and AIEEE) can be given multiple times till a candidate is satisfied with his/her performance. So more exams and not less are needed to help the student.

Why so much hurry. That is easy to understand. 2014 is the year of general elections. Politicians do not want to do anything which could go wrong and become unpopular just around the election time. And it is not clear how to make moves now so that the Minister after 2014 elections is unable to stop the change. So you can't assume that it will necessarily happen in 2015. So the only option is 2013, even if appears to be somewhat unfair to some students.

If IITs were to considerably change their admission process and allow a 40-50 percent weight to the 12th class marks in 2013, would it not be unfair to someone who will give the 12th class exams in 2012. These students will claim that they spent much more time on the JEE test than the 12th class exams, since the marks in 12th class were not being counted towards admission, but now suddenly they are being told that their 12th class marks will indeed be considered for the admission purpose.

The boards are currently under legal obligation (because of a Supreme Court decision) to announce the 12th class result by 30th June. But that is too late for IIT admission. Will it be possible to ensure that results of every single board is announced by say, 10th June.

The specific questions that I am raising are not important. The important point is that if the process had been transparent, then lots of people would have had the opportunity to raise such questions, and if education sector will not have transparency then where else to expect transparency. I have no doubt in the wisdom of 40-50 wise persons who constitute IIT Council, but I do have doubts whether their combined wisdom is more than the combined wisdom of all other stake holders.

At the end, I am really hoping that media is just indulging in speculation and there is really no such secretive proposal that will be discussed and approved with just an hour of discussion.

7th Annual Convention of Indian Railway Fan Club

2012-01-31T02:28:00.000+05:30

Last weekend, I was visiting Kolkata. I went there to attend the 7th Annual Convention of Indian Railway Fan Club.

It is a fun event, where you go for a sanity check. The whole year, you keep hearing from your family and friends, how crazy you are. Sometimes you actually start thinking whether you should meet a counselor. But then the convention time comes and you meet other members of your community. It is a comforting feeling to know that you are not alone in this universe. After all, the beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.

It is a difficult hobby to pursue, particularly if there is no one in your family working for Railways. As a kid, you are constantly told that memorizing Tables for numbers from 1 to 20 is more important than memorizing Railway Time Tables. Modern history is all about what politicians did and no exam is ever going to ask about the role that Railways played in shaping that history. When it comes to knowing the Indian cities, it is alright to just remember that Kolkata is the capital city of West Bengal. There are no bonus points for knowing that Kanpur lies on the path from Delhi to Kolkata. (What is interesting is that parents don't have the same concerns for hobbies like philately. In fact, if a child shows an inclination towards philately, the parents will tell the child how philately could help him learn history and geography better.)

The convention had some truly memorable presentations. The clips from Satyajit Ray's movies containing train related scenes were fantastic. The etymology of train names taught us not just why the trains have been given particular names, but we learned history, geography, languages, and many more things. The interview with a loco pilot gave us interesting insights into a job that many kids love, but they are brainwashed by the time they become adults. Interesting history about why there is no rail link between Indian subcontinent and Mayanmar, even though at multiple places the distance between the closest rail heads in the two countries is not too large. And how this lack of rail link allowed Japanese to occupy what was then known as Burma. What was the context for deciding the Unigauge project in 1993, or the context in which the Railway Strike of 1974 happened. There was a lot of interesting stuff to learn.

The worst part of the convention is the Quiz. It exposes your ignorance so blatantly. It is done in two stages. In first stage, everyone answers the 20 questions, and the top 8 scorers get to participate in the real quiz in the second stage. I have never reached the second stage, but I have not lost hope. I started with 0 marks in the 1st convention, have been improving my score every year, and this time, I had correctly answered 6 questions. At this rate, I should be in the second round in the 17th convention or so. This time, some of us, who have always been in the bottom few, tried to rig the quiz. We argued that people who were the finalists last year should not be allowed to participate - give chance to new faces to win the quiz. But soon we realized that this won't help us, and we started arguing that finalists of all 6 previous conventions should be disqualified. It probably won't have helped us either, but in any case, the organizers did not believe in equal rights for all. So, the effort failed, and I will have to wait for 10 more years to get to the second round (at the current rate of improvement).

I was incredibly lucky to find a room to stay at Howrah Station. The window overlooked the platforms, and I could see the train movement early morning and late night, that is, before and after the convention. The announcements kept me fully informed about all the train arrivals and departures. To drink a cup of coffee, one just came down to the platform, any time of the day or night.

We did a quick count of people who have attended ALL seven conventions so far, and we (myself included) are ten in numbers. By the way, I am one of the founding members of this fan club (in 1989) and we also organized one of the conventions at IIT Kanpur (in 2008). I am already looking forward to the next convention. The place will be decided in the next couple of months through voting by more than 5000 members who participate in the forums of the club.

Teaching 500+ Students - Part 5 (Sleeping during the lectures)

2011-11-17T20:14:00.001+05:30

When I was a student, I used to miss any class if I felt sleepy. It just seemed wrong to sit in the class and not pay attention. Things have changed with age, and perhaps with time. Now, I can peacefully sleep during seminars without feeling too guilty. And I have no problems with my students sleeping in my lecture, as long as they don't get upset with my lecture disturbing their sleep, and they don't snore and disturb others. Peaceful coexistence, as they say.

About a month ago, in one of my lectures, I noticed that a student was sleeping in the last row of L-7. (For the benefit of readers not familiar with IITK lingo, L-7 is lecture hall number 7, which is the largest lecture hall on campus with a capacity of more than 500.) When I say sleeping, I don't mean sitting with eyes closed and not paying attention. He was as flat as you can be on a chair with legs resting on the next seat. He had a handkerchief on his face so that the lights don't bother him. And, I am sure, though I did not check, he had ear plugs to make sure that my lecture does not disturb him. His body did not seem to be moving at all.

I became acutely aware of what W H Auden (an American Poet) had said about half a century ago, "A Professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep," and I tried to be soft, and I tried to ignore him. Sometimes there will be two students sleeping. I was curious, as to who they were, were they registered in my course, were they sleeping through the previous lecture as well, and why can't they sleep in their hostel rooms.

The funny thing happened two days ago. I decided to take a surprise quiz in the lecture. A kind soul went to the last row to wake up the sleeping student, gave him the paper. The student took a few seconds to look at the question, returned the paper, and went back to sleep. How important can a few marks be when you are day dreaming about your career, or your favourite heroine, for that matter.

Today was the last lecture of my course, and my last chance to find out. So I asked some students in the course if they knew who they were. Yes, of course, they were registered students in my course, and very hard working ones at that. They worked whole night, every night. Doing what? I don't know but I can only guess that playing computer games and watching movies on a small screen is a lot of hard work. And human body can only take so much. So one has to sleep some times. No user manual of life has said that one can only sleep in the night. And they were born in a free country, where they can enjoy a whole lot of freedoms, including freedom to sleep at will.

But students told me that the Warden of one hostel whose resident this student was, considered himself above the Indian constitution. He got the Hall Executive Committee to approve a rule which stated that students cannot be in their rooms when their classes are on. No respect for individual freedom. I guess this warden thinks that these students have come to IIT for studying. He himself should wake up and smell some coffee.

So sleeping in the room during the late morning hours entails a cost (fine) of Rs. 50. Sleeping in the lecture hall is free. And in the last row, disturbance is arguably less than what it would be in the wing. In fact, the C syntax that I was teaching must be acting as a lullaby for him. (Though I wonder whether the Physics lecture before my lecture was also sleep inducing? They apparently had slept through that too.) To add to their comfort, the lecture halls are air-conditioned. What more can one ask for. It is such an attractive proposition that I am sure the student would have gladly paid Rs. 50, if we insisted on that to let him sleep during the lecture. It is definitely better sleeping in a lecture hall than in the hostel.

But in my opinion, some things in the world must be be tax-free. Free Sleep is one of those things I feel strongly about. I am sure when the constitution was being drafted, the members were asleep. That is why they gave us free speech, when they really wanted to give us free sleep.

Oh! The joys of teaching a 500+ students' class.

Added on 18th November: Here are the links to previous posts on my experiences in teaching 500+ students:

Teaching 500+ Students - Part 4 (Extreme performances)
Teaching 500+ Students - Part 3 (Excuses for Copying)
Teaching 500+ Students - Part 2 (Conducting Labs)
Teaching 500+ Students - Part 1 (Language Issues)

Dynamic Pricing of Tickets in Railways

2011-10-31T14:38:00.005+05:30

Indian Railways is broke. A large number of their plans, particularly those relating to increase in capacity, are not moving forward because of lack of funds. Their operating ratio is over 90. That is, for each 100 rupees that they earn, more than 90 rupees are spent on the operating expenses alone. Obviously, no money is left for development work.

If you do not increase the passenger fares for 8 long years, and you have limited flexibility on the freight side of business, you are bound to land in the situation that Railways is in today.

With some increase in infrastructure, improvement in technology, higher efficiency, some more new trains can be introduced every year, but to really solve the problem of demand and supply, they would have to build infrastructure at a very fast pace. But for which they have no money.

In the last one month, the Minister and the officials have been talking about a middle-of-the-year increase in fares, which is good. The Minister has reportedly said that they don't want to get into the situation that Air India is in. They have already increase the freight rates, but given that they have a strong competition from trucks, they can't cover all their passenger traffic losses from freight. But I am sure no politician would want to increase the fares substantially in one go. And there is no doubt that the situation is so bad that a small tinkering with fares would not be of much help.

This is where dynamic pricing could help. And the good news is that the Minister is talking about it. (Read an article in Economic Times.) The Minister only needs to announce an increase in the normal fare, a fare that would be paid by only some of the passengers. Others pay the fare determined to a large extent by demand and supply. Just to give an example, if in the first 10 minutes of the reservation opening 90 days in advance, 10 percent of the train capacity is booked, the pricing engine would increase the fares. On the other hand 10 percent of the train capacity is not booked even 10 days after the reservation opens, the fare remains the same till an upsurge in booking is seen closer to the travel date.

The last minute tickets could be priced substantially higher than the minimum fare for the same on peak rush days.

Dynamic pricing has been completely accepted by public at large as applied by airline industry, except when the fares have become ultra-high, as it happened during Diwali time in 2010. Even in trains, the Tatkal rules of Laloo's times, when one had to pay the fare of end-to-end journey, and a premium on top of that with no cancellation refund, was accepted by public without much protest, though it would often be more than 2-3 times the normal fare, if one had to undertake the journey for only a part of the train route.

Dynamic pricing has lots of advantages, both for railways as well as passengers. Railways is able to get more funds, which can now be used for expanding the services. Passengers don't have to resort to bribing, finding loopholes, standing for several hours from early morning, 90 days in advance, so that they can get reservation on the day of opening, and so on. The VIP quota business can be thrown out, as with the new system, it would be possible to have some tickets available till the last day. Railways lose a lot of revenue, particularly in AC-1st and AC-2T because many people traveling on business do not want to book waiting list tickets. So for these classes waiting list is not long enough to take care of additional seats available when these VIP quotas are released for general public.

A system which allows some tickets at a relatively low fare on first come first served basis, and other tickets to be sold on the basis of market conditions, is also a fair and practical system. Selling all tickets at low fares 90 days in advance does not seem fair to those who cannot plan so much in advance. Selling all tickets through a lottery a few days before the date of journey is not fair to people who want to plan their vacations much in advance. Auctioning all tickets discriminate against economically weaker sections. But dynamic pricing takes care of all these concerns.

If one still has "fear of the unknown," it may be first introduced in upper classes, see the experience, and then take a decision to introduce it in non-AC classes.

Indian Railways could also introduce differential pricing for different seats in the same class. The pricing of lower inside berths could be higher than side upper berths.

Another pricing differentiation could be that the price of a short journey on a long distance train could be higher than the price of the same journey on a short-distance train. For example, Delhi-Kanpur ticket would be cheapest on Delhi-Kanpur trains, slightly costlier on Delhi-Allahabad trains, more costly on Delhi-Howrah trains, etc. Basically, encourage more long distance passengers on a long-distance trains, and you will find out that the long distance trains do not have many passengers from small stations, and therefore, those halts can be removed, and trains can be speeded up.

Another advantage of dynamic pricing (and the resultant availability of tickets closer to the day of journey) is that one can provide better service on super-fast trains. It may be worthwhile to recall that about a couple of decades ago, there were no unreserved compartments in many of the prestigious super-fast trains. They were added later on to enable those passengers to travel by these trains who have to reach their destination urgently because of some emergency, and they could not get reservation done in time. But now, if reservations are available closer to the date of journey, we could remove all unreserved coaches, replace them by reserved coaches, and make journey more comfortable for more people.

There are other ways in which Railways can get more revenue without having to increase the base fares by much. Currently, Indian Railways has a mechanism to book a ticket from a station different from the station where the passenger will board. This is, however, discouraged by Railways. If I want to go from Station 'B' to Station 'C', and if I try to book the ticket from Station 'A' to Station 'C', with boarding at Station 'B', the reservation engine will book me only against the quota of Station 'B', and therefore, it would be foolish to pay from Station 'A'. But if Railways allowed passengers to use quota of Station 'A', it is essentially increasing the fare of those passengers, while keeping the option to sell those seats between Station 'A' and Station 'B' and make additional money.

We need Railways for the economic growth of the country, and not just a defunct railways, but a vibrant railways, which is expanding to meet the growing needs of the nation. It has to be financially strong to invest in the future.

PS: On an unrelated note, I found this news item on Economic Times very interesting. It talks about a problem similar to Y2K problem in the context of railway reservation system.

Selecting a Dean

2011-10-30T21:19:00.002+05:30

I had been thinking of writing about selecting the second rung of leadership in an academic institution for a long time, but this semester is not allowing me to write much. But when I saw Prof. Ram Mohan's blog on the same topic, I was encouraged to write my own views on it.

Typically, in Indian institutions, the top position (Director or Principal or Vice Chancellor) is often advertised, and the decision makers (whether promoters, including government, or the board) often do consider a broad search, including people from outside the institute. There are some lacunaes in the process. As Prof. Ram Mohan says, the board (assuming that this is the body responsible for recruiting the top leader) must first articulate what type of skills it considers more important at that stage. This is hardly ever done. A combination of decent academic record with experience in administration is all that matters. But at least the search is wider.

But, when it comes to the second rung of leadership, there is very little focus on the selection process. And the result is an obvious one - you get some good Deans, and with others, you just pray that they won't do enough damage in the 3 years that they would be occupying the office.

First of all, there is no articulation of the job description. Somehow we all are supposed to be aware of it. While one may generally be aware of what are the responsibilities of say, Dean of Students Affairs, a document specifying the role will great help the search process. Also, what are the specific focus for the next couple of years, or what are the immediate issues to be handled will also help potential candidates and those who are involved in nomination or selection. If the goal of the Institute is to privatize the messes of all hostels, and you bring in a Dean who is philosophically opposed to outsourcing, it is not going to help the goals of the Institute. But, if the job description only included one line about managing the hostel, then no one will ask about the philosophy of outsourcing from the potential candidates.

Second, there is a need to think about the desirable profile. Not that a person outside this profile cannot be a good Dean. But having a desirable profile makes it easier to think of names to nominate and for shortlisting, etc. For example, Dean of Research and Development whose office is expected to provide support to all project investigators should be one who has handled several projects himself/herself. Dean of Students Affairs should be one who has handled student interaction either as a warden or in some other capacity. Dean of Alumni Affairs will have to be one does not mind traveling and meeting a lot of people. And so on. The profile may include desirable past experience, age profile, interests, etc. Again, generally speaking, there is no profile that is made available during most searches.

Thirdly, unlike search for Director or VC which looks at external candidates, there is hardly any institute in India who will look for external candidates for a Dean's position. This must change. Normally, a good institute would not recruit its own fresh PhDs as faculty. The reasons are many. But one reason is that we want the person to have had a diverse experience, and bring in a different perspective to the institute. In the same way, a few leadership positions being filled by external persons would bring in a new way of doing things, a change of perspective. And it becomes a tool to attract talent as well.

Fourth, in most cases, the process is very secretive. Not having a job description and a desirable profile is part of that secretive culture. It is impossible to find out who all were nominated, who were shortlisted, how shortlisting was done, why someone was selected as a Dean, etc. No transparency at all. Having a more public process (even in private universities) will result in better selections. It should be known to stake holders who are being considered, and how shortlisting was done. The shortlisted candidates may be asked to give a presentation on their vision and plans for the job. Such presentations could either be open to all stake holders, or at least their videos be made available to stake holders later on. This would result in people who are really passionate about the job and has some clear vision and plans for the job to be selected.

My colleagues tell me that secretive process is necessary since most faculty members in a good institute like IITs do not wish to become Deans. If they have to go through a transparent process, they will simply refuse. On the other hand, if they are selected after a secretive process, then they think it is their responsibility to take up any role assigned to them by the institute. So the secretive process helps the Institute in getting good Deans. Nothing could be farther from reality. While I don't deny that there are some faculty members who would agree to be a Dean after a secretive process and wouldn't have participated in a transparent process, but the number of such Deans is small. Most faculty who do not want to be an administrator will refuse to take up the role even after the secretive process. A lot of people who later turn out to be ineffective leaders as Deans, wouldn't have participated in the transparent process, but are happy to be Deans after a secretive process. And the transparent process does not mean that the Director or the board members cannot approach faculty members and encourage them to participate in the process. In fact, it is often necessary to do this in any selection process, if you want quality intake. We do this all the time for faculty selection, but somehow forget to do so when it comes to leadership positions.

Search for leaders often a long time. Hence it is important that the process starts six months in advance. The final decision should be announced about a month in advance of the incumbent's tenure coming to an end. It should be possible for the new Dean to spend some time as Dean-designate and observe how the previous dean carries out various tasks. This would enable the transition to be smooth.

I welcome readers, particularly those who are faculty members in Indian institutions, to write about any interesting mechanism that their institute follows to find leadership talent.

NRN Speech at PanIIT

2011-10-09T18:33:00.000+05:30

A lot of people have commented on NRN's comments during Pan-IIT at New York last week. So, I am not going to add something new to the debate, but just putting my views across.

What I find very amusing is the exclusive focus on the numbers, 20 percent good, 80 percent bad. If media were to be trusted, Mr. Murthy made several points during his speech. He criticized the coaching culture and considered that as one of the reasons for decline of IITs. He said that in current form, JEE is not the best admission filter. He said that graduates of IITs have poor English language skills. He also said that IITs will have to focus a lot more on research if they want to be in the top league of universities in 10-20 years from now. All the statements that a lot of people have been saying in the recent past. You may agree or disagree with any one or all of these statements, but people have generally remained civil in their disagreements. The only statement which has inflamed passions is the 20-80 percent thing.

Is it fair to lose all sense of fairness and ignore the entire speech of NRN, and only focus on one statement of that speech. Isn't it obvious that Chetan Bhagat wants to be in the limelight just before the release of his book, and that is why he is bringing in completely irrelevant issues to the table like what Infosys has done or not done. (And, what does he know about Infosys anyway.) My friends who listened to him live in New York tell me that it was a great speech, where he talked about a lot of issues, with the only controversial statement being this one about 20-80 percent. Same thing had happened earlier when NRN had given a speech in IIT Gandhinagar in July. People listening to him there thought it was a great speech with deep analysis of what is right and what is wrong, and were totally shocked next day when media just harped on one particular statement during the speech.

I have had the good fortune of meeting NRN on several occasions. And every time I am impressed with his ideas to improve education. And he does not only make statements. Under his leadership, Infosys had initiated PhD fellowships long before IBM and Microsoft started doing so. Infosys support for conferences and other academic pursuits has been remarkable. The Infosys Prize has become the biggest honor that a scientist can receive in this country. Infosys has been supporting IT education in 100s of colleges around the country. (One may argue that it is only due to self-interest, but whether for self-interest or otherwise, you cannot ignore that they are serious about quality of education.) Of course, Mr. Murthy has also been supporting excellence in education from his personal funds to the tune of 10s of crores of rupees. Here is a person who is really passionate about education, has remarkable analysis, great ideas, and who has done a lot. And we ignore everything he says, but we can't ignore that one line.

Having said all this, let me also take this opportunity to reiterate some of the things I have been saying in this blog. First, the coaching issue. A lot of people have been saying that it is wrong to criticize coaching centers. They are servicing a need of the society. But has anyone said that it is not a legitimate business. Has anyone said that Bansals, PACE, FIIT JEE and others are not satisfying a need of the society. If they weren't, they won't be in business. The point being made is that the pedagogy employed in coaching is very different from the pedagogy that education experts tell us should be employed for teaching kids at that age. Kids coming from coaching classes demand the same pedagogy after they come to IIT. Also, the attitudes that coaching creates are different from what one would expect from a well rounded school education. They focus only on short term success. You can't blame coaching centers for any of this. The real reason is competition for a few good seats in a vast country like ours. But can there be no other admission process that allows a bright student to focus on school education and still get admission in IITs (or other top colleges). Can we not minimize the impact of coaching (not because coaching is illegitimate business but because of its side effects). I am convinced that IITs can come up with better admission strategies, and some of that I have talked about in this blog earlier.

Advantages of Aakash

2011-10-06T20:41:00.003+05:30

So, we now have the world's cheapest tablet. Congratulations to all who made it happen.

I am curious about one thing. What is innovative in Aakash. I am yet to see a paper, or a reference to a patent, or any design document which describes the innovation part of Aakash. If any of my readers know something in this regard, please let me know.

The alternate theory of Aakash is the following.

Most hardware vendors (like most manufacturers in most industries) think of products for the richest 1 billion of the world. The margins are decent with this sector of population, and if you are sure that your product will sell a few million pieces, you go for it. This market segment would prefer good quality, good specs, multiple things in one box, and so on. Of course, once the vendors are convinced that the 2nd or 3rd or 4th billion also will buy their product if the price is right, they will bring the lower versions of the product, which is happening in the phone market today, where the growth market is 4th or even 5th billion, who can hardly afford anything fancy. But it has not happened in other markets. The lower-end laptops, PCs, and now tabs are at best being targeted at the 2nd billion today.

How do you get a tab whose price point is accessible to the 3rd billion or even 4th billion. You either do an innovation, which others haven't thought of. (And, by innovation, I include the possibility of a technical innovation as well as a financial innovation - may be some company will subsidize the device in exchange of some advertisement rights.) Or you convince a vendor that there is sufficient market for the product at the 3rd or 4th billion level. And one way to convince a vendor is to tell him that I am prepared to give a written order of 1 lakh pieces, and will further purchase a million devices from the market. And then you sit with him to figure out what is bare minimum configuration, which is useful for the purpose it is intended for. And if the bill of material cost is more than the price point you have announced publicly, then quietly wait for 3 months, 6 months, a year, or 2 years, for the prices to come down, and if they stubbornly refuse to come down to the level that you desire, throw in some subsidy as well.

But whatever may be the mechanism of getting this price point, I am quite sure that this will have a strong positive impact on higher education in India. And because of this reason, I must congratulate MHRD for thinking of such a device and taking the project to its logical conclusion.

Why am I sure that this will have a positive impact. Well, institutions in India are generally averse to bringing in technology in the teaching learning process. We don't know who is going to maintain those things. We don't want to be seen as elitist by insisting that students own some devices. And a lot of faculty isn't good at technology adoption anyway. All solvable problems, but who has the motivation. But institutions in India are also very aware of what MHRD wants, and would like to please the minister and his secretaries. It is obvious that if MHRD is putting in a huge amount of money and wants this to be a visible project, it is going to ask Directors to write reports on how Aakash is being used, how it is making a difference, etc. And a few Directors will want to make sure that they have something to tell MHRD. They will ensure that we pluck at the least the low hanging fruits. Can we do at least some sort of video recording of the lectures, and make them available on our servers for students to go through them later on. Can we ask each course instructor to prepare a playlist of youtube videos relevant to that course, which students can see on Aakash in their free time. Once a few institutes show that technology adoption is not a serious problem, and it really helps in the teaching learning process, I am sure others will join in, and we would have improved the quality of higher education in this country.

And, I am sure, if indeed we have a few million devices with students, private sector will bring in innovation so that the students can make use of these devices more effectively.

A similar experiment is underway in Tamilnadu where the state government is giving away laptops to all students. An excellent blog article by K Satyanarayan on implication and details of the TN government scheme is a must read for those interested in this topic.

Update on 9th October, 2011:

In today's newspaper (Sunday Times, Kanpur edition), there is an interview Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO of Datawind, the manufacturers of Aakash. He talks about three "innovations" or reasons that have kept the price of Aakash low. The first one is that they shift the burden of processing from the client device to backend servers in the cloud, that reduces the cost of processor. (I read this as an admission that the device is not meant for any computation, but is just a web browser and a video player, and hence we have used a real low end processor and small amount of memory.) Second, he claims that they are a lot more vertically integrated than the average manufacturer who buys 50 parts and puts together the device. Datawind componentize it - they buy 800 parts. (It is not clear how much this can save.) And last point is interesting. Aakash connects to their app store, and they are expecting some users to buy some apps from them. This is likely to result in some profit for them, and help them keep the cost of Aakash low.

Teaching 500+ Students - Part 4 (Extreme performances)

2011-09-27T00:52:00.000+05:30

This is in continuation with my experience of teaching the first year programming course to 500+ students. We had the mid-semester exam on 14th September, and the copies were returned on 21st. We did the computation of total marks of all students in lab assignments, quizzes, and mid-semester exam, and put them on the moodle on 21st. I then asked those students who were figuring in the lowest 10 percentile to meet me individually. Out of 50 students, only about 25 came to see me. And I asked each one of them what problem were they facing, and what could our team of instructor, tutors and TAs do to help them.

The most common issue, as expected, was that of language. While they were getting adjusted to learning in English, their skills at understanding spoken English was still below par. So they really were dependent on the slides of the lectures, and hardly understood anything I did on the black-board. Some people who claim that now they are used to lectures and can understand fully, but still said that they have missed so much of the background in the first 2 months that it is difficult to understand lectures now without knowing the material covered earlier. (I am asking these students to go though the material in the forthcoming mid-semester break, when some members of our team would be available for some help.)

But hardly anyone talked about home sickness, medical problems, poor time management, too many extra-curricular activities. The second biggest issue was that the second year students were forcing them to participate in various student functions. For every activity in the hostel, the first year students are the bonded labour. During "Takneek" (an internal technical competition), the first year students would be told to report at midnight. If they felt tired and slept in their rooms, someone will bang the door soon after midnight, force you to open, use the standard hostel language (read abuses), and ask them to come along. And they need to work for hours. If they didn't sleep in the night, they had to miss the morning classes. Most students still manage to keep afloat, but I was talking to those who were anyway having some problems with academics. For them, missing classes was a disaster they could not recover from.

Strangely though, most faculty members and students I talked to, refuse to call it "ragging." Ragging is only when something bad happens in the first couple of weeks of the semester. This is common across all hostels in all colleges and universities. (Sure, people said the same thing about beginning-of-semester ragging, before Supreme Court intervened.) This way, they get exposure to variety in life. See, most people manage and don't complain.

The hold of the second year students is absolute. Within the first few weeks, they have brainwashed the first year students that the only group that will help them with all sort of information during the placement season, a few monsoons from now, will be those who are 1-year senior to them. So they must listen to them. And, of course, they should never approach any faculty member for advice. They will always give you advice to earn less, it seems. They will brainwash you about doing MTech and PhD. They will brainwash you as to why you shouldn't prepare for CAT and should always go for "core" jobs and not "finance" jobs. So, if they want to be happy in life (read, make more money), they should avoid talking to faculty.

I advised a couple of students whose performance is really poor, to drop the course, and not have an undesirable grade on their transcript. They admit that the chances of their passing are remote, but, Sir, the second yearites in the hostel have advised us that dropping a course is a sign of cowardice. We can't live in the hostel with the stigma of having dropped a course. We would rather have an "F" grade on our transcript. (One of those students is in such a bad state in several courses that getting an "F" grade in this course could mean that he might be asked to leave IITK. While, if he drops this course, he is almost guaranteed to stay on. But he won't drop the course.)

Very interesting hostel dynamics, which I never realized before. There are advantages of teaching a large first year class. You get to understand your students far better.

We also wanted to do something for students at the other end, that is, those whose performance is in the top 10 percentile. We are organizing lectures on "python" over Saturdays, and there will also be labs, and these students will get support from tutors and TAs, if they decide to take up a project. While we were not in a position to provide extra lectures and labs to a very large number of students, there was tremendous pressure from a lot of students to allow them to learn "python." As of now, we have told them that we will try our best to organize lectures on python in January. Let us hope we are able to do this.

JK Center for Technician Training

2011-09-23T00:02:00.000+05:30

On Monday this week, I was invited to the inauguration of a center for technician training in Kanpur. Though I have heard a great deal about the importance of skills training, vocational education, and other such keywords in various conferences, I must confess that I know very little about that category of education. My knowledge about ITIs for example, is limited to discussion on IITians for ITIs in various Pan-IIT events. So I was naturally curious and decided to go and check it out.

The center was being inaugurated by Mr. Yadupati Singhania (Chancellor of Sir Padampat Singhania University, Udaipur), whose vision it is to provide low-cost, high-quality technical training to a large number of youths across the country, without provisioning a large amount of subsidy every year.

The center has been operational for about 6 months in temporary space, and has now become fully functional in its own swanky building. It provides training similar to ITIs in three disciplines - electrician, mechanical fitter, and modern carpentry. But there is a difference. The training period is only 3 months, as opposed to 2-year period of an ITI course, and that is where the low cost kicks in. Just imagine the cost of lost wages for 2 years, while doing the training from an ITI.

The team has studied ITI program in great detail, and have also visited technical training centers in different parts of the world. They realized that there are too many holidays in an ITI, and in fact, one hardly attends the course on 180 days a year. Even on those 180 days, the incidents of something going wrong are also high - sometimes faculty is on leave, sometimes the machine is not working, sometimes there is no electricity. On top of all this, there is a lot of repetition, a lot of old technology being taught, and so on. And they realized that it would be possible to provide a similar skillset to a young, motivated person in about 3 months only. He has to come to the center every day, six days a week. No time to waste - you are either in a lecture, or you are in the workshop. No canteen breaks.

Batch size is kept small, a maximum of 30 students in each trade, so that the trainers can give personal attention to everyone. The workshop was amazing. Can you imagine a CNC Lathe machine in a center to train technicians. I was proudly shown all the latest equipment that the industry works with and is available for training there. The lecture room had a projector and a screen, along with Internet connection so that guest lectures are possible through skype. And the quality. There were many industry leaders from local industry there, who vouched for the quality. The first two batches have graduated, and the placement has been good.

Of course, it would be difficult to sustain this with a single batch, and as I said, they have no intentions of this being a charitable activity of JK group. The idea is to soon expand into multiple batches. When one batch is having lectures, the other will be in workshop, and vice versa. Also, the center will eventually operate 14-16 hours a day so that there can be morning batches and evening batches - make as much use of the wonderful infrastructure that they have, and reduce costs as well.

The students who were graduating on Monday had confidence written all over them. They could even speak a few sentences of English. They have been exposed to a bit of computers - can check their emails, for example. They were smartly dressed - ready for the real world. Each one was given a bag which had a tool box in it - their most prized possession.

The comparison with the ITI could not be more stark. The center is situated in one corner of the ITI campus, using only 5% as much space as the ITI, and will be producing many times more technicians than the ITI, and the chances are that they will be equally well trained, if not better, than ITIs, at zero cost to the promoters (as opposed to huge budgetary support that ITIs get).

I was told that the goal is to replicate this model through the franchisee route all over the country. They themselves are setting up a second center, this too in Kanpur city, which shows their confidence in their own model for technical training.

What I found very interesting is that the team behind this dream has a significant IIT Kanpur presence. The three member Project Management Council - Mr. Yadupati Singhania, Mr. Manoj Pant, and my batchmate, Dr. Rajnish Karki, all are IITK alumni. There were at least 20 industry leaders at the function who were IITK alumni, some of them have recruited the graduates, many had offered advice and other forms of support.

I am confident that with IITians getting into the area of skills development, India will be able to exploit the demographic window of opportunity that it has over the next couple of decades. The era of private sector ITIs has arrived.

Here is the link to JK Center for Technician Training.

GATE Eligibility - No to 3rd Year Students in 2012

2011-09-15T23:33:00.000+05:30

I first read about change in GATE eligibility in Prof. Giridhar Madras's blog. I talked to a few colleagues at IITK also, and like the comments in that blog, here too I heard that the major reason for not allowing 3rd year students to give GATE was that they can't handle so many students.

This is yet another manifestation of the arrogance of IITs. If you can't conduct this exam, then give it up. It is not your exam. It is MHRD's exam. This is not just for admission to IITs and IISc. This is for admission to ALL MTech programs in the country, where the stipend is charged to MHRD. CBSE has had no problem in conducting an exam for 12 lakh candidates, and should be happy to conduct yet another exam. CBSE has done a far superior job of conducting AIEEE than IITs have done for JEE (at least the way exam is conducted - I don't want to digress by discussing the paper content). And I am sure CBSE can do a far better job of conducting GATE than IITs can. If CBSE refuses to conduct, then we can consider outsourcing it to BITS Pilani, Merit-trac, Prometric, and any number of other players. All of them have huge experience of conducting large public exams.

Have IITs ever bothered to ask other universities when GATE should be conducted. Note that IITs have a small number of MTech seats. Others admit more MTech students than IITs do. But there is no mechanism for anyone to give any inputs. Most universities would want to start the admission process earlier than April, and therefore, would want GATE to be held earlier than February. But IITs won't listen. I know of some places who were seriously considering keeping some seats for "early admission" for those who would have given GATE in the 3rd year. But that won't be possible now.

GATE has also become a way to test your basic knowledge in your field of engineering. Many students would give GATE in the 6th semester, and if they get good score, highlight that in the CV for placement. The industry values such students, but this can't be done any more.

In fact, even at IITK, if someone sent us an email in March telling us that s/he has got a very good GATE score (better than our typical cutoff for calling for MTech admission), we will try our best to invite him/her for summer internship in the hope that next year s/he will join our graduate program. That would no longer be possible.

For many years, there is a talk about GATE becoming a multiple day, online exam. But trust IITs to not do that. Only a few disciplines will have an online exam even after trials for a couple of years. They are so afraid of technology.

All this because IITs and IISc can't find enough invigilators and they are too rigid to consider alternatives. They could have had, for example, more subjects in online format, and spread offline papers on to 3-4 sessions by having the exam on Saturdays as well, thereby reducing the need of faculty members going to various centers.

They have increased the cost of JEE application fee to Rs. 1800. They could have done a similar hike for GATE as well, and use that for solving problems (like going for online exams in more subjects, paying more for larger and better exam centers).

Teaching 500+ Students - Part 3 (Excuses for Copying)

2011-09-10T20:44:00.005+05:30

Continuing with my experience of teaching the first year programming course to 525 students, I am today writing just a short note. I wanted to share some of the excuses students have been giving me when we catch them using unfair means in labs and/or quizzes. And, believe me, I am not making them up.

(This is about a quiz, where we had multiple versions of the paper, and this student had written the answers which were correct for a different version of the quiz paper.) His explanation was that he was writing random characters and random numbers. There is a small but finite probability that it will result in the answers that will exactly match the answers given by the neighboring student. I should offer him stronger evidence of copying than just that his answers don't make sense for his questions, but are answers for questions given to his neighbor.
What I have done is not copying. This can be called cheating in an exam, but not copying. And you have always been saying that copying will result in an "F" grade. You have been silent about cheating. Since I have done cheating and not copying, I should be given a lighter punishment.
My program has been written by a senior, who is not even doing this course. This is not copying, but just taking help from friends. If someone who is doing this course had written the code, that would be wrong.
I did not copy from any classmate, but searched on google, found the code for the problem, and submitted it. What is wrong in that.
I have only seen function definition, variable declaration, for loop, while loop, if conditions, and few other things that I did not understand. But, believe me, I did not copy 100%. (Yeah sure, there was indeed a one line difference between the two submissions.)
Sir, moss (the software developed by Stanford University) is saying that 96% of the lines are same. It is obviously wrong. See, I changed all the variable names, and deleted all comments. So, there is hardly any line which is same. You are using a buggy software.
We are so used to copying in other courses. Even previous instructors of this course ignored copying. It is difficult to remember to do things differently in just one course. (The implication being that I should change, not him/her. And remember, these are students who have just joined IIT less than 2 months ago.)
And this is from a faculty member (thankfully, not from IITK). When everyone is making 1000s of crores, you are trying to teach honesty. You are spoiling their careers. They should become more practical and a better fit in today's society.

I don't want to give an impression that everyone is cheating. In fact, that is a small minority. But the excuses and arguments that they come up with are truly remarkable, and I just wanted to share some of the gems.

Teaching 500+ Students - Part 2 (Conducting Labs)

2011-08-27T00:21:00.000+05:30

This is to continue describing my experience of teaching a class of 500+ students. If you are interested, you can read the earlier post.

Last time, I had described my dealing with students who did not know adequate conversational English. This time, I am describing how we are conducting labs.

We have divided the batch into 5 groups, each of about 105 students. There is one lab of 3 hours per week for each group. For each lab, there are 8-9 persons (2-3 5th year dual-degree MTech students, and 6 1st year MTech students) to help students with any difficulties.

Normally, the first 3-4 weeks are hell for students who are looking at a computer screen for the first time. Too many questions, and too few people to help. So we requested all MTech students to do extra duties in the first 4 weeks. First two weeks, there were 6 extra MTech students in each lab, and for the next two weeks, there were 3 extra MTech students in each lab. The labs have gone extremely smoothly as a result, much better than what I could have imagined.

The first week was a bit of chaos. The MTech students themselves were new to campus, and trying to settle down, and understand the computing environment, find out where the labs are, and what they are supposed to do. In the past, instructors have not conducted labs in the first week for these reasons. But I was adamant. I was willing to not have a lab only on the first day of classes. From day 2, labs must start, and those who miss the lab of day 1 would have an extra lab on the weekend. I must say that the dual-degree students were huge help in this week and a couple of students went to lab on each of the five days. Without such dedicated students, I couldn't have managed this course. The first lab was to just remove their fears of the computers. They would learn how to send/receive email, attachments, searching for stuff through google, and a few other miscellaneous tasks, including playing computer games. A bit of linux commands too, and getting familiar with moodle. No programming, not even typing a given program. I didn't want to scare students.

The second week was to learn an editor, typing a program (which was given to them), knowing about the compiler, and running the program. Again, a very comfortable exercise, just to start the love affair between the students and the computer.

But the third week was different. The real labs started now. And the labs were very different from what their seniors had told them. We used to ask them to write 3-4 small programs (20-25 lines sort of stuff) in every lab. By the time they completed the course, they would be comfortable writing a 50-line program. This won't work for me. I would ask them to write at least a 50-60 line program in the lab, and the hope is that by the time they complete the course, they would have written at least one 150-200 line program.

Earlier labs would ask them to write some standard program from the end-of-chapter exercises. But now, they had to understand a more real-life situation and write a program for that. No rocket science. Just produce a telephone bill, or a shopping receipt, or project the train arrival time, or whatever, but a real-life context is important (not always, since I have to think of 5 problems of roughly equal difficulty, all of which can be done with the limited amount of programming that I would have taught till that week).

Since I can't expect students to write a 50-line program in a 3-hour lab, I would announce the lab problems at least 2 days in advance. So they can think about the flow chart, may be even try out some coding in their free time. But announcing the problem in advance has its own critics. Many students spend far too much time on them. Some students, after solving their own problems, even try to solve problems of other lab batches. Some have truly fallen in love with the machine, while others are just trying to catch up with those who already knew programming. Yet others find the air conditioned environment of Computer Center rather conducive to work (and sleep). But it is all my fault that they don't seem to be spending as much time in other courses.

Then the grading. Normally, the grading is the responsibility of the MTech student, who is as new to the system as the first year BTech student. And grading was done in the lab itself, with no record of program that was shown. And it was not surprising that the average of the class would invariably be a healthy 9 out of 10. This meant that almost all students wrote programs for all small exercises that were given in all labs, even though the students were not told about what program they have to write till the beginning of the lab hour, and within 3 hours, everyone had submitted, that too correctly, and had been graded. Something was not right.

I have insisted that all lab assignments must be uploaded on moodle. So if I want to check some submissions randomly, I should be able to do it. I would also give a very detailed grading policy every day - what to check, how many marks for what features including comments and use of proper variable names, etc. And grading should mostly be done offline (which is now possible since all assignments are uploaded), so that the TAs focus only on helping students in the lab. The lab average is a more realistic 6 out of 10 with a proper spread of marks on both sides. But students are not complaining. The amount of help they are getting, again thanks to all the graduate students, is something that they probably did not expect. Some of the TAs would be available even on weekends to help the students with their programs.

While we provide all the help to the weak students, one complaint that we keep hearing in IIT is that we don't do enough to encourage good students. Well, there is something for them too. We are starting the process to identify the best programmer in each section for each lab, and their names will be announced not just to that section, but to all the students. And soon, we will offer these students a chance to do a large project in lieu of the exam.

We tell our students one simple thing. We will work hard to provide all opportunities and support. But they should also work hard. Short cuts won't be tolerated. In other words, copying in a lab is a strict no-no. Some of them don't seem to understand this. Nowhere, the lab is taken seriously, I am told. We start using the services of MOSS server at Stanford today. Since this has been announced that we will use MOSS, and anyone copying will be failed in the course, I don't expect students to take chances.

IIMs want a gender-balanced classroom

2011-08-26T12:34:00.001+05:30

Apparently, IIMs see a value in having a diverse classroom. In the front page news report, aTimes of India informs us that many IIMs will add up to 30 marks for female applicants, when they decide the merit list for admission.

This reminds me of a blog article that I wrote long time ago. In that article, the focus was JEE and admission to IITs, and I had argued that something had to be done to improve the gender ratio in our top academic institutes. One of the suggestions I had at that time was to add some marks to the JEE score of girl applicants.

I went through some of the reader comments on ToI website, and you find the expected arguments. If girls (may I say ladies, since all applicants to IIMs are adults) are good enough, they should come in on their own merit. They don't say it, but the obvious implication is that the ladies are not good enough. How come they score well in school, and their marks are marginally higher than the boys in school. There is an answer to that too. One comment says, "girls are good at cramming, while boys have better brains." I thought schools teach more of concepts, and coaching for admission tests teach more of tricks. But I let it pass.

Some others have commented that ladies are not interested in business administration. (Coming to IITs, it would translate to girls not being interested in STEM fields.) Of course, what is the basis of this sweeping statement. The comments are silent on that. Why would a girl who chooses to study science subjects in 11th and 12th class would suddenly decide in 12th class that she is not interested in pursuing under-graduate education in STEM fields. Is there any data to support such a statement (data showing that after 12th class, they change their discipline and study non-STEM fields). Well, the data from engineering admissions show that the problem of gender imbalance is only in the top 50-100 colleges. This debunks the theory that girls are not in IITs because they are not interested. I am sure similar data from management schools other than the top 50-100 would show that ladies are indeed interested in business administration, but they are not getting admission to top 50-100 schools.

One possibility that readers on ToI website would not want to consider is that perhaps the admission process inherently favours the men. One reader suggests that this is not the case by arguing that CAT is very simple exam. It checks things that any good student should know. Well, if that is the case, why is CAT coaching next only to JEE coaching in this country. And if the admission process has an inherent bias against ladies, then wouldn't it be in the fitness of things that that bias be counter-balanced by adding certain marks to ladies' score.

Of course, the difficulty that one faces is that there is no easy way to compute the effect of that bias in terms of marks. And hence, an academician would like to stay away from calling such a thing as an exercise in removing bias. Also, to suggest that this is being done to counter biases in the admission process, would imply that one admits that the admission process is not perfect. Any honourable academic should admit that there is no perfect admission process, since admission process amounts to predicting success of individuals in the long run, where the situation would be very different from the situation at the time of admission. And if I could see the future so clearly, I wouldn't be an academician. I would probably help more people (and make more money too) by telling them their future. But admission process is managed by a specialized breed of academicians, called academic administrators. And this breed finds it extremely difficult to admit even the obvious.

But what is there in the name. As Shakespeare said, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." At least some academic administrators are showing leadership and solving a serious problem. Let them call it gender-balancing. Let them call it diversification of student body.

By the way, this method of countering the biases, is followed in all top schools in the world. If, from your admission application, it is obvious that you had a particular hardship or a situation which would adversely affect your marks, that is taken into account while deciding the admission. In India, we are so afraid of any subjective evaluation (for good reason, I must quickly add) that we can't do such a thing on a case to case basis, and therefore have to apply any process identically to a large group.

This method of countering biases is extremely powerful for the simple reason that you could identify a large number of biases and decided on a year-to-year basis how to counter for each such bias. I can see that in future, this has the potential to replace reservation system. I should ideally check for each applicant what all hardships one has gone through, and give additional credit to that applicant to counter the bias introduced by that hardship. So, one may give certain amount of credit, if the applicant did not have access to a city school. One may give some credit, if both parents are non-graduates. One may give some credit, if one of the parents was always away defending the borders in a warlike situation. If tomorrow, we come up with a transparent system of finding out the financial status of an applicant, then that could correspond to some credits. If we can do all this, then our education system becomes truly inclusive, and we will no longer need a reservation system which only looks at one parameter - caste. But that is a long way to go.

I Support A Strong Lokpal

2011-08-25T02:42:00.000+05:30

I went to Ramlila Maidan on Sunday. It was an amazing experience. There must have been at least 20,000 people in the ground, while another 5,000 would be outside, either waiting in line to get in, or just came out, or just shouting slogans, etc. But with this kind of crowd, everything was running so smoothly. Except for the 500 meter stretch from the New Delhi Metro Station to Ramlila Maidan, all other roads in the vicinity had regular traffic. I don't think anything of this type is possible when we have meetings organized by political parties.

A few random thoughts on the protest.

Let us recall that initially Delhi Police had tried to put all sorts of restrictions on the protest. There can't be more than 5,000 people otherwise there could be danger to law and order. Do they ever say that to political parties. There can't be more than 50 cars parked at the protest location. Do they say that to political parties. Rallies by political parties often bring a large part of the city to a standstill, and despite being banned by the courts, the bandhs continue to be common. What does Delhi Police do then.

India Against Corruption (IAC) is being charged that they don't have respect for the parliament since they are demanding that LokPal should be able to investigate corruption charges against MPs. Let us see what the two sides are saying. IAC is saying that a few MPs may some time take money for asking questions in the Parliament. They may some times take money for voting in a particular way. And these few MPs must be investigated quickly. Government is saying that if MPs can be investigated by LokPal then it will become difficult to run Parliament. I read these statements as IAC saying that there may be a few MPs who will indulge in an act of corruption occasionally and in those occasions, they must be investigated. On the Government seems to feel that so many of MPs are corrupt that it would be difficult to find quorum (which is 10 percent of the strength) in the house. Which side has respect for parliament and which side does not. You figure that out.

IAC is saying that Prime Minister should be investigated if there is a credible complaint against him/her. (By the way, I do not fully agree with that. There should be some safeguard and a single person or a small group should not decide that the complaint is credible or not.) But Government view is rather strange. It says that PM can be investigated only by an agency which is to be directly under the control of PM, and no other agency (and this agency is CBI). Either the Government should say that PM will not be investigated by anyone, or it should agree to PM being investigated by some independent agency (whether LokPal or not). But to argue that PM can only be investigated by an agency which directly reports to PM is so moronic.

It is being said by the Government and many intellectuals that having an independent statutory body can lead to stalemates. That there can not be bodies with too much independence. Hmm. The Constitution already provides for independent judiciary, and thank god for that. The judges of High Court and Supreme Court can only be impeached, and we are noticing only the first impeachment of independent India now. Today's politicians would not want anyone with too much independence. The constitution already provides for an independent Election Commission, whose Chief can only be impeached, and cannot be removed through an executive decision. An Election Commission which has largely remained independent (though politicians have tried interventions like enlarging the commission) is a major strength of Indian democracy today. The constitution already provides for an independent Comptroller and Auditor General, who can only be impeached, and cannot be removed through an executive decision. And this has certainly helped the nation in uncovering some corruption. Chief Vigilance Commission was supposed to be another independent authority, though the process to remove the Chief is somewhat simpler. One does not need impeachment proceedings, but a process involving Supreme Court has been defined. If all these independent bodies have not created problems for Indian democracy, and indeed strengthened it, an argument cannot be made that mere existence of an independent body is a threat to Indian democracy. (But still, I think I will prefer, if the LokPal can be removed not by Supreme Court, but by Parliament through impeachment proceedings. The accountability of independent commissions have to be to the Parliament - just like CEC and CAG.)

A few intellectuals and of course some politicians have criticized Anna's methods of putting pressure on the Government. They quote Gandhi who apparently said that breaking of law as a protest is an acceptable strategy only against a foreign rule, and not against your own government, and hence "Satyagraha" is not a desirable form of protest in independent India. Sorry, I don't get it. Which law is Anna breaking. He only threatened to violate the restrictions imposed through promulgation of section 144 by Delhi Police which states that not more than 5 persons can be together. Section 144 can be applied only under the circumstances where there is a reasonable fear of violence and threat to public safety. Despite repeated requests, Delhi Police has not been able to bring forth any evidence which shows that there was any fear of violence or threat to public safety. Also, again the point I made in the beginning, will Delhi Police ban all form of protests, all forms of rallies, all bandhs in future. (If they promise to ban all rallies and bandhs and anything else that inconvenience citizens of Delhi, then I wouldn't mind them stopping one of the most peaceful protests of our times. But to stop only the peaceful protest, and not others, that is not cricket.) The only difference between Team Anna and other rallies has been that Team Anna wanted to do things in legal ways. They sought permissions. Others don't bother to seek permission to burn buses, stop trains, block highways, and so on. And if someone does not seek permission, you can't deny permission. You can only deny permission to those who seek it.

Protesting and putting pressure on legislators and the Government is an integral part of democracy. it can't run without citizens having the right to put such pressure. You can't have a democracy where you only have one vote in five years and you have no rights in between.

Finally, why is it that the Government has been able to successfully ignore IAC despite the huge support that IAC has all over the country. It is willing to offer some face saving to IAC, but no more. In a mature democracy, any MP would be worried if so many people are protesting for the same cause.

The root cause for this is the Anti-Defection Law or the 51st Amendment to the Constitution of India, which banned change of parties by any legislator. This was passed in 1985. The act essentially says that we are not represented by an individual, but by a party. The party knows that I may try as much as I can to convince my MP or MLA about my view point, if party rejects that view point, this MP or MLA can do nothing. It does not have that final and most potent weapon - to vote on the basis of his own intelligence, views, and what will benefit his constituency. So we can all try convincing our local MP to support a stronger LokPal than the one this Government intends to create, but at the end of the day that MP is powerless, and is subservient to party. And given that there is no internal democracy in any party anyway, a few people will control the agenda of every party. And while the individual MPs may be jittery, the party knows better. It knows that the next election is 32 months away, and the Indian public will forget what ever is happening today. May be they will lose a couple of states in the next few months but they reckon that they were going to lose them anyway.

So, if you want to push your viewpoint, you have to push much harder. One crore people is not enough to convince the Government that they can lose elections 32 months away.. You need 10 crores, and IAC does not have 10 crores on the streets.

The Anti-Defection Law has brought in political stability which was very much needed in the 1980s (and I suspect that if we repeal that act today, the situation may once again go back to what was there in the 80s). But that political stability has come at a significant price. We have all been dis-enfranchised to some extent.

Teaching 500+ Students - Part 1 (Language Issues)

2011-08-15T22:41:00.001+05:30

In an earlier post in the summer, I had mentioned that I will be teaching the first year programming course to 500+ students, and I wanted advice from my readers on how to handle such a beast. First of all, I thank all those who responded. Your suggestions really helped me. This is the first time I am teaching such a large class. The last time I taught a large class was 17 years ago, when I taught Pascal to about 200 students.

525 is a very different beast. I thought I was well prepared. With 1 lakh lines of code under my belt, I was confident of knowing C language much better than Pascal that I taught 17 years ago. I had sat with several weak students last year and tried to understand what problems weak students face in this course. I went through videos of the first programming course at MIT and Stanford. I went through example lab assignments at several other universities, and the entire archives of this course at IIT Kanpur, for the last 6 semesters - all PPTs, lab assignments, and the works.

But when it started, I did not know what had hit me, and I still haven't recovered. Blogging was the first casualty. Google+ came at the wrong time. I have joined but don't follow anything. My active social life has come to a screeching halt. I guess this is my destiny for the remaining part of the semester. Today, after having spent the good part of the day in the office, I decided enough is enough. I got to blog.

At least point out the issues that I face, and hopefully the collective wisdom of the readers will help me sail through. The biggest issue is the language. No, I am not talking about 'C'. A fairly large number of students, in the initial survey said that they don't understand spoken English. This number is more than 15 percent, almost 100 students. They claim to follow the powerpoint slides. My natural way of teaching would have meant that while there are slides being projected on a screen, I would use blackboard to explain the finer points. This revelation meant that a lot more would have to be put up on the powerpoint, even though I may still use the blackboard on the side.

About 50 students said that they would like to be tutored in Hindi. And what came to me as a shock, some students do not follow even written English.

And this caused a debate in the department. I decided that I will request a graduate student to provide extra help to those who are weak in English. So he holds a session on Sunday for an hour in which he speaks in Hindi. I also encourage students to come to my office and ask me questions in Hindi.

Am I doing the right thing. Some faculty members don't think so. They point out that English is the official language of instruction at IITs, and therefore, it is the responsibility of the student to make sure that s/he learns sufficient English prior to coming to IIT Kanpur. By agreeing to offer help in Hindi, I am discouraging them from learning English. Second, it will increase expectation of students that in other courses too, the faculty would explain in Hindi, and a majority of faculty members are not from Hindi belt. So that would cause problems. Third, this is discriminatory with respect to non-Hindi speaking students who are also poor in English.

My take is different. The collective wisdom of the leadership of all IITs and indeed this country (because such decisions are taken at the cabinet minister level) has decided that students cannot be tested even on basic language skills. That we can't even specify that they must take English as a language in 10th or 12th class. This leadership has also decided that JEE will happen after 12th class, and not earlier, and that the schedule will be such that admissions will be offered only a few days before the semester starts. So, there is no scope for running a remedial course prior to the semester. With such decisions, one must expect that there will be students who would be weak in English.

What am I supposed to do. Ignore 100 students in the class. I do respect the fact that the same leadership has decided English to be the official language of instruction at IITs. I do not speak even one sentence in Hindi during my lectures and tutorials. I do not have any course related information on the official website of the course in Hindi. All assignments, quizzes, and exams are in English, and no translation is provided to anyone. But it is difficult to digest that even informally, I should do nothing about such a large set of students, who have worked really hard to reach where they have reached. I believe that a bit of compassion and support at this stage will make a huge difference to their learning experience. And I think not understanding the course content for several weeks till they learn more of English would be an insurmountable hurdle in doing well in this course.

Will this put pressure on all other faculty members to offer some support in Hindi. Will this discourage these students from learning English quickly enough. I don't know. Till I am officially told to do otherwise, I cannot refuse if someone asks me informal help in Hindi.

Inefficient Land Use by Elite Institutes of India

2011-07-26T23:41:00.000+05:30

Recently, there was an article in ET which talked about inefficient utilization of land by our educational institutions. It primarily focused on IIMs, but what the author says is applicable to IITs and other Institutes as well.

Prof. T T Ram Mohan, in his blog mentioned that it is important for Indian institutions to have a residential campus, and hence the student density cannot be comparable to that of foreign institutions. But he does seem to agree that the class size should be higher to justify the amount of land that IIMs have.

In this regard, I remember my discussion with the Architect of IIT Kanpur more than a decade ago. Kanvinde (senior) was visiting IITK and I asked him a question that I was curious about ever since my student days. Why did he design the Faculty Building to be a six-storey building, while all other buildings in the academic area were restricted to three floors. He told me that the original brief to him was that the academic area had to be designed for 20,000 students (yes, I asked him twice, if he really meant TWENTY THOUSAND, and he did). The first phase would be for 2,000 students. Even in 1960, when land was not considered such a scarce resource, it was not so free that we design an Institute with a student density of 2 per acre (we have more than 1000 acres of land). The planning even at that stage was that of 20 students per acre. (By the way, it took us 30 years to have a student strength exceeding 2,000.)

Of course, amongst other buildings that he designed early on, he did not want to have multiple storey lecture hall complex, because movement of thousands of students within 5 minutes of break time between lectures would be very difficult. The library could not be much taller since books are too heavy a load. And before he could design the next building in the academic area, he got a revised brief. Just to concentrate on 2,000 students, and not worry about future growth. So all the buildings after that had a maximum of 3 floors.

Fifty years later, we are still at only 5,000 students. Even the 20-year future planning is not getting us anywhere close to 20,000 students for which the land was apparently given by the government.

By the way, IIT Delhi has a density of more than 25 students per acre, and they provide similar quality of education as IIT Kanpur. So, one can't really argue that an ultra-low student density is necessary for excellence. And IIT Delhi cannot really afford to tear down all its old buildings and construct taller buildings instead. We have empty land, and can construct tall buildings on them. So the land we have can actually support a much higher student density. Even on fully residential basis, it should be possible to support 50 students per acre easily. That is ten times the size of current student body.

Of course, many at IIT Kanpur will argue that the issue is not that of student density, but of absolute number of students. One cannot maintain excellence when the size becomes too large. Fair enough. (Actually, I don't fully agree with that. I think we haven't explored more efficient administrative structures. But that is for another blog some other day. For now, let me agree with this, to avoid digression.) But if that is the case, then the government has clearly made a mistake by giving us so much land. They thought in 1960 that such a large institute is possible. Let the Government correct its mistake by taking away the unused land. Let it set up other educational institutions on that land. Let there be a cluster of educational institutions on the land which has not been utilized for the last 50 years, and is not likely to be utilized for the next 50 years.

I am giving example of IIT Kanpur only because I am most familiar with this campus. The student density of most IIX campuses is extremely low.

IISERs Await Legal Sanction to Award Degrees

2011-07-24T01:50:00.000+05:30

In the past I have written about new IITs not having legal sanction to award degrees. But recently, I came across a news item that IISERs are in worse situation. Two of them were started in 2006, and the first batch has completed five years of stay, and the academic curriculum that was told to them. They were promised a degree, which was illegal. No one can promise a degree without having the authority to award the degrees. IISERs did not have that authority. People trusted the two Directors. After all, they were appointed by the Central Government. The Government had promised funding and was indeed providing money. So the fact that they were doing something illegal was ignored. It was just a technicality that would be taken care of soon.

But "soon" turned into weeks, months, and indeed years. And now after the first batch of students have completed their curriculum, that technicality hasn't been taken care of yet. So they cannot have a convocation and they cannot receive a degree. Without a recognized degree, the students' careers can be in serious trouble. Would there be a Tandon committee equivalent to investigate this.

In the meanwhile, government has started 3 more IISERs, 8 more IITs, and several more NITs, etc., all without the parliament conferring the right to award degrees to these institutions.

Just imagine what would happen if some private person puts an advertisement in the newspaper saying that s/he is starting a college which will give degrees.

UGC has strictly told all deemed universities and those who want to become deemed universities that they can give degrees to only those students who are ADMITTED AFTER they were conferred the right to award degrees. But such rules are implemented selectively and who is the promoter matters. If the government has a stake, then rules are mere technicalities.

I hope Parliament will pass all appropriate bills to grant university status to all new IISERs, IITs, NITs, and others, in the monsoon session which is starting in a week.

Should IIT Directors be Shortlisted by Board

2011-07-23T00:19:00.000+05:30

There was a recent newspaper article, which mentioned that IIM Ahmedabad may be allowed some more autonomy. In particular, it mentioned that if the modifications to MoA are approved by the government, the board will shortlist just three candidates for the post of Director, and send them to the Ministry of HRD. MHRD will have to pick up one of the three persons.

I believe that such a mechanism would be ideal for not just IIM Ahmedabad, but most Central Government Educational Institutions, including IITs and NITs.

The Board members have a greater stake in the Institute, since they have been involved in policy making at the highest level, and would, in general, be able to judge the suitability of the candidates in a better way. This is not to say that MHRD has not been doing a good job of selecting Directors. Most of the Directors are indeed very distinguished and have reasonable amount of administrative experience. And a few who have not performed, would get selected in the modified scheme as well.

But, two things will happen if Board takes the role of selecting a panel of 3, out of which MHRD must select one. One, MHRD delays the whole process in a large number of cases. For example, a large number of NITs were without a full-time regular Director for several months. The boards will not delay sending the list, one hopes. Second, there have been many instances of Directors spending more time in Shastri Bhavan (MHRD offices) than on campus. With this change, the probability will be higher that Directors will feel more accountable to the board than the ministry.

Further, if we look at the system of selection of Directors in recent times, MHRD usually bunches multiple appointments. If they have to select 10 Directors, they will short-list only 15 candidates, and do a joint interview of all 15, and then take a decision on which 10 to be selected and which NITs they should be sent to. Earlier practice was to shortlist 8-10 candidates for each position of Director, and hold the interviews/discussion separately for Director of each Institute. But with increase in the number of institutes, this is no longer practical. This effectively means that the shortlisting becomes extremely important, which is not good.

Also, the board has internal representation in terms of two faculty members. It is important that the internal stake holders have at least some say during the selection process of the Director.

A process at the level of board is also likely to be more transparent.

So once IIM Ahmedabad is given this flexibility, we should ask for the same for all other central government institutions.

Stop Ragging

2011-07-20T17:59:00.000+05:30

IIT Kanpur has just opened its portals for a new batch. These are young men and women (well, mostly men), most of whom are going to stay outside the comfort of their home for the first time in their lives. When you meet them, you immediately see the advantage of Kota. Those who have lived in hostel for their preparations are the confident ones. Others are shy, and a bit scared. Excited about the new journey, but worried about the first couple of weeks.

Most of them have heard of ragging. How could they not. They all have signed a declaration that they will not indulge in ragging of their batchmates. The declaration has been signed by all students of the Institute. It has been counter-signed by the parents. They all agree to accept any disciplinary action that the Institute might take, if they are caught ragging. The Institute has these posters all over the place asking students not to indulge in ragging. They have all been assigned a student guide and a faculty counsellor. They have been given mobile numbers of these people and others to report any ragging. There will be surprise checks in the night in the hostels by anti-ragging squads. Wardens will be on alert. But these freshers know that that is not enough. They have already been told infinite number of times that they will not be treated as equals for some time. They will have to follow orders, which they do not wish to follow. They will be embarrassed, laughed at, and warned not to complain. A complaint will only make sure that the fun activity (fun for whom?) is changed to physical ragging. Worse, they are told that if they resist ragging, no senior will ever help them in the next 4 years. The poor fresher does not realize what a blessing it will be to not interact with most seniors in the next 4 years. And, by the way, we call it "introduction", since "ragging" has been banned by Supreme Court. Will SC ban "introduction" next.

To be fair, there is none of those physical harm, or discomfort, generally no abuses on IITK campus. But this does not mean that there is no ragging.

Simply defined, ragging is any form of abuse of new students (“freshers”) by existing students (“seniors”). It could be an act by seniors which could cause annoyance or harm (psychological or physical) to the freshers. Ragging could also include seniors forcing the freshers to carry out an act which could be embarrassing.

Ragging is, no doubt, a menace in our institutions of higher learning, which in its extreme form has even resulted in deaths. University Grants Commission (UGC) has framed rules that every higher education institute is required to follow in order to curb ragging. Besides the obvious sort of measures, which I mentioned above in respect to IITK campus, there are some extreme measures too, which include a compulsory FIR within 24 hours of a ragging case coming to the notice of the institution. It is suggested that as per the Supreme Court guidelines on curb of ragging, the police will treat the senior students accused of ragging humanely and not as a criminal. There are supposed to be district level committees, with representation from police and district officials.

While the ragging appears to have reduced in the last few years, its prevalence is still unacceptably high. One of the serious problems in curbing ragging is the “zero tolerance” policy that everyone is recommending today. In my discussion with a Dean of Students’ Affairs at a reputed institute, it turned out that they feel helpless. If a minor case is reported, they would like to give a small punishment commensurate with the act, which would act as a deterrent to others from repeating the act. Now, they do nothing, and would simply destroy the complaint and give an oral warning at most. If they were to punish the senior student, there would have to be a record of complaint and punishment. If the record says that it was a ragging case, someone could ask them why they did not report the matter to police as per the rules. It would be difficult to argue for an Institute that they did not file an FIR because they did not trust that police will handle such cases with sensitivity.

But when the institute trashes ragging complaints and give only oral warnings, the message to the student community is loud and clear. That the institute will tolerate ragging till it reaches a level where they feel it is justified to involve police. No academic institute wants to involve police and district administration for small matters. By insisting that they do, UGC and others have actually tied the hands of the institutes in their efforts to curb ragging.

If an institute wants to curb ragging, it is extremely important that first small steps be recognized by the administration and prevented. The first step in ragging is identification of freshers. Different institutes have different ways to identify freshers, but invariably this will involve seniors controlling what juniors wear. Sometimes it could be that they wear proper pants and shirts along with dress shoes all the time (while seniors would wear T-shirts, or shorts, or slippers to distinguish themselves from freshers). At other times, it could be a specific hair cut that is imposed. Or it could be a specific colour of the uniform. Academic administrators ignore this as they don’t want to interfere in a “good” tradition of the campus which teaches the freshers how to present themselves. They don’t understand or do not wish to understand that such differentiation will lead to discrimination. If at all the freshers need to know how to present themselves, then the best way is for the seniors to demonstrate that. And in any case, this sort of teaching is not necessary in the first week of their stay on a campus. (This happens on IITK campus also, I am told by some first year students.)

There are other “traditions” on some campuses, which lead to hardships to some students and therefore come under the ambit of ragging. The freshers are forced to contribute a small amount for a party. The amount is small enough (like Rs. 200) that it is difficult for only a few students to afford. The seniors would organize a party outside the campus where the anti-ragging committee members are not likely to make a surprise visit. And it really is free-for-all ragging. While many institutes forbid seniors to go to the hostel rooms of freshers and vice versa in the first month, but they will refuse to take responsibility of anything that happens outside the campus. The institutes need to make sure that anything done against the will of the freshers, including a small financial contribution, or a party outside the campus, has to be stopped.

One of the reasons why it is difficult to stop ragging is that the first year students do not know anyone on campus. They do not know how serious the Institute is about stopping of ragging. They cannot trust the anti ragging committee, or simply feel shy of approaching them. When seniors know that no complaints will be made, they are not afraid of rules. So the focus in the first few days should be to make freshers comfortable on campus. Also, there should be so much interaction between faculty and freshers that not just the shyness goes away, but seniors also notice the close interactions. They know that during such interaction, some fresher may actually complain about ragging.

When I was at LNMIIT Jaipur, we would ask the freshers to join the Institute a week before the seniors would come. In this one week, there would be an orientation program, where there would be several lectures on general topics – not about their course, but on campus life, time management, stress management, values, and so on. Since these are more interesting topics in the beginning than Physics and Chemistry, it brought a lot more interaction between students and faculty, and that too at a time when the only seniors on campus are those who have been carefully chosen as volunteers to help the freshers in settling down. We also organized several matches between faculty and freshers in different sports – cricket, badminton, table tennis, etc. - further cementing the ties. The nature of interaction would vary from one institute to the other. But there must be some interaction, if ragging has to be curbed. In IIT Kanpur, one faculty member is assigned responsibility of talking to 5-6 students. He would meet them, invite them to have a meal at home, and interact with them so that they feel comfortable to discuss any problems, including ragging, if the need arises.

A place where discrimination usually starts is the mess. The fresher can be easily identified there, because he would not be aware of the culture of the place, and would be asking simple questions. Invariably, the seniors would either ask freshers to sit with them where they can carry out verbal ragging, or they will ask the freshers to stand last in the queue, just to discriminate against them. Our solution at LNMIIT was to make sure that at least one faculty member is eating in the mess during every meal in the first couple of weeks.

Another strategy adopted was to find any news item where a student had been punished for ragging in any university in the country, and forward that news item on email to all students. This is sending a strong message to students that if such an incident happens on our campus, we will not shy away from taking a similar action.

Yet another strategy is to involve parents. Students do not want their parents to get any negative news about their behaviour on campus. So when there was a suspicion that someone may have indulged in some ragging, we would call up his parents, and tell them that if their son is caught later on with some proof, the punishment will be serious. Parents will ensure that he does not do anything silly again.

We also adopted community punishment. We told all students that if there is ragging in any hostel wing, and if we are not able to identify specific individuals who were involved, then the whole wing will be fined. This ensured that if there is even one student in the wing who is opposed to ragging, will make that ragging does not take place in his wing. And one will find such students in every wing. And once you have ensured that there will be no ragging in the hostels, you have already won the war.

It is possible to eradicate ragging from our institutes and universities. If there is a will, there is a way.

Derailment of Kalka Mail

2011-07-19T16:54:00.000+05:30

As I have mentioned in the introduction to my blog, I will write mostly about education, but sometimes, I will write about other issues as well. This post is related to my older passion, trains. The worst train disaster of the year happened in my backyard a few days ago. Kalka Mail derailed and lots of coaches climbed on top of each other, resulting in more than 60 deaths and over 250 injured. There is enough speculation in the media about the cause of the train accident, and I will wait for the report of the Chief Commissioner of Railway Safety before believing any of the theories being forwarded by different people.

This post is really not about this particular accident, but about how easy it is to do the right things which we still do not do.

In the year 2000, we imported a new coaching technology from LHB. This was the first major design change of the coaches after 30 years, when Integral Coaches started getting manufactured. LHB coaches are a huge improvement over IC coaches. Not only they look nicer, they are lighter, they have more capacity, they have much better ride quality, they require significantly less maintenance, and most importantly, a HUGE improvement in safety.

The coaches have anti-telescopic feature, that is, when there is an accident the coaches don't tend to climb on top of the next one. The coaches have crumple zones on both ends to take the brunt of the pressure in such situations. The coupling used (CBC) is stronger and the coaches do not separate out during accident. All these save precious innocent lives during accidents.

There were some initial hiccups in adopting technology for Indian conditions, and starting the indigenous manufacturing of coaches based on LHB design. But, all the problems were sorted out in about 3-4 years.

Now, if LHB coaches are so much better than Integral coaches, why do we continue to produce Integral coaches and only a small number of LHB coaches. I suspect that we do so because Railways is broke and cannot afford to buy LHB coaches. Remember that train fares have not been raised in the last 8 years, exactly the same time that LHB technology has been around in the country. (And that too despite a greater than 100 percent increase in the running costs during the period.) LHB coaches require almost double the capital investment, though one will save in the operating cost during the lifetime of the coach due to significantly reduced maintenance requirement.

If you look at the estimate of how much would be the cost of running a train using LHB coaches versus Integral coaches (including costs of all infrastructure, salaries, etc.), it is estimated to be higher in the range of 0 to 5 percent. That is, the pro-LHB folks would say that there is no additional cost because of huge savings in maintenance cost, while on the other extreme, some people believe that the cost may be higher by up to 5 percent.

Even if we assume the worst case, railways could have easily increased the fare by 5 percent in the last 8 years. That is about half a percent per year. I am sure Indian public would have easily paid that much extra for a much safer travel. And this extra cash would have helped Railways in procuring LHB coaches. If a decision was taken 8 years ago to produce only LHB coaches, today about 25 percent of the coaches of the Indian Railways would have been LHB coaches. That means all Superfast trains in the country would have had an LHB rake, including Kalka Mail, and within a few more years, we would have had an LHB rake for all mail/express trains as well.

Railways decided to be populist and not increase the fares, leading to a situation where Railways could not afford to introduce LHB coaches at a fast enough rate. This leads to increased deaths in accidents like the one happened last week.

There is no free lunch. We either pay in rupees, or we pay in blood. Unfortunately, the choice is not ours. The payment method is decided by Rail Bhavan.

Technology Enhanced Learning

2011-07-18T09:39:00.000+05:30

The biggest challenge facing the tertiary education sector, and particularly the technical education sector, is the dearth of high quality faculty. The experts tell us that with the use of technology, we can extend the reach of good faculty on one hand, and enable better learning despite poorer faculty on the other hand.

In the 80s and 90s, many attempts were made at recording lectures of faculty members. These lectures were initially distributed as video cassettes. As technology progressed, we started using VCDs and DVDs. Now, such lectures can be downloaded through Internet. Distribution of lectures through a television channel has also been tried (and continues even now). However, the quality of such videos left much to be desired. When these were recorded in a studio setting, the lack of students made it appear artificial. And when actual classroom recordings were done, the lights and camera angles left much to be desired.

When the video technology did not do wonders, the experts did not blame it on the quality of videos. They instead argued that the problem is lack of interaction. The questions that students may have had are not being answered immediately in this model, as the communication is one-way. So the videos could at best be used as supplementary material, just like books.

Without interaction, student would soon lose interest. They suggested that a classroom lecture should be beamed live to distant locations with at least an audio back channel for the remote student to ask questions. The interaction would make sure that there is sufficient interest in the remote students. The earlier such attempts were again beset with quality, but latest systems genuinely give remote students a sense of almost being part of the class. They can watch the lecturer, the board, and the presentation material, as clearly as the students in the local lecture hall. They can ask questions. They can be watched by lecturer all the time.

However, distance education based on video conferencing has its limitations. The cost is still high as all remote locations need to have decent quality cameras, and high quality audio. But that cost is rapidly coming down. The bigger problems are the logistics issues. The timetable of different institutions needs to be synchronized in some way for lectures of one institute to be available for the students of the other institute(s). This is not practical many times. The curriculum of all the institutes involved in such a setting will have to be same as well. Again, this may not be possible. Also, a lecture with an audience of 1000 students, whether local or remote, can not be truly interactive. So the video conferencing as an interactive mode of classroom does not scale up beyond a point. And, if interaction is going to be limited or non-existent, why spend significant amount of resources on this mode. Why not go back to what we were attempting in the 90s, video recorded lectures that can be played any time, any where.

There is another problem in this whole discussion. We started off with the premise that the technology will help extend the reach of good faculty, and will enable students to learn despite poor quality faculty. The good faculty has no incentive (and only disincentives in terms of increased workload) to extend his/her reach. And no body wants to admit that they are poor quality teachers. So, if playing a video in my class is an admission that I am poor quality teacher and hence I am showing a video delivered by someone else, then I will never show a video in the class.

So we need to develop applications of technology through which we can claim convincingly that it is helping the quality of learning irrespective of whether the local instructor is good or average. There should be no stigma attached to the use of technology.

Recently, I visited Waikato Institute of Technology, an Institute in Hamilton, New Zealand. There I watched an instructor teaching his class. He started teaching his class and during the class, he would take a break and show a video on a related topic. He had interwoven his own teaching and these videos so nicely that the overall learning experience was excellent. The videos were mostly searched from youtube. He told me that he spent a lot of effort in searching for videos on related topics. He would then watch parts of those videos, and after a painstaking effort, would choose those videos which perfectly blend with his own lecture plan. Of course, he was there to answer any question that the students may have. So it was not a passive session, but very much an interactive one. Showing such videos broke the monotonic delivery of the lecture, and therefore the students were more attentive throughout.

He also made another interesting point. He said that today’s generation is what he called the “i-pod” generation, which is always listening to music. That meant that they are listening to a different voice every few minutes, and they would get bored if they were to hear the same sound for 50 minutes. A video lecture of some other expert also caters to their need to listen to different sounds.

After this experience, I started visiting sites of the best universities in the world, and they all have lots of video lectures available for download and viewing by anyone in the world. I watched a large number of them, and realized that these were a great resource for learning. (I must add here that many of these would be inaccessible to our students because of the accent of the speaker.)

So a new model for enhancing learning using technology seems to be emerging. An instructor can now search for videos on a per topic basis, choose the best one, and play them in the class. She is available in the class for answering any questions. So there is interaction in the class. Since the instructor is not dependent on only one source, the differences in the curriculum are no longer important. There is no need to synchronize the timetable. The infrastructure needed in the lecture hall is only a projector, which is standard equipment today in most classrooms across the country. The instructor can download the videos on the laptop a priori, or if the Internet connection is good and is reliable, then they can be shown right off the Internet in the class. The downloaded content or the links could be put up on the course website, so that students can look at them again any time, any where. The videos can be short 5-10 minutes that is embedded into a larger lecture, or they can be 45-50 minutes, a replacement of the lecture (but with interaction with the instructor).

A significant value of the model is that it enhances effectiveness of both an average instructor as well as a good instructor. A good teacher too can use such resources from the Internet to enrich the experience of her students further. So there is no stigma that an average instructor would feel in using this.

The role of the local instructor continues to be very important. While in selecting the appropriate video lectures, she may take help from others, but is still responsible for delivering those parts of the course for which no good videos could be found. Also, she has to manage interaction in the class, answering all questions. Further, the assignments, projects, etc., are still her responsibility. So she continues to have the respect of the class, and that aids the learning process.

In summary, using selected high quality videos that are integrated properly into the teaching plan of an individual instructor, can enhance quality of teaching. A large number of free videos are available, and the infrastructure requirement are minimal. And hence, this could be a model for "Technology Enhanced Learning."

The largest repository of video lectures in India has been created under the National Program for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL). This is a joint program of seven IITs, and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, funded by Ministry of Human Resources and Development. They have developed a large number of courses for engineering students. The biggest advantage of these videos is the familiar language/accent of the instructors.

The other good source for such lectures is MIT’s Open CourseWare (OCW). Massachusetts Institute of Technology has put all its course material on the web. One section of the website is OCW Scholar, where the lectures have been annotated, along with all the assignments and their solutions. There are discussions groups associated with each course, where any learner can participate. The content is so rich in OCW Scholar that MIT claims that it can be used by independent learners to gain knowledge. A large number of universities in the world are increasingly putting up similar course videos and other content on the web.

If one is looking for short 5-10 minute videos on a topic, then youtube is the best resource to search. For some topics, particularly Mathematics, Khan Academy has excellent videos, starting from primary school to college education.

There are lots of other resources, and I have only listed a few here. If you know of some really wonderful resource, please mention that in the comments.

Of course, when an institute or a university decides to encourage its faculty to use these educational resources on the web, they must understand that these resources (at least with the current technology) are to enhance learning, and not to replace the instructor.

Note: This is an edited version of the article that has appeared in the latest issue of EDU magazine, Teaching Tools for Generation iPod.

History of Computing in India

2011-07-14T18:20:00.000+05:30

Recently, I read Ross Bassett excellent paper titled, "Aligning India in the Cold War Era: Indian Technical Elites, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, and Computing in India and the United States." This paper talks about history of computing in India, and the relationship of US and Indian academicians and technical people. It was published by JHU in October 2009, and is available here.

A couple of interesting points.

On page 14, it says, "Part of the reason the Indian government sought different sponsors [for different IITs] was to introduce a variety of ideas into its engineering institutions."

It is obvious that the government of the day was very aware of the need of experiments in educational institutions. Today, most stake holders want similarity across all educational institutions. Most states have a technical university, which will force same syllabus in hundreds of colleges affiliated to it. A state like UP is trying to create common syllabus across all state universities for all programs, including BTech, BA, BCom, BSc, BEd, and so on. Everyone is being encouraged, if not forced, to admit students through a single exam.

Another interesting observation is the undergraduate institute of Computer Science professors in top 10 CS Departments of US. In 2008, the author looked at the background of all Indian professors (those who did undergraduate studies in India) in the top 10 CS departments of US. There were 38 such faculty members (almost 4 per department, that is a lot). The two IITs dominated this group - 11 from IIT Madras, and 10 from IIT Kanpur. (5 from IIT Delhi, 4 from IIT Bombay, none from any other IIT.) I guess this reflects the migration of undergraduate students to US in 80s and 90s, which was perhaps a lot more from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur at that time.

IIIT Delhi: An Innovative Admission Process

2011-07-07T23:35:00.001+05:30

This appears to be a month when I will write less about my ideas, and write more about the innovation in higher education that some institutes are carrying out. Today, I want to write about the novel and innovative admission process that IIIT Delhi has adopted for its under-graduate program. (Actually, one can learn a lot from their PG admission strategies also, but I will focus on UG admission today.)

First, the mandatory disclosure. I am a member of their Academic Senate. However, I have attended my first meeting only recently, and share no credit for this innovation.

First a bit about Indrapastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Delhi. It is an Institute solely focused on IT education and research, set up in 2008 by Delhi Government, and is a university empowered to give its own degrees. Within three years of its existence, it has built an awesome reputation. Excellent faculty. A visionary Director.

The process for under-graduate admission starts with the question: What type of students do we want. A question that is rarely asked by universities and colleges in India. As a first cut solution, one will argue that we want students who know their science well, and have an aptitude for engineering or more specifically IT. Aptitude! They already are different from everybody else. But they go much beyond this initial answer.

Should we admit students who have reasonable aptitude and are excellent in science. Or should we admit students who are reasonably good in science, and have excellent aptitude. Most institutes would vote for the former (that is, if they at all think about it this way). It is then perhaps assumed that 60% (or whatever) marks in 12th class is sufficient indication of reasonable aptitude. So they will have a test based on Physics, Chemistry and Maths, and rank applicants based on score in the test. But IIIT Delhi is different. They think aptitude is lot more important. So they will consider 80% marks in 12th as sufficient academic preparation, and take an entrance test which tests aptitude. The ranking is based exclusively on this aptitude test. (As an aside, this is the method for selecting students from within Delhi. They do admit some non-Delhi students which is done through AIEEE. They do not ask them to come to Delhi to give the aptitude test.)

The story does not end here. The next question they ask is whether it is really important for someone studying IT to know a lot of Physics, Maths, and Chemistry at the 12th class level. And their answer is that just like engineering colleges are starting to offer basic biology related courses in their curriculum, the requirement of even Physics and Chemistry knowledge is to a minimal level, and if needed, that knowledge can be imparted in the Institute. So, the eligibility is just Mathematics with any other 4 subjects in 12th class. So, they are creating an opportunity for students who have done Maths, Commerce, Economics, etc., in the 12th class, to get into a BTech (IT) Program. It is interesting and I certainly admire the courage of IIIT to conduct this experiment. (I am told that not many people from non-science streams applied this year. Perhaps the message did not go across. Hopefully, more students will take advantage of this from next year onwards.)

The minimum eligibility is 80% marks in Maths, and 80% marks overall in 5 subjects in 12th class. They say that the cut-off is on the higher side since they do not want a very large number of students to apply for a small number of seats. And you fill up their form after the 12th class result is out. They are not in the business of creating a huge profit through their admission process. Their cut-off is high enough that students who only did coaching by ignoring their 12th class completely are less likely to be eligible. In their own little way, they are encouraging school education in Delhi, without burdening the kids with the pressure to get close to 100% as some of the colleges in Delhi University do.

And finally, they seem to have done their home work well in terms of how to judge aptitude for IT. So the exam consists of five areas: Comprehension, Data Interpretation, Mathematical Ability, Analytical Ability, and Decision Making.

The entire process is online. One fills in form, takes the print out of the admit card, and just reaches the examination center. From the last date of filling up the form to the announcement of results, it takes only 18 days. (There is no typo. It is not 18 weeks.)

The admission process and many other innovations being carried out at IIIT confirm my belief that leadership is extremely important for the success of an institute, even more so for a new institute.

Why I Like the 5-year Integrated PGP at IIM Indore

2011-07-06T23:29:00.000+05:30

IIM Indore announced a few days ago that it is starting a 5-year Integrated Post-Graduate Program in Management (IPGP), for students who have finished 12th class. There is a lot of debate on the net whether it is a good move by IIM Indore. Apparently, Directors of some IIMs believe that it will lower the value of brand IIM. There is also some debate on whether it is a good idea to have an undergraduate program in Management. A lot of people believe that the basic undergraduate education should not be in management. There is also a debate on whether students should join this, considering the high cost of the program. Also, if, for some reason, the student decides to drop in between, then s/he gets a diploma and not a degree after three years of studies.

I am pretty excited about this announcement for several reasons.

In general, any well thought of experiment in education space excites me. There is a severe dearth of experiments and new models for higher education. If an IIM is doing it, then they certainly would have given it a lot of thought and done a cost-benefit analysis from its own perspective and from the perspective of its potential students. It may fly or not fly in the future, but as Prof. Kelkar (founding Director of IIT Kanpur) used to say, "if educational institutions won't do experiments, who else will."

IIM Indore is planning to teach lots of different things in the first 3 years. These will include Maths, Computer Science, Biological Sciences, History, Political Science, Literature, Economics, Finance, Ethics, Law, and a lot of things related to business management. They will also include a foreign language (I hope they consider English as Indian language), and soft skills. This will really be a very broad based program, unlike most undergraduate programs in the country. I think there is a need to get out of the thinking that undergraduate is a terminal degree and is meant to create a specialist out of you. I hope other universities will follow IIM Indore and make their undergraduate programs more broad based.

There is a strong need in the country to have a higher education system which is outside the excessive control of regulators. In India, regulators don't regulate, they control. Today, we have PG Diploma programs, which despite AICTE's repeated attempts, have remained somewhat independent, and of course, we have a shining example of ISB, which offers excellent education at PG level without any approval of AICTE. We have nothing similar at the UG level. After this program, though most students will complete IPGP in 5 years, we will have some people getting out early
with just a diploma. And hopefully with the quality of education they would have received, they would find some decent jobs. This should encourage people to offer programs which sell not because they have a stamp of AICTE, but because industry and society at large values it for its quality.

Another reason for liking this program is the tuition they are charging. I have often argued that India has extremely poor quality education since institutions are not allowed to charge what it takes to offer high quality. In an earlier article on this blog, Pricing Engineering Education, I had argued that NIT quality education costs Rs. 2.5 lakhs per year. But since costs of IITs and NITs are hidden from parents, people don't believe those numbers. With IIM Indore charging Rs. 3 lakhs per year, I hope it will make fee regulators think and at least allow the best colleges to charge a more realistic tuition.

IIM Indore will be dependent on visiting faculty for teaching many of the under-graduate courses. I am sure they will only like to invite the very best faculty members for teaching these courses, and would be willing to give a decent payment for the same. Most NITs have a serious shortage of faculty, particularly in IT and other "popular" disciplines. But they bring in visiting faculty by paying Rs. 1000 per hour, peanuts really, and while a few serious people may still come in to help, a lot of visiting faculty is very poor quality. (Compare this with LNMIIT Jaipur, where we used to pay up to Rs. 5000 per hour.) I think a government institute paying a decent remuneration to visiting faculty will encourage NITs and other government institutes to treat their own visiting faculty better, and hopefully that will improve the quality of education in all such places.

In short, this is a wonderful experiment, and each aspect of the experiment will encourage other players in higher education to do things in better ways.

Will JEE fill up more seats this year

2011-07-05T22:50:00.000+05:30

Last month, I had written about a judgement of Andhra Pradesh High Court which directed JEE to do something to fill up more seats this year. The blog article is here. Last year, 443 seats remained vacant because there were not sufficient number of qualified candidates available to fill them up (1 OBC, 7 SC, 232 ST, and 203 PD - Physically challenged). There were an additional 781 seats that went vacant because selected students did not join (501 General, 109 OBC, 100 SC, 44 ST, and 27 PD). So the total number of vacant seats were 1224. The court was not perturbed by 443 seats. It did not want IITs to lower their standard (and in any case, most of these would result in the corresponding seat in the preparatory course). But the court was seriously perturbed by the 781 seats which went vacant due to students not joining after paying the initial fee.

In the beginning of June 2011, there was a meeting of Directors of all IITs to discuss the court order. They decided to have a 3rd round of seat allocation. Last year, there were only two rounds of seat allocation.

I have a problem with this. If you read the court order, it mildly suggests that perhaps another round of seat allocation will help. In that sense, the Directors have followed the court order and the matter is over. But the court order says much more than obliquely suggesting the third round. Read this:

"It baffles me to note that academicians and administrators of the premier institutions like IITs cannot find a much better process of admission than stopping with the second round of counseling, come what may be the vacancy position in the institutions. It is time that the scholarly inputs are borrowed and implemented at the earliest so that a national waste will not get repeated. I hope and trust that the remedial measures are put in place before the next academic year’s counseling is undertaken."

It is clear that the court is concerned about the vacant seats and wants JEE to do whatever is feasible to reduce the number of vacancies, and some oblique references to 3rd round were just a suggestion, and not the order of the court.

It is clear to me and must have been clear to Directors (and Chairpersons of JEE at different IITs) that a third round of seat allocation will not result in any significant drop in the number of vacant seats. (If you read my previous article on this, I had said even before the meeting of the Directors that the third round will not be effective unless it is conducted after the beginning of the semester. So it is not something that I am saying now with better information on this year's process.)

My contention is that by doing the 3rd round of seat allocation, and taking no other step for reducing the vacancies, JEE is not following the spirit of the court order, as the 3rd round could not possibly solve the problem which the court has ordered it to solve. If there was too little time to come up with the solution for this year, JEE should have gone back to the court and requested for time till next year. Or it should have challenged the court decision. By doing neither, it has accepted the court decision, but still not implemented it in spirit.

Summer Camp at IIT Gandhinagar

2011-07-04T23:45:00.000+05:30

I had promised to do this 20 days ago, but didn't find time to do so. But before I describe this incredible initiative at IIT-GN, the standard disclosure: I am a guest professor at IIT Gandhinagar.

What do engineering students do in the summer. Internships, of course. But normally speaking most students are able to get an exciting internship in the summer after 3rd year. The number is much smaller after 2nd year, and most 1st year students waste their summers. IIT Gandhinagar debated if somehow life can be made exciting for students who either do not have a very exciting summer internship opportunity, or for whatever reason don't want a typical technical work that internship involves. And they came up with this idea of holding a summer camp on their campus. I will highlight a few points here. You could read all about it at the summer camp website.

The camp is of one month duration from 15th June to 15th July. It has a mix of activities. Being a technology institute, no activity can be complete without learning of some technology. So they have workshops on Autodesk and Lab-view. To encourage students to work on relevant problems and sensitize them to the problems in the society, there is a design challenge in the camp. This year, the students will spend time with blind people, and come up with better guidance system for them. Students will be able to learn a sport of their choice (as long as their choice is one of football, volleyball, basketball and table tennis). If they do really well, they can get into the IIT-GN team for the Inter-IIT Sports Meet in December 2011. There will be literary component too. They will be reading and discussing in detail the book, "Makers of Modern India" by the famous historian, Ramachandra Guha. And no camp can be an attractive option to the young generation, if it does not have a component of performing arts, particularly dance. So they learn the basics of theater and media editing, and get to learn Salsa dance as well.

It is really a very innovative program by IIT Gandhinagar to engage their students in the summer to make them complete human beings.

A suggestion from my side, since I know some of them will read this. Open this up for non-IIT students, primarily to diversify the experience of your students. Bring in some students from other disciplines, a few from law, a few from humanities, and may be a few from abroad who may want to experience India through such a program. You can charge these outside students some minimal amount to take care of your additional incremental costs.

And I hope other institutes start something like this. I receive more than 1000 emails every year asking for summer internship. If such summer programs become popular, this number may become more manageable and I am may actually start responding to such emails again.

Need Help in Teaching Programming to First Year Students

2011-06-15T22:51:00.000+05:30

This is not the usual blog article. I am not giving my opinions and ideas, nor I am forwarding others' ideas/opinions that I find interesting. I am seeking YOUR ideas and opinions.

So, here is the issue. I am the instructor for the first year programming course at IIT Kanpur in the coming semester. It is called, "Principles of Computing" and the focus is to learn how to use computation in problem solving. So algorithmic thinking is what we want to inculcate. Since some programming language has to be used as a vehicle for this purpose, the Institute has decided on "C" language. So, the language is not negotiable at this time, even though I know that there are strong views of people on this. Also, the labs are going to be Linux (some recent fedora distribution most probably, that too is not negotiable). The last time I taught this course was 16 years ago. "Pascal" was the language used at that time. And there were less than 200 students.

I want your ideas on improving learning in this course.

To begin with, a bit more detail about the course structure. We will have three one-hour lectures a week for about 525 students (roughly 60 percent of the students who take admission this year). There will be one one-hour tutorial in small groups of 35 students each. And there will be one 3-hour lab for all students. Every day, 3 sections will have lab, so about 105-110 students will have a lab every day. Besides the instructor, there is one tutor and two teaching assistants for each section of 35 students. Tutors take care of tutorials, while tutors and TAs jointly take care of the labs. Tutors are normally either faculty members or PhD students, while TAs are normally MTech students, though some tutors will also be MTech students.

Now the questions.

First, is there some diagnostic test or some other mechanism to figure out the background of each student. I am expecting that a quarter of the students would have never done any programming. The second group would be good at algorithmic thinking, but would have done programming in a language other than 'C'. The third group would have done programming in 'C' but still no algorithmic thinking. One wishes they hadn't learnt programming. And finally the group which does not need this course. It is easy to identify the first group - just ask - but how do you identify the other three groups so that there can be appropriate pedagogical interventions for each group.

Second, What are the good books as textbooks. I have gone through many 'C' books but not very happy with any of them. I am looking for something that focuses on "algorithmic thinking." It should develop the habit of making flow charts and writing pseudo code, before worrying about syntax of any computer language. If there is no 'C' book which has good enough focus on "algorithmic thinking" then I don't mind having two books.

Third, what interventions can be there for different groups - particularly the first group and the last group. Having additional labs/tutorials for the first group in the first couple of weeks - is this good enough, or should we plan to do this throughout the semester. Would you suggest some material which is specifically targeted at novice users. I am thinking of offering projects to the 4th group to keep them engaged. Can something else be done.

Fourth, I am looking for interesting videos of 5-10 minutes which explain some aspect of problem solving (algorithms), which I could use once in a while in the class just to give a different perspective, to make lectures more interesting, to ensure that students don't sleep in the class, etc. But they could also be linked from the course website (moodle) so that people can watch it on their own. Similarly any longer duration videos (but they will only be linked from course website, not played during the lecture). Any links would be deeply appreciated.

Fifth, I am planning to setup moodle, and use that as LMS for this course. How can I use blogging and wiki to improve learning. Is there a role that social networking can play in improving learning.

Sixth, how do I detect copying in the labs. Is there some software that can go through all the 110 odd submissions, and tell me whether the two programs are too close for comfort. Similarly, is there some software that can go through the program and comment on its quality - tell me if the student is using one letter variable names, or not writing any comments, etc.

Seventh, what is a good debugger environment for first time users. gdb is an overkill. Remember, we will use Linux environment. So the debugger has to run in Linux, and should be free.

Eighth, anything else that your experience can help me with.

If you feel more comfortable giving me advise on email, my address is: sanghi[AT]gmail.com

Thanks much in advance.

IIT Gandhinagar: An Innovative Orientation Program for Freshers

2011-06-11T14:28:00.002+05:30

While the JEE selected candidates is busy thinking of what should be the order of their preference of various program in different IITs, IIT Gandhinagar has been busy preparing a plan to engage the new students, when they arrive on campus. Recently I received a copy of the final plan, and I must say that it was innovative enough that I thought of describing to a larger audience of this blog.

The biggest departure from the norm is that it will be a 5-week program. Normally an institute will have a 2-3 day orientation program to give new students a feel for the place, tell them all the important rules, introduce them to important people and offices, help them in opening a bank account, register them for courses, get them computer accounts, and all the rest. And the classes start immediately thereafter.

IIT Gandhinagar believes that there are a couple of problems with this method. One, a couple of days are really not sufficient time for someone to settle down in a hostel environment for the first time in his/her life, and start a tough academic program immediately. For most students (though some would have stayed in a hostel in Kota) this would be a very major transition, and should be done over a longish period. The second issue is that most of these students have only studied Physics, Chemistry and Maths in the last 2-4 years (except some studies to pass the two other courses in 12th board). Most of them have not read a novel, or seen a movie, or played any games in this period. In order to develop their overall personality, there is a need to expose them to a variety of things, so that they can pick up their interests once again, and nurture that along with their studies.

And, therefore, IIT-GN would have a 5-week orientation program for the incoming batch, which will focus on social awareness, values, creativity, physical activities and sports, and team work and communication. There will be large number of guest lectures on different topics, visits to different places in Ahmedabad, meeting NGOs, workshops on painting, creative writing, and many more, performing arts like theater, music, and dance, vocational stuff like pottery, carpentry, etc., athletics, outdoor sports (both team sports and individual sports), and yoga, personality development workshops, and many more things. The list of activities is truly impressive. And in order to create the right environment for faculty-student interaction, there will be many activities involving both faculty and students (that is, not the activities where the faculty is teaching, but activities where they are equals). Hopefully, that will make sure that there is close interaction for the entire duration of the stay for these students, and the students will feel comfortable in approaching faculty, if they need any help or advice.

The hope is that all this would result in students discovering their passion, becoming more creative and confident to face any challenge in future, and they will become well rounded individual who are sensitive to their surroundings and have a strong value system.

I don't know how much they will achieve within 5 weeks, but this is certainly worth an experiment. As Prof. Kelkar (the founding Director of IIT Kanpur) used to say, "if academic institutions won't do experiments, who else will." I wish them well.

(I will talk about another of their innovation in a couple of days regarding how they utilize the summer term. And the all important disclosure, so that you know my potential bias: I am a Guest Professor at IIT Gandhinagar.)

JEE Counseling: Changes in IIT Kanpur

2011-06-09T14:11:00.003+05:30

As I said in my yesterday's blog article, I have been getting lots of emails, and the maximum number of them are related to placement data. The next biggest chunk of questions are related to the changes that IIT Kanpur has made in its offerings recently. So, today, I want to talk about those changes, and how they may or may not affect your decision to rank IITK programs in your list of choices.

The first change has been to scrap all BTech-MTech dual degree programs, and add all the dual-degree seats to the corresponding BTech program. The idea is to offer flexibility to all students. The dual-degree will continue to be offered, but it will be an option for students of BTech programs. So after you have been in the system for a couple of years, you can decide whether you want to graduate with a BTech degree or want an MTech degree as well (besides other new options that have been created).

The second change that you will notice is that instead of 5-year Integrated MSc programs, we now have 4-year BS (Bachelor of Science) programs. These are in the disciplines of Physics, Chemistry, Economics, and Maths and Computing. The report of the Academic Review Committee, available from the Dean of Academic Affairs website, does not elaborate the reasons for this change. But I can make a guess.

Several academicians and national academies have previously talked about the need to make the under-graduate degree in all disciplines, but particularly in Science, to be of 4-year duration, as opposed to the current 3-year BSc. And this change can only happen when some Institute displays a leadership position and just does it, and hopefully, others by looking at the success of this program, will follow. Of course, for the foreseeable future, there will be both a 3-year under-graduate program in most universities, and a 4-year undergraduate program in some universities. Both will be named "Bachelor of Science." To differentiate between the two programs, their short form will be different. The 3-year degree will be known as "BSc" while the 4-year degree will be known as "BS".

It is good that IIT Kanpur has taken a leadership position in introducing BS. But whether this is going to be a sustained leadership position, only time will tell. Obviously, there will be problems that the first couple of batches will face. You will have to explain to everyone that you are not a failure who is doing a 3-year program in four years, but really a pioneer who is helping move this idea that the under-graduate program should be of 4-years. How much will IIT Kanpur support you when you have to provide all these explanations, I don't know. If you are having a difficulty in getting admission to a PhD program somewhere, will Director, IIT Kanpur, pick up the phone and talk to the Director there to explain this new degree. Well, it depends on who the Director will be 4 years from now. So there are some risks, but a good move by IIT Kanpur.

The third major change this year has been the introduction of double major and minor programs. Theoretically, it will now be possible for someone doing an undergraduate program in discipline "X" to also get a second undergraduate degree in any discipline "Y", by spending just one year extra. It is possible because if you look at the detailed curriculum of various programs, you would notice that out of about 40 odd courses to be done, only 15 courses or so are from the discipline itself. You have to do a lot of courses in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Technical Arts, Engineering Sciences, Humanities, several non-discipline electives, and so on. So to get another degree you only need to do these 15 courses (or whatever that number is for a specific program). It is expected that some of those courses you will be able to do in the "elective slots" of the original undergraduate degree. Some courses may be waived (like B Tech Project may not be necessary in the second undergraduate degree, and some courses in the two disciplines may have significant overlap, and hence waived). The remaining courses you should be able to do in one extra year.

As a concept, this is great. Provides excellent flexibility, the reason because of which I have been recommending IIT Bombay to JEE candidates. But unfortunately, the devil is in the detail.

There is a lack of clarity on how liberal will be the implementation. My guess is that it won't be very liberal. So the report I referred to in the beginning says that the option for double major will be available to only those students who have a CPI of 8.0 or above. This means that you will have to be approximately in the top 40 percent of the class to avail of this option. That is somewhat restrictive already. The next thing it says is that the departments can restrict "admission" of second degree students to 10 percent of their strength. So, for Computer Science, we will have the right to restrict admission to ONLY 9 students, our current batch strength being 92. And, I can tell you that our department will probably restrict access to the minimum number, nine, and most other "popular" departments may do the same thing.

The detailed rules are yet to be formed, and the chances are that it would be possible for someone to change one's mind and after a semester or two, just inform us that s/he is no longer interested in the second major. If this happens, then I would expect that 9 toppers amongst the non-CSE students would ask for admission to Computer Science major, do a couple of CS courses, and then withdraw, but then it will be too late for others to be given admission.

So, I think the impact of second major would be very negligible. Till all the rules are framed, my advice would be to not be swayed by the announcement of double major. We offer good programs anyway. So consider IIT Kanpur based on that. If you are able to get double major in your preferred discipline, that will be an added advantage later on.

The last time IIT Kanpur introduced a new type of program, which was the BTech-MTech dual degree, it could not come up with clear, student-friendly rules for 10 years. And I have no hope of IIT Kanpur deciding rules on a fast track for the double major students.

My guess is that the implementation of minor program will be more liberal, and a lot more students will be able to do courses in another discipline to get a minor, than the double major.

But as always, I am not an official spokesperson of IIT Kanpur. I do not take any responsibility for correctness of the information provided here. Please read the ARC report that I have linked above for more details. And follow my opinions at your own risk.

Added on 1st July, 2011

PDF file for the Frequently Asked Questions on New Changes

Should placement be a criteria for choosing your program of study

2011-06-08T13:46:00.001+05:30

In the last one month, I would have received no less than a few hundred emails asking for all sorts of advice, sometimes complimenting me, and sometimes strongly disagreeing with my views. The strongest disagreement has been on the issue of placement.

I have always advised that students and parents should not look at the placement records of different colleges or programs before deciding their choices. And I get asked many times, don't I like money. Why do I want everyone to be a professor. Apparently, professors are satisfied with less money.

The truth is that I love money too. When 6th pay commission almost doubled my salary, I did not protest. And if 7th pay commission doubles it again, I will not be protesting at that time.

And I don't ever say you should not worry about money. I only say that you should not be bothered about placement information.

But this question has been raised so many times, that I thought I will write my views on it in some detail, though you will find parts of it in some of my earlier blog articles.

First of all, placement information is so unreliable, that in most cases it cannot be relied upon. Some colleges will tell you the top salary, which only one student would have got. If you know a bit of statistics, you would know that a single sample cannot be used to deduce a general principle (of ordering programs in this context). The most reliable barometer of the current employability and the economic value of a program, is the median salary of that program. But only if the program has large enough number of students, say at least 40-50, who are interested in taking up a job, and indeed get one. Hardly any institute will give you median salaries. And a large number of programs have much fewer students graduating, or having an interest in placement. If colleges give you median income, they will not tell you how many people did not even get a job. Sometimes, they will remove weak students from the list, and then give you placement statistics. Sometimes, they will tell you the number of jobs and number of students, but will count two jobs to a student as two - so you can't figure out how many people don't have jobs. In top places, sometimes students would not go for placement but for higher studies. That is not captured by the placement statistics. Then there is a huge fudge factor that both companies and colleges introduce in terms of what constitutes salary - is it take home income, is it pre-tax salary, is it the cost-to-company, etc.

Second, the placement is only an indication of how a group was valued by those wanted to recruit that sort of talent. The individual differences are lost in the statistics. May be the guys who got good jobs are those who also had good soft skills, something that the program did nothing to add value to. I have no doubt that there is a difference in the market value of different academic programs. But that difference cannot be judged by placement figures, since they get biased by the presence or absence of certain categories of students. For example, if we assume that CS education adds more market value than Chemistry education, the degree of the difference cannot be judged by placement figures alone. The difference in median value of salaries offered will be partly due to CS versus Chemistry, but also partly due to the fact that CS program attracted much higher ranked individuals to begin with. So some difference is due to the set of individuals who are joining the program. (If you believe that 100 percent of the difference is because of the discipline, then essentially you are admitting that you bring no value as an individual to your recruiter. Your recruiters should be careful with that attitude.)

Third, placement data is for last year's batch. You will be graduating 4-5 years from now. What will be the market valuation of your discipline/program, we don't know. Things may change in the interim period. Need to take that into account as well.

Fourth, you are looking at last year's placement data because you want to be rich. Fair enough. But there is no study done looking at the correlation between the first month salary, and the career earnings. If you want to be rich (and why not), you should be looking at a decent living immediately after the graduation, but most importantly, a hefty salary after 30-40 years. Your work life is going to be 50 years. Too bad, but you will be working till the age of 75. (Even today most people retire between 65 and 70 years of age, and with the rapid advances in medical science and technologies, it would be at least 75 for you.) Today's placement data gives you absolutely no indication of what your salary will be 30-40 years from now. In fact, I just did a small informal check up on my batchmates. We entered IIT Kanpur about 30 years ago. I guessed the incomes of people by their designation/company/location, etc. For some people, I knew. And based on this very crude, unreliable, statistically insignificant experiment, I can still confidently say that the median income of Computer Science graduates of our batch is nothing to write home about compared to many other programs.

Fifth, the emails that I have been getting, they only ask for "scope" of two programs whose perceived economic value is very similar. Nobody has ever asked me for an opinion between English literature in Delhi University versus Computer Science at IIT Kanpur. The perceived economic value of the two programs are so vastly different, after all. And if you consider money in such a situation, you are being normal. Almost everyone will prefer 10 lakhs over 2 lakhs, even if one has to give up one's interest. But in India, we are worrying about very small amounts of money. I never get asked to compare Computer Science with Mining. I only get asked comparison between EE and CS, or between Mechanical and Chemical, etc. And the reason for all the confusion, all the stress is that between these two programs, the difference in the median salary last year would not be more than 5 percent, and people are really trying to figure out whether this difference of 5 percent will stay for 4-5 more years, and indeed 40-50 more years. When the difference is 50 percent, then people automatically assume that the difference may come down or go up, but it will never be erased. So they are sure in such circumstances which program they want to put ahead of the other.

Now, if the economic value of a degree program differs from the other one by only 5 percent, you should know that your interest and passion in a program can at least cover up that 5 percent difference. In fact, the interest and passion can often compensate very significantly in a job/career, much more than the 5 percent.

Across the length and breadth of this country, parents and students are not even attempting to know their interests, their passions, their aspirations, in the hope of getting that 5 percent extra money. Worse, many people will directly, shamelessly, tell me, that they are interested in one discipline, but will like to get admission in the other, because of a possibility (not even a guarantee) that they might get slightly better placement. And that bothers me.

And what I feel is that if so many of our youth at an age where they should be most idealistic are willing to give up their interest and passion for 5 percent, when they grow up and become less idealistic (and more "practical"), would they not be willing to give up a principle or two for 10 percent. Wouldn't such students in an academic institution be willing to do plagiarism, copy an assignment, and cheat in the exam.

And what would they be willing to do for 100 percent, just the imagination of it fills me with horror.

I don't think Anna Hazare will be successful.

High Court Directs JEE to find ways to fill vacant seats in IITs

2011-06-03T15:27:00.001+05:30

Recently, the Honorable High Court of Andhra Pradesh has passed an order directing JEE to find ways to fill up the vacant seats in 15 IITs, IT BHU, and ISM Dhanbad. Here is a link to download a copy of the order.

Since only the judgment is on the web, it is difficult to know the exact argument of all stake holders, but what I can make out from the judgment is the following.

The petitioner is a student of ISM Dhanbad, who got admission to the Institute in 2010 after passing the Joint Entrance Examination. When the results of the first round of counseling were announced, she was allotted MSc (Chemistry) in ISM Dhanbad. She paid her fee, etc., as per the JEE procedure. If you recall, last year, there was an error in the counseling. The Counseling software had not taken into account the results of the Architecture aptitude test. When this error was detected and corrected, it turned out that the course allotment of several students had to be canceled. This student was one of them. There were 52 such students. She got lucky that at least she could get a program allotted. She was assigned MSc (Mathematics and Computing). By the only 41 students could get some course in the second round. Eleven students had no where to go (even though as we will see later, there were hundreds of seats vacant in the system).

After this the details are sketchy. She apparently wanted a better branch. ISM Dhanbad refused saying that the branch changes will be done after 2nd semester, based on performance in the 1st year. However, she noticed that the rules in ISM Dhanbad did not allow too many people to get branch change. The rules said a student is not allowed to leave a branch, if that would cause the strength of the program to become less than 50%. A very large number of students who had been offered admission to ISM Dhanbad had not joined, leaving more than 250 vacancies in the Institute. This meant that many programs would have less than 50% seats filled up. Or the number of branch changes that would be permitted would be extremely few. So, she appealed to High Court that JEE should have filled up those huge number of vacant seats in all the institutes put together, and if such a thing was done in 2010, she would have got a better program to begin with.

JEE responded to the writ petition by arguing that it is not possible to keep doing multiple rounds of admission, since the classes have to start at some time. And IITs have such a high standard of academics that doing admission even a few days into the semester would be harmful to the quality of education.

The court asked for information on the number of vacant seats after the students had joined various institutes. It turned out that the number of seats vacant were 8% of the total seats available through JEE. The court has said that based on JEE's argument, if there were a small number of seats vacant, it would have accepted the situation. But the argument cannot justify such a large number of vacant seats, particularly when JEE could have started the admission process a bit earlier, and tried to incorporate another round of admission process.

For 2010 admissions, the court has asked ISM Dhanbad to allot any of the vacant seats to the student in question before doing its branch changes. And for 2011 admissions, it has asked JEE to do whatever it deems fit to make sure that such a large number of seats are not left vacant.

This is an excellent judgment which will make JEE more student friendly. However, there is one aspect of the whole admission process which has not been clearly understood by the court. If JEE were to do a 3rd round of counseling, it would still leave 8% of the seats vacant, unless the 3rd round was done AFTER the semester started.

Let us understand why third round prior to the semester would not help. The reasons for vacant seats is NOT that students who are offered seats do not accept it. Such a number is rather small after the 2nd round. The reason for vacant seats is that students accept the admission offer by paying whatever amount is needed, and then never inform JEE that they would like to withdraw. They just don't show up on the campus on the 1st day of the semester. So you can have any number of rounds prior to the semester beginning, and you still wouldn't know how many people won't show up on the appointed day.

So what is the solution. There are, in fact, several solutions possible.

The obvious one that Central Counseling Board (which does counseling for all NITs based on AIEEE ranks) makes use of is to offer admission after the semester has started. The assumption with which CCB works is that teaching is unimportant and even if a student misses a few days, nah a few weeks, may be half the semester, it is still ok for him/her to get admission. The underlying assumption appears to be that teaching in most such places is so poor that it is perhaps better for the student to not face such teaching :-) But JEE can't make such an assumption, and it has correctly argued in the court that late admissions will result in poorer quality of education.

The second solution is to admit more students than the number of seats that you have. This is the solution that every single country in the world follows (other than India, of course). In India, we believe, we are very unique. Our problems are very unique. So nothing that works in the rest of the world will work in India. (Of course, the corollary is that what does not work in the rest of the world will also not work in India.) And, therefore, we must do opposite of what the rest of the world does, and consider our seats as sacrosanct.

But, if somehow JEE can come out of this anti-rest-of-the-world feeling, then what they may do is to look at historical data about the percentage of students who don't join a particular institute, and admit that many extra students to each institute. So if we have 500 unreserved seats (since we need to do this category wise), and 10% students did not join on an average in the last 5 years, then may be I can admit 8% more (to be on the conservative side - I don't want to exceed my target strength, not by large number, anyway). So, we shall admit 540, and if 10% did not join, I will still have 486 students as opposed to 450 in the current scenario. Yes, there is a risk that I might have 510 students. But the question is that if you have capacity to deal with 500 students properly and in the best way that you want to deal with them, would you rather have 450 students and waste a significant investment, or would you rather live with a very small probability of 510 students in some year (and hence the quality of education for that batch presumably going down).

Of course, the immediate question will be what branch to assign to these extra students. It is assumed that the students will give a choice during the counseling that they are willing to be admitted to an Institute without any assignment of a program. So someone, for example, could give a higher preference for IITB-NONE compared to ISM-Dhanbad-Mining-BTech. On the joining date at an institute, we will know how many students in each category have joined. Based on this data, we know vacancies in each program in each category. We can do an internal branch change of each student based on their preferences in JEE counseling, and by this process, the unassigned students will get some program assigned to them. It is assumed that when they opt for unassigned seat, they are actually willing to take any program in the Institute. So if they have not put in all the choices during the JEE counseling, they could be given a random seat.

The problem will come when the number of vacancies (or people not joining) is less than the number of students admitted against unassigned seats. In such a case, each institute will take its own decision on how to assign programs to these people. The easiest will be to increase the number of seats in each program by same proportion. If there are 10 programs, and there are 10 unassigned students, increase 1 seat in each program.

This has a downside. Most of the JEE selected candidates - while they may have solved hugely complex mathematical problems in JEE, they will now claim that they don't understand probability and statistics. They will make statements like this: If you have 500 seats and you are admitting 8% extra, then theoretically you could have 540 students. It means that at least in such a case, you will somehow manage 540 students. Then why not admit 540 students anyway. The only answer to this question is that if you do not understand probability and statistics, then you don't deserve to be in an IIT. We will take your name off the JEE merit list.

There is a solution number 3. This is to somehow have an incentive for the student to inform JEE in advance that he has decided not to take admission. What could be such an incentive. How about returning some of the money that you charge them. Right now, JEE asks for Rs. 40,000 to be deposited for accepting admission, and whether you decide to withdraw the next day or 2 weeks later, you don't back a single paisa. If we could have a sliding scale. If you withdraw within a day, we will give you back most of the money, if you withdraw within a week, we will deduct some more, and so on. Then there is an incentive for people to decide fast and communicate that decision to JEE.

The problem with this scheme is that the Government has mandated that anyone leaving the program till the day of beginning of the semester, has to be refunded the entire amount (except a token processing fee of Rs. 1,000). IITs currently are below the radar of the government, and don't get hauled up when they don't give any refund. But if they start giving refund, they will have to follow this policy of 100% refund. This policy of 100% refund has played havoc with admission process in India. Ever since this rule has been made in 2007, most admissions are now done after the beginning of the semester in most colleges across the country. To know more about it, you may want to read one of my old blog article on refund rules. Strangely, most students and parents believe that this refund rule is very good, not realizing how it has destroyed education in NITs, and other good institutes, and how it is actually making more money for private colleges, since most admissions are now happening after the beginning of the semester, where the refunds are not controlled by this rule anyway.

So, IITs may have to argue with MHRD to junk this rule and come with an alternate scheme with gradations for refund depending on how many days before the semester the student is withdrawing.

Of course, there is a 4th solution. IIT Directors can agree that after the 2nd round of counseling, each Institute can decide on its own whether they want to do more admissions, and do those admissions in whatever way they deem fit (increase ad hocism). Of course, JEE could go to Supreme Court and not do anything on the ground this year.

The right thing to do is to do both 2nd and 3rd solutions. Admit additional students, and have a graded refund policy. Doing these things together will clean up the admission process not just in IITs, but in all engineering colleges, since they will then be able to do the same thing.

In my opinion, this high court ruling is a godsend to IITs to improve their admission process without political interference or too much media glare. After all, they will be following the legal mandate. I hope they will do something that will have a positive impact on all engineering admissions throughout the country.

In the end, I will like to just give out the vacant seats last year in old IITs, BHU and ISM in unreserved and OBC categories (combined). IITB (2/663), IITD (5/640), IITK (8/622), IITM (10/630), IIT-GHY (20/442), IIT-KGP (54/1008), IIT-R (114/866), IT-BHU (146/785), ISM (213/760).

Are IITs World Class

2011-05-30T12:07:00.000+05:30

Everyone has heard the honorable minister, and everyone has an opinion. I have been reading a lot of those opinions, and I thought I will add my voice to the clutter as well. Of course, I only know about IITs, and hence I will not talk about IIMs.

To me the answer is, "No, IITs are not world class, but it does not matter." The whole debate is not about what is world class, and whether IITs have achieved that standard. Whether we are in this list or that list. My belief is that such statements are often a reflection of the gap between expectations and perceived reality. And, when such statements come from people who ought to know, we should not dissect their words, but look at the causes of that gap.

May be the reality is much better but people don't understand. Well, isn't that a problem then. Shouldn't IITs work on that.

May be the expectations are too high. That, in my opinion, is a good problem to have, but may be IIT administration should do some expectation management.

But, may be the expectations are reasonable, and we still don't match them. That would be very worrisome.

Let me explain with an example. I have often written about JEE on this blog and elsewhere. One can argue that in the middle of huge scandals, IITs have largely been able to offer admissions on merit. JEE has not faced any major scandal (barring some doubts in 2006) over its 50 years of existence. And that is a HUGE achievement. And whenever I criticize JEE, people love to point out all this to me. But when I criticize JEE, it is with the knowledge of this background. I criticize because my expectation from the best institutes in India is much more than conducting a scandal free UG admission. I expect the top institutes to have a transparent admission process. I expect the top institutes to do some research into their admission process and figure out whether they are getting the students of the right type. I expect the top institutes to constantly debate alternative admission strategies. So don't point to me that IITs have the best admission process. They may very well have that. But I expect them to do better than the current best.

As long as there is a gap between what is expected and what is delivered, there will be criticism. IITs can keep ignoring this criticism and stay in their comfort zone. Or IITs can dissect the exact words of the Minister and say that if we get world class budgets, then we might improve. Or they can do some introspection and say whether they can do something within the significant resources that our country spends on them and narrow that gap of expectation and performance. Unfortunately, the last part is never done.

When someone says that IITs are not working with Indian industry, IITs can counter with the statistics of how many companies have given sponsored projects, how much funds they get in these projects and consultancy. But all that means nothing to the person who complained to begin with. Shouldn't IITs be doing much more than what they are doing. I recently wrote about the Waikato Institute of Technology at Hamilton, New Zealand, who are having amazing amount of focus with industry. I am not suggesting that IITs become as focused on industry as Wintec, but certainly there is a huge scope for improving industry interaction (and without increase of budget).

When someone says that IIT graduates are not exposed to live projects and the education is very theoretical, you can counter by telling about the latest equipment in your labs, and telling about the number of lab hours that students have to spend before getting a degree, but is that what I expect from the best institutes in my country. Why can't a civil engineering student be involved with a real civil construction project on campus, and all our campuses are having a lot of construction all the time. A student who has to spend just one hour every week with the site engineer would have a great experience and understanding of how civil engineering is actually practiced. Is it too much to expect that on an average, a CSE graduate would have written 20,000 lines of code in 4 years, and I am talking about original code, not code copied from Internet (while agreeing that Computer Science is much more than coding, just like Civil Engineering is much more than construction).

I also want to comment on the supposed selectivity of IITs. We are supposed to be world class because we are the most selective. Everyone in the country has heard the numbers, one out of 50 or something to that effect, while Harvard admits one out of 10. Are we really comparing apples with apples. Harvard tells you all the parameters that they will look at for admission. They give you statistical details of some of those parameters from last year's admission (parameters which are objective like SAT score). While in case of IITs, there is only one parameter, which is unknown at the time of application, which is the JEE rank.

Let us consider an experiment for IITs. Let them conduct JEE, announce the result, and then ask students to apply for admission, knowing fully well what the last year's closing rank was in each program. I don't think you will see even a ratio of 1:2. The large number of applicants for a small number of seats only means that people believe in randomness of the admission process. And if the process is based only on objective criteria, and there is still a large ratio of applications to seats, then it is nothing to be proud of. 4.5 lakhs JEE applicants are there because there is a general feeling amongst the students that JEE is a lottery, and on a given day, anyone with coaching can score high, and also, there are now some more institutions who have started using JEE performance for admission.

(By the way, the ratio of the number of candidates in AIEEE to the number of seats in NITs is much worse. Should we say that NITs have higher selectivity, and therefore, they are also world class.)

I think the problem with IIT system is that they are satisfied with being the best in the country. And whenever anyone points out that your parameters are not what the best in the world have achieved, there is a ready made excuse - money. Double our salaries, type of thing. IITs are not doing sufficient introspection to see if they could have met the expectation of our nation to a fuller extent within the same resources.

A Guide to JEE Counseling 2011

2011-05-25T00:15:00.000+05:30

Congratulations for performing admirably in the toughest rat race in the world, and soon, you will be one of us, the IITians. I am sure you are more thrilled on 25th May, 2011, than on 2nd April, 2011. (Don't remember that date. Well, when you were studying for JEE, the Men in Blue got a fake trophy called the ICC World Cup.)

But the problem with rat races is that you are never satisfied unless you are number one, and there can only be a single number one. So my first advice, you can become a cat only if you stop being a rat. Accept your result with grace. Being in top 10,000 in a country of 1.2 billion people (yes, they did count you even though you were hiding yourself amongst the books in that tiny space in Kota) is not a mean achievement, even if you believe that you ought to have topped the exam.

A few words about me. I am a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kanpur, and have been here for most part of the last 17 years. I also studied at IIT Kanpur (BTech/CSE/1986), so have some appreciation for both sides of the classroom, though my experience as a student is too far back in the history. I have taught at IIT Bombay for a semester. I have had joint research projects with IIT Delhi. I am a Guest Professor at IIT Gandhinagar. I have visited a few other IITs as well. I have friends, collaborators, and acquaintances in pretty much all IITs. Here is the link to my webpage, if you are interested in knowing more about me.

Before I go further, let me claim the standard disclaimers. I have no association with JEE. I am not their spokesperson. They did not pay me to write this note, and indeed they would be happier if I didn't write this note. If any of my views here match the views of anyone in JEE or for that matter anyone in any IIT, that is purely co-incidental. What ever I say, take it simply as unsolicited advice, but take your own decisions. Do not hold me responsible for your decisions. If you agree with any suggestion on this page, follow it at your own risk.

While I have taken reasonable care to give correct data and processes, I take no responsibility for correctness of any piece of information on this page. Before you take a decision based on information provided on this page, please check from authentic source. Here is the link to JEE Website. This would have a link to JEE Counseling Online Portal, and that page would have links to all participating Institutes.

OK. Let us get back to what you have to do. You should be getting a Counseling Brochure from JEE explaining the various steps. But basically, your next step is to go online and register yourself in the JEE Counseling Online Portal. If you don't have Internet access at home, go to an Internet cafe. My advice to you, DO NOT share your password with others, and the password should be such that it is difficult to guess. After you have made JEE richer by One Thousand rupees, and also sent all sorts of sundry documents to JEE, you can use the portal to fill the choices.

So now, we come to the main point. How should you decide the order of those choices. Sorry, no simple answers. And let me warn you right in the beginning. This is a long note, at the end of which you will realize that I am not telling you the order of your choices anyway. So, if you are reading this to know what choices you should fill on that portal, you may cut your losses and stop here. (This is how we teach at IIT. We give 55 minutes long lectures, at the end of which you don't get the answer to the question that we started with. You only get hints on how to proceed to get that answer.)

JEE has an official stand on your choices. All IITs (and non-IITs) are equal. All programs are equal. But the egalitarianism stops here. I wish they also believed that all students are equal and hence any student can get any IIT and any program. But, alas, we live in an unfair world, full of discrimination. IITs will discriminate on the basis of your performance, not just at the admission stage, but till you manage to break free and get out with a degree. We will stamp you with a dreaded word called Cumulative Performance Index (CPI). (If you don't understand this word, read Chetan Bhagat's "Five Point Someone.")

Oops, I digress again. If you believe in official words of wisdom, your life will be very simple. Since all programs and all IITs are equal, the best way to choose is to draw lots. Write down codes for each program on a separate piece of paper. Put all such small pieces in a box. Take one slip out at a time, and write down the code in that slip on the JEE Counseling Online Portal.

Did not like that. You have company. No one in India believes officialdom.

So what do you do. First of all, ask yourself whether you are really very keen on a particular discipline. I don't expect many 12th class students to know their interests, particularly because you would have been terribly busy over the last couple of years in preparing for JEE. But some students do.

Sometimes it is a role model in the family or neighbourhood. Sometimes, you had an excellent teacher in Physics, Maths, or Chemistry, and hence that subject is what you want to pursue for your career. And, of course, there are many who always dreamt of becoming a computer scientist. Their first toy was a computer. Their class fellows in school envied them because they have 1000 friends on facebook. And if they did not have to study for JEE, they would have certainly made their parents proud by winning the state level championship on "AOE." All this justifies their passion in Computer Science. And finally, some of you know that you are not interested in engineering or science, but just want to own a piece of paper, which is the key to joining the IIT Old Boys Network (girls can join it too).

Whatever is the answer, be honest with yourself. If you have a passion, it is extremely important to follow it, Your career will largely depend on how passionately you do your job, and if you are not interested in that discipline, you won't perform well in IIT, you won't perform well in your job, and you won't have a good career. Remember, there are excellent careers in all disciplines.

So fill up the discipline of your passion as a choice in as many participating Institutes as you are willing to study in. If you can't get admission to that discipline in an IIT, see if you can study it in a good institute outside the IIT system.

But if you have not been able to identify your passion, do not worry. I have collected the questions that I have been frequently asked over the years, along with their answers. I hope you will find these helpful in taking your own decision about the order of choices to be filled in.

Should I be selecting an IIT or a Discipline.
I have decided the Discipline. Which IIT should I choose.
I have decided the IIT. Which program should I choose.
Should I prefer a Dual-degree program or a BTech program.
If Dual-degree programs are so good, why is it that many people are not opting for it.
Which IIT has the most liberal branch change rules.
Which IIT is best for MBA entrance preparation.
How are programs on Mathematics and Computing.
How are programs on Engineering Physics.
For Bio-related courses, is it necessary to have done Biology in the 12th class.
I am interested in pure science programs. Should I prefer IITs, or IISc, or IISERs.
I am interested in Aerospace related career. Should I prefer IITs or IIST, Trivandrum.
I have heard that IT BHU will become an IIT soon. Will I get a degree from IIT Varanasi, if I join IT BHU.
Is IIT Roorkee as good as original five IITs.
Is it safe to study in Guwahati? Why do many people not prefer IIT Guwahati.
I am convinced about IIT Guwahati. But my parents are not agreeing to let me go so far. What do I do.
Should I opt for programs in one of the eight new IITs. Are they going to be as good.
Which of the new IITs would you recommend.
What discipline should I choose in ISM Dhanbad.
What Institutes would you rank higher than new IITs.
I have got a rank between 1 and 500 in JEE. Should I opt for Computer Science or Electrical Engineering.
I have got a rank between 500 and 1000 in JEE. Should I take Computer Science in IIT Kharagpur or Mechanical Engineering in other four older IITs.
I have got a rank between 1000 and 1500 in JEE. Should I choose Civil in Bombay, Chemical in Delhi/Kanpur/Madras, or ECE/CSE in Roorkee/Guwahati.
I have got a rank between 1500 and 2000 in JEE. What are the prospects of Civil Engineering.
I have got a rank between 2000 and 3000 in JEE. How are programs in Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, Textiles, and Metallurgy.
I have got a rank between 3000 and 4000 in JEE. What engineering programs (BTech) can I expect to get.
I have got a 4000+ rank in JEE in my first attempt. Should I go for a second chance next year.
I have got a 5000+ rank in JEE. Should I study abroad. I have an offer from NTU, Singapore.
I have got a 6000+ rank in JEE. But I have a much better rank in AIEEE. Can you suggest a few good colleges.
I have got a 7000+ rank in JEE. Why do IITs declare so many candidates as successful when the total number of seats available is less.
How many options should I fill in.
Can I seek refund, if I do not take admission.
Tell me about second round of counseling.
Will there be a third round of counseling.
What are the colleges that admit students based on JEE rank, but are not part of JEE Counseling.
If I need additional information about a specific program, whom do I contact.
Can we contact you for more information.

Should I be selecting an IIT or a Discipline.

If you are passionate about a particular discipline, then programs in that discipline should be given higher preference. You should be even willing to consider good institutes outside the IIT system to study that discipline. If you are not sure of your interest in any particular discipline, then selecting an IIT is alright.
I have decided the Discipline. Which IIT should I choose.

I would choose IIT Bombay. In my opinion, which is based on lack of knowledge about things in most IITs, IIT Bombay offers a huge flexibility in their programs and curriculum. You can undergo BTech or BTech (Hons.) programs. Besides, you can either study for a second degree (MTech), or a minor in another discipline. I consider such a flexibility as extremely important, since during the next 4-5 years, your interests will change, and you will have better information to take decisions on your career.

IIT Bombay has had the good fortune of having visionary leadership for a long time now, and they have really transformed the place in the last couple of decades. At IIT Bombay, they seem to believe that they can't be satisfied with being in top 5 in the country, and they need to compete with the best in the world, and they are not afraid of change.

Let me also point out that you may not choose an IIT for academic reasons alone. It is ok to go with your heart (or heartthrob, if you have one) in such decisions. For example, some of you may select an IIT because it is closer to home (and you want to be able to meet family every weekend). Some of you may select an IIT because you want to go far off from your home so that your parents can't visit you frequently, and certainly not without a warning. Both are valid ways of selecting an IIT.

You could also select IIT based on whether you want to be in a large city or a smaller place. Till a few years ago, I used to recommend non-Metro IITs, because Metro IITs attracted students from nearby areas, and hence were very regional in character. But, now Metro IITs are attracting students from all over the country and provide an equally diverse experience.
I have decided the IIT. Which program should I choose.

A more direct question that I get asked every year is what are the job prospects of various programs. And it is a sad question to answer, because it reflects complete lack of self-confidence even amongst people who have qualified in one of the toughest exams in the world. If they won't have jobs, then who else will.

If you look at those students who are in the top 75 percent of their class, there is no problems at all in terms of finding a good job. Most graduates in the lowest 25 percent will also find jobs, but there could be cases, where one does not get a job in one's dream company, or does not get a salary in 7 digits, or one could not manage a job through the campus placement, but had to apply on one's own. But, really placement is hardly an issue in IITs. And if you didn't get a satisfactory first job, that is not the end of the world. Perform well in whatever you got, and then switch to something more to your liking.

And on top of that, most IITians end up doing things completely different from what they studied at IIT anyway. So why worry about placement of a particular program. A large number of IIT graduates seem to be interested in doing an MBA these days. From that career perspective, there is no distinction between various programs. In fact, if you are a smart cookie, and you choose a program which all other smarter cookies will avoid, then you can have an easy life in IIT, spend more time on extra-curricular, developing your personality and soft skills, prepare for CAT, and have a better chance at getting admission to IIMs.
Should I prefer a Dual-degree program or a BTech program.

There are fewer dual-degree programs now. IIT Kanpur has decided that it will admit all students in BTech program, and the dual-degree will be an option, to be exercised by the student after 2-3 years in the BTech program. IIT Bombay has also closed a couple of dual-degree programs.

But we still have a large number of them across many IITs. And the answer depends on whether you are talking about the two programs in the same department, or different departments. Let us take the two possibilities separately.

If you are comparing Dual and BTech in the same department, say Dual (CSE) versus BTech (CSE), then the answer is very simple. Go for BTech. I think the dual-degree programs are fantastic, but why go for an early commitment. And if the MTech part of the dual degree is in a specialized area, that should be avoided. When students don't even know the difference between Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, asking them to commit that they will work on "Power" or "Wireless" or "VLSI" after three or four years is simply ridiculous.

Now coming to the more interesting question. I prefer CSE over EE. But I am not likely to get admission in BTech (CSE). Should I prefer Dual (CSE) or BTech (EE).

You could replace EE and CSE with any two departments, and the answer will be same. It depends on how strongly you prefer one department over the other (CSE over EE in this example). And to test how strongly you prefer one department over the other, I will ask a theoretical question. Be honest in answering it.

Your BTech (EE) program will finish in May 2015. Suppose I were to offer you admission in BTech (CSE) on the condition that your program will be delayed by three months, and you will actually graduate in August 2015. Would you then prefer BTech (CSE) or would you still prefer BTech (EE).

Basically, if you prefer EE in this hypothetical scenario, then it is clear that your preference for CSE is very minor, and you are not willing to pay even a small cost of three extra months to undertake a CSE program. Then you should prefer BTech (EE) over Dual (CSE).

But if you preferred CSE in this hypothetical situation, then we can continue this game a bit further. Now, I further suggest that you invest 9 more months in the discipline for which you have indicated a reasonably strong preference. In these nine months, we will most probably give you more than one lakh rupees in cash, we will give you a degree that normally takes two years to complete, and a degree that opens a lot more doors for you in industry. At least in CSE, several multinationals have setup advanced R&D labs in India, and they hire MTechs and PhDs only, giving a very good work environment and a lucrative career. I am sure there are such labs in other disciplines as well.

To me the decision is a no-brainer (though your mileage may vary). The future certainly belongs to more specialisation, and having an MTech degree will be an asset for everyone. Spending a few extra months in the same environment where you have spent four years is the easiest way to get an MTech degree.
If Dual-degree programs are so good, why is it that many people are not opting for it.

Two reasons. One, because it does not fit into the career plans of many students. Two, resistance to change. It is not easy to accept something new. Fear of unknown.

Many students think that they might like to get a US degree after IIT. And the easiest US degree to get is a Masters degree. People feel shy of joining another master's degree after completing one.

This used to be the only ticket to US a decade or more ago. Very few IIT graduates go abroad today for an MS degree. Most people who go to US today, go with business visa, but still old thinking die hard.

Also, many students have already decided that they want a non-technical career. They would be interested in MBA after BTech, and they only want an IIT degree. They don't see a value of an additional year in an IIT.
Which IIT has the most liberal branch change rules.

Frankly, I do not know all the nuances of the branch change rules of all IITs. Also, there are some traditions, which are not codified as rules. My advice would be to not decide your choices based on a hope to get a change of branch. So it does not matter which IIT is liberal and which is not. But if you are interested in knowing more, please read the JEE Counseling brochure. It gives a reasonably good summary of all branch change rules.

But I do know that IIT Gandhinagar has very liberal branch change rules. Last year, as per the information received by me, every single student who wanted a branch changed was allowed to change. On the other hand, IIT Kanpur has extremely small number of changes allowed. Till a few years ago, IIT Kanpur used to be amongst the most liberal, not any more.
Which IIT is best for CAT preparation.

There is MBA coaching available in every city and town. (May be not Mandi. But I won't be surprised if there is coaching there too.)

If you are sure that you will like to go for MBA after your under-graduate program, select the program with the largest closing rank. Statistically speaking, it is likely to be least competitive. Since you are not interested in any program, and only want to be associated with IIT brand, choose a program with least number of years (4-years) and a program where very few top rankers are likely to be present.
How are programs on Mathematics and Computing.

In many IITs, there are programs on Mathematics and Computing. Please note that in all cases that I know of (but please check individual website), the program is offered by the Department of Mathematics and not the Department of Computer Science. It means that the major component of the program will be Mathematics, and the Computing component will be significantly less than what a pure Computer Science program would offer. But if you are very keen on anything related to computers, and you can't get the full-fledged program on Computer Science, then these programs are the next best things in life. You, of course can get into software industry, though you will find it difficult to get a job in research labs of IT companies. Also, these programs are popular wih financial firms.

And while they may be poor cousins of Computer Science programs within the IIT system, I would tend to favor them over a CS program outside IIT system, even for those who are sure that they really want to be in Computing as a career. First, in some IITs, a few courses in the program may be offered by Computer Science Department. Please check their website, or ask a faculty member in the Mathematics department. Second, most IITs give you opportunities to do elective courses from outside the department, and hence you may be able to do a few courses from Computer Science Department (other than those which are compulsory in the curriculum).

Also, if you are serious about a career in computing, then you should be planning to do an MTech later on, irrespective of whether you do a CS degree from a non-IIT, or a Maths and Computing degree from an IIT. And both will stand an equal chance for admission to most MTech programs.

And, if you have something inherently against a five-year degree, or if you have something against an MSc degree, you can consider IIT Guwahati's offering, which is a BTech program in Mathematics and Computing.
How are programs on Engineering Physics.

The programs on Engineering Physics differ significantly from one IIT to another. These programs invariably include several Physics courses, but what differentiates them from MSc (Physics) courses are the courses from other disciplines. Some IIT may have substantial amount of Electronics in the curriculum, while another one may have material science, and yet another one may have courses from a diverse set of disciplines.

So, please read the JEE brochure, or visit the website for more details before deciding which program matches your interests. But, in general, they are great for those who really wish they could study Physics, but parents are forcing them to study "Engineering" and everyone else is telling them how important it is to get a "BTech" degree as opposed to an "MSc" degree.
For Bio-related courses, is it necessary to have done Biology in the 12th class.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no requirement of passing Biology in the 12th class for courses on Bio-technology, Bio-chemistry, Bio-sciences, Bio-medical, and so on. I did not see any such requirement mentioned in the JEE Brochure.
I am interested in pure science programs. Should I prefer IITs, or IISc, or IISERs.

I would suggest Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, followed by those IISERs who have already shifted to their permanent campus. Both IISc and IISERs have extremely flexible programs, where you don't have to decide your major discipline right now. This, as I have said above, is a great flexibility to have. Also, their curriculum exposes you to all branches of science, not just the discipline you will get a degree in.
I am interested in Aerospace related career. Should I prefer IITs or IIST, Trivandrum.

Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology,
Thiruvananthapuram, is still too new to really know how it will pan out. While IITs (that offer programs in Aeronautical Engineering) have well established departments. However, IIST has a close association with ISRO. And that association would mean that this Institute would always have enough faculty, resources, live research problems, practical training, and so on. In my opinion, that is a huge plus.
I have heard that IT BHU will become an IIT soon. Will I get a degree from IIT Varanasi, if I join IT BHU.

This is a question that has been on everyone's mind for many years. Now, finally, the bill is with the Parliament. Lok Sabha has passed it, and Rajya Sabha will consider it in due course. I don't wish to assume what Rajya Sabha will do with the bill. But the chances are that IT BHU will become an IIT soon. It probably will be known as IIT BHU.

However, I would like to caution that even assuming that the IIT status will happen soon, it will take quite some time for its impact to be felt on the quality of education. So, if you believe that IT BHU was not preferred in the past only because of branding, but its quality is as good as any other IIT, then you can take the chance, and fill up IT BHU programs in your options. But if you believe that IT BHU was not preferred because its quality of education (including infrastructure and other aspects) was less than other IITs, then a name change should not make your choices any different.
Is IIT Roorkee as good as original five IITs.

IIT Roorkee is doing well. They do have some weak spots. In Computer Science, for example, I would definitely rank IIIT Hyderabad higher than IIT Roorkee. In general, look at the website. Do they have enough faculty members in that discipline. IIT Roorkee has its strengths. And the original five IITs have their weaknesses.
Is it safe to study in Guwahati? Why do many people not prefer IIT Guwahati.

To the best of my knowledge, it is as safe to be in Guwahati as in Kanpur or Mumbai. Yes, it does have an image problem. A lot of geography-challenged parents cannot differentiate between Guwahati and the rest of North-East India. Even an occasional law and order problem in North-East is immediately linked to Guwahati in their mind. Please don't worry. It is a beautiful campus, right next to the mighty Brahmaputra. You will enjoy your stay there.

The problem with Guwahati is really its connectivity. The number of trains from Guwahati to the rest of the country is rather small, and you need reservations much in advance. The connectivity has been improving over the years, and simultaneously, the closing ranks have been improving as well.

Of course, they do have less faculty in some disciplines than what they would like. But as I said elsewhere, look at their website to get exact data, and then make up your mind. In terms of infrastructure, I don't think they are anyway less endowed than others. It is cheap to build infrastructure.
I am convinced about IIT Guwahati. But my parents are not agreeing to let me go so far. What do I do.

Argue with them. Convince them. Put them in touch with some faculty member in IIT Guwahati. Tell them that for your job, you might have to go abroad, even farther than Guwahati, and for people in North India, IIT Guwahati is not farther than IIT Madras.
Should I opt for programs in one of the eight new IITs. Are they going to be as good.

As I said elsewhere, building infrastructure is cheap. So there is no reason for not having as good facilities in new IITs as old IITs have. Of course, it will take time. All new IITs are in temporary campuses, and many of them do not even have their land allocation done. And in a temporary campus, facilities cannot be what one can have at one's own campus. But still most new IITs have built good facilities at the temporary locations. Please do visit their respective websites to find out more about them.

I have no reservation suggesting that you consider programs in new IITs seriously.
Which of the new IITs would you recommend.

I am extremely hopeful about IIT Gandhinagar. It will be in the same league as older IITs soon. The activities there clearly shows how important leadership is for any organization. They are trying to bring innovation to every aspect of institution building. You will certainly enjoy and learn well in such an environment. Out of three new IITs that I have visited so far, they have clearly impressed me a lot more than others.

I will bet on IIT Hyderabad next. They have been very successful in attracting quality faculty. They have the advantage of being close to a Metro city. They have an excellent website, which gives you a sense of excitement on the campus.

Good air connectivity coupled with strong leadership (no malice towards leadership of other new IITs) would ensure that these two IITs improve much faster.
What discipline should I choose in ISM Dhanbad.

If you think you only want a degree from a good enough place to pursue a non-technical career, and degree is only a line in the resume, then you need not join ISM Dhanbad. My suggestion would be to give higher preference to programs within the IIT system.

But if you are genuinely interested in Mining related programs, then ISM is a good place to study. And remember that mining is getting hot these days, so there is really no shortage of good jobs in mining. For mainstream disciplines like Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, etc., my suggestion would be to compare these programs at ISM Dhanbad with those in other fine institutions, including those which are outside the IIT system.
What Institutes would you rank higher than new IITs.

It is difficult to say for other disciplines. But in Computer Science, I will certainly consider IIIT Hyderabad as having emerged as a top class IT Institution. IIIT Delhi is only a 3-year old institution, but it is one you should watch out for.

I am told that School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, is excellent for the study of Architecture.
I have got a rank between 1 and 500 in JEE. Should I opt for Computer Science or Electrical Engineering.

Difficult question. But an easy answer: I don't know. (This is really the case with most questions.)

I don't know enough about EE, but from outside, it appears to me that EE is a much more difficult and challenging program, while anyone can do Computer Science. We in CS departments believe in inclusiveness. Everyone who can think logically, is welcome. But these EE types want only those who are good at Mathematics. I find EE guys to be always serious, while computer science guys are always looking for more fun. (My bias, of course.)

But more seriously, the world is fast becoming inter-disciplinary. After doing Electrical Engineering, you would be able to pick up Computer Science stuff easily (we are accessible to everyone, remember), but not vice versa.

And, here is an interesting tale:
Electrical Engineering versus Computer Science
I have got a rank between 500 and 1000 in JEE. Should I take Computer Science in IIT Kharagpur or Mechanical Engineering in other four older IITs.

If you are keen on Computer Science, also consider other IITs like those at Guwahaty and Hyderabad and Roorkee. Otherwise, you could go for Mechanical Engineering in other older IITs.

I have a serious concern about IIT Kharagpur. The attention of IIT Kharagpur leadership has remained divided because of several allegations of wrongdoing in the last few years, starting with the JEE 2006. These things do affect the focus on academic excellence, and it shows in the declining number of top students going to IIT Kharagpur over this period. You may also refer to my blog on trends in JEE Counseling over the last several years.
I have got a rank between 1000 and 1500 in JEE. Should I choose Civil in Bombay, Chemical in Delhi/Kanpur/Madras, or ECE/CSE in Roorkee/Guwahati.

Since you are asking this question, it is clear that you do not have any deep interest in any specific discipline. If that is the case, as I said above, my personal preference is for IIT Bombay. After that, I will prefer to be in a metro. But your interests may be different. Do go through the websites of all programs. Think of all pros and cons from your perspective. And then take YOUR decision.
I have got a rank between 1500 and 2000 in JEE. What are the prospects of Civil Engineering.

I guess the "prospects" is a code word for "how much salary can I expect at the end of four years." If you are only interested in knowing whether there are enough jobs in Civil Engineering, then I can tell you that there are more than enough jobs in Civil Engineering. But what would be the salary levels 4-5 years from now. How will you perform in the Civil Engineering program, and whether you will have enough skills to get a job, I cannot predict all that.
I have got a rank between 2000 and 3000 in JEE. How are programs in Manufacturing, Industrial Engineering, Textiles, and Metallurgy.

Again, simple answer. I do not know. But why are you not considering new IITs. You could get to study a discipline, which you might be more interested in.

But if you are keen to study only in old IITs, you should know that pretty much everyone in an IIT is likely to get a job, and a large number of persons would not be in their discipline soon after their graduation, anyway. So in that sense the discipline does not matter. What IITs give you is not just learning in a particular discipline, but train you for life-long learning. The kind of learning environment you will find in IITs is difficult to replicate elsewhere.
I have got a rank between 3000 and 4000 in JEE. What engineering programs (BTech) can I expect to get.

You are likely to have a large number of options. Lots of programs in new IITs should be available. Though IT BHU closing ranks may improve this year, but still a large number of their programs should be available. There would be some programs like Naval, which should be open at these ranks. Many Bio related programs should also be open. But remember, if you are looking for programs in pure science, consider IISc and IISERs as well.
I have got a 4000+ rank in JEE in my first attempt. Should I go for a second chance next year, or should I join whatever I am getting this year.

It is a very personal decision. (Aren't all decisions personal.) I am, by and large, a risk averse person, and I believe that success in JEE requires that God be with you on that day. A slight headache, and a couple of questions wrong can set you back by a large number of ranks. Given that chance plays a significant role in JEE selection, I wouldn't advice anyone to take that chance again, if you can find anything of your interest in an IIT. (And remember, if you accept admission at an IIT, you are not allowed to give JEE again.)

Of course, if there was a medical reason or some other strong reason that caused you to score much less than what you think you would have done in the absence of such a reason, then you may give the exam again.

There are several programs that based on last year's closing ranks are likely to close after 4000. Then there is Design program in IIT Guwahati, which is very good. You should study the Counseling Brochure carefully to find out the likelihood of getting a branch by looking at the last year's closing ranks. Please note that last year's closing ranks are just guidelines, and in some cases, the closing ranks can vary substantially from one year to the other.
I have got a 5000+ rank in JEE. Should I study abroad. I have an offer from NTU, Singapore.

If you have decided that your passion lies in a particular discipline, then you have to look at your options and decide the best place to study that discipline. How does it matter whether that place is in India or abroad. (Of course, you should be able to afford it.)

On the other hand, if this was a trick question (like the kind we ask in JEE), and you really intended to ask me to compare Computer Science in a foreign university with a less popular discipline in an IIT, then it is complicated. IITs' brand value (and that helps in career, as I have said before) is much higher than most academic institutes in Asia for under-graduate studies. And the other is the cost issue. Can you afford to study abroad, and even if you can, is it worth that much investment. On the other hand, the advantages of studying abroad are that you are getting international exposure at an early age, which has a significant value. Also, you are getting to study that you prefer. These are the positives and negatives. Now you decide for yourself which factors you are going to give more weight.

Let me also add that compared to the best institutions in the world, IITs' quality of education is good but not great. Our graduates do well because we take the best, and a small amount of value addition can turn them into gold. But if you consider the value addition that many good US universities provide to an average student, no Indian college can come close. You study in IIT because they provide the best education in India, and they have the best brand name, provide access to Old Boys' Network, and is almost free compared to the cost of providing that education. But purely in terms of quality of education, many universities in US will be better. For almost a decade, we had kept open a channel of admission for NRIs through SAT scores. None of our illustrious alumni settled in USA thought about sending their sons and daughters to IITs. (I did my MS and PhD from University of Maryland, College Park. Quality of under-graduate education there was certainly better than at IITs.)
I have got a 6000+ rank in JEE. But I have a much better rank in AIEEE. Can you name a few good colleges, in case I don't get admission to any program in an IIT.

Please read my article on how to choose a college.

You may also want to read my blog entry recommending a few colleges for CS/IT only.
I have got a 7000+ rank in JEE. Why do IITs declare so many candidates as successful when the total number of seats available is less.

There are many candidates who prefer to join other colleges if they can't get a discipline of their choice through JEE. Because of this, JEE declares many more candidates successful than the number of seats. The total number of successful candidates is about 1.15 times the total number of seats available (including reserved seats). It means that depending on how many candidates choose to not take admission through JEE, some of the successful candidates may not be offered admission to any program.
How many options should I fill in.

You should fill in as many options such that the total number of available seats in all these programs put together are more than your JEE rank. DO NOT consider last year's closing ranks as the guideline to fill in choices. You should not assume that this year's closing ranks will be similar. There is no harm in filling up a large number of options.

Of course, if you are not interested in some options, you must not fill that. If you are only interested in a few programs, then you fill only those, but then you are not guaranteed an admission. Remember that if you take admission in an IIT, you cannot give JEE again.
Can I seek refund, if I do not take admission.

You cannot get refund of counseling fee, even if you are not offered any seat. The counseling fee of Rupees One Thousand is only to allow you to participate in the counseling process. It does not guarantee that you will necessarily be offered admission to any of the programs.

You will be asked to pay the admission fee of Rupees Forty Thousand (Rupees Twenty Thousand for SC/ST candidates) only after you have been offered admission. If you pay that fee, then you have accepted admission. If you wish to withdraw later, you will not be given any refund. (Last year, apparently, there was some confusion in the language, and it seems that JEE did refund the admission fee. But this year, they have been very clear in their language and are not likely to change its policy. But, if Ministry puts pressure, one never knows.)

Please check the JEE website for authentic information.
Tell me about second round of counseling.

Since last year, IIT JEE has been conducting a second round of counseling to fill up seats that are left vacant after the first round. Please go through the JEE Counseling Brochure and the website to get authentic information. I am only mentioning here my understanding of the system, which may have inaccuracies.

Those candidates who accept the program offered in the first round of counseling (by paying the fee) and those candidates who did not get any program of their choice in the first round, will be eligible for the second round. Note that if you do not like the program offered to you in the first round, but want to be considered for the second round, you must still accept the offered program, and pay the required fee. (So, be careful while filling the choices. If you are sure that you won't join a particular program, do not fill that as an option.)
Will there be a third round of counseling.

As per my information, no third round is planned even if substantial number of students do not accept the admission offers, or do not join even after accepting the admission offer by paying the fee. It is expected that individual IITs and other participating institutes will take independent decisions on this issue. But keep visiting the JEE website for updates on this.
What are the colleges that admit students based on JEE rank, but are not part of JEE Counseling.

There are a few institutes that use JEE performance for admission. These institutions include five Indian Institutes of Science, Education and Research (IISERs) at Mohali, Pune, Kolkata, Bhopal, and Thiruvananthapuram, respectively. The others include: Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology (RGIPT) at Rai Bareli (UP), and Indian Institute of Maritime Studies (Merchant Navy). LNM Institute of Information Technology (LNMIIT), Jaipur also admits some students based on JEE performance.
If I need additional information about a specific program, whom do I contact.

Certainly, not me. I know somethings about Computer Science and IT. I have some general knowledge about various other fields, but no detailed knowledge. If you want to know what do they teach in that program, or which companies came last year to hire, I would not know any of that stuff.

Please visit the website of the department who is offering that program. Find out email addresses of some faculty members or even students. Send your query to one or two persons only. Please Do Not Spam.
Can we contact you for more information.

I will be glad to answer your further questions, if time permits. But I do not wish to discuss JEE Counseling on phone. Please do not call me. Please contact me only on email, and that too only on my personal email id, and not on the IITK email address. You can send me email at: sanghi[AT]gmail.com
(Remove [AT] and replace it by @.)

Even on email, I will not be able to answer all the queries. I get far too many emails, and I prefer to respond to those emails, which are easily readable, and where the question is very clear, and not something that I have already answered in this page. Please don't ask me what can be available at what rank. First read the JEE Counseling Brochure for 2011, which you should be getting soon. Also, there are websites on the Internet where people have put up the closing ranks of last year. My guess at how closing ranks will change this year will be as good as yours.

Further, if you send me an email, please note the following:
- Emails with SMS like language are not readable.
- Emails with all capital letters are not readable. (It amounts to shouting.)
- Use of Roman script for Hindi words is discouraged.
- Use proper puntuation marks, and capitalize the first letter of every sentence.

Best wishes.

My visit to Wintec: An Institute focused on industry

2011-05-23T12:11:00.001+05:30

Today was the first day of my 2 week visit to Waikato Institute of Technology, Hamilton, New Zealand. And I am impressed. The focus is solely on supporting industry and on doing things that would help improve the economy of the region. They do all the things that a normal university would do - teaching, research, extension activities, consultancy, etc., but everything has to have an industry focus.

The institute offers degree, diploma, and certificate programs in various fields. What program to offer has to be based strictly on the need of the industry - what kind of human resources industry needs in the short term, and what kind of skill up-gradation needed for people currently working in industry. The folks from industry have a say on the overall curriculum of a program, as well as the plan for an individual course. Most of the programs can be done in both full-time mode and a part-time mode, through evening/weekend instruction, to support working professionals trying to upgrade their knowledge and skills.

The institute's research programs are totally focused on problems faced by industry. They don't shy away from admitting that doing blue-sky research is not their focus, and take pride in the fact that their research helps industry in short term.

In every discussion, for every idea, there was this constant question - how is this relevant to local industry. The local chamber of industry office is on campus, which helps in constant interaction between industry and the institute. Also, the government's agency for promoting industry is also housed on campus. I have not seen such a strong bonding between the government, the academia and the industry.

The Head of the Institute is not called Vice Chancellor, but CEO. And the CEO could be either a person from academia or from industry.

To help solve small problems of their Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), they have a research fund of their own. So a company can walk into their research office, giving them a problem and if it is not a routine business problem, but really requires some research, and Wintec has academic staff in that area, then they will not even charge anything from the industry if the total cost of research is up to 5000 NZD.

It is required that the bachelor's project of all students be done while interacting with industry, and must either solve an industry problem, or develop something that industry can use immediately.

ALL Academic Staff are required to spend a minimum of one week working in industry every year. That is how they will know whether the research they are doing is relevant to industry.

All the work they do is disseminated to industry through magazines and other medium. All the conferences they organize will have industry participation.

Apparently, there are several such institutes of technology in New Zealand in different regions of the country. They are distinct from universities (though they are themselves degree granting institutions), in that universities are supposed to have a wider role - greater number of disciplines, greater focus on basic research, etc. They have grown out of polytechnics which used to prepare technicians for different industry segments, and now, instead of just imparting skills training, they do a lot more, including applied research.

My first reaction after going through the meetings of the day: I think we need to have a few such places in India as well.

There is lot more to write about Wintec, and I will do that in due course.

AICTE mandates 50 percent minimum marks in 12th class

2011-05-22T16:14:00.000+05:30

AICTE has a mandate to improve quality of engineering education in the country. Its functioning over the years, particularly allowing mushrooming of colleges and lack of proper monitoring of these colleges has been strongly criticized. But this year, AICTE did one thing which will surely improve the quality of education. It mandated higher minimum marks for admission to Engineering Colleges. The new requirement is 50 percent for the Unreserved seats, and 45 percent for the Reserved seats. (It used to be 45 percent for Unreserved seats.) I definitely see merit in the new cut-off marks.

However state governments are not amused. They are under pressure from the private engineering colleges to do away with any minimum requirement of marks so that the load factor :-) can be increased in the highly competitive marketplace. In fact, some state governments have refused to accept AICTE rule and gone ahead asking the colleges to admit students with lower marks.

It is not clear whether the state governments can over-rule AICTE legally, but it is clear that AICTE cannot do much, if the state governments do no cooperate. AICTE cannot de-recognize all those colleges in a state which admit students with less than 50 percent marks, since that would be closing down most colleges, and playing with the career of lakhs of students already studying in these colleges. State governments know that, and therefore, can openly allow colleges to violate AICTE rules.

This is a dangerous situation. If states can play this game, knowing any step by the regulator will be so unpopular that it will not be able to do so, then states are essentially trying to get out of regulation altogether. Now, if these state governments were setting up their own regulation which was better than a central regulator, I could see a point (even then I would prefer that a legally acceptable mechanism is created for giving primacy to state government regulator). But if state governments will regulate using political process, that is, the minister and bureaucrats will take a decision to just ignore uncomfortable AICTE rules, then it is essentially saying that we will follow only those laws which we agree with. Just imagine what will happen to a country, if every citizen were to say this. There will be no rule of law.

So what can AICTE do. I suggest that it stops permission for all new colleges, all new programs in existing colleges, all increases in number of seats in existing programs, in the state that does not agree with the 50 percent minimum marks. After all, if you look at the logic given by state government, it is essentially saying that there is already excess of seats, and we must find ways to fill up those seats. If the state governments are publicly saying that there are excess seats, then AICTE should not allow any more seats in that state. Those who wish to start new colleges can do so across state boundaries, or need to wait for a couple of years, by then the pressure on the state government from the good colleges and from those who want to start new colleges will become more than the pressure from poor quality colleges.

IIT Kharagpur Suspends a Professor

2011-05-19T14:31:00.001+05:30

As per this ToI news item, IIT Kharagpur has finally decided to suspend Professor Rajeev Kumar. It was coming. IIT Kharagpur has been in the news for the last five years for all the wrong reasons. And generally government organizations tend to believe that we must shoot the messenger, rather than take care of basic problems that are being raised. The leadership is very unlikely to question itself. And the service rules for government officers are such that if Government wants, it can find ways to harass any employee. So, given this power equation, we were just waiting for this event to happen.

But it is sad. IIT Kharagpur was the first IIT, and has been the harbinger of quality engineering education. With such an illustrious history, it has to stoop to the level that it has gone to, is really sad and reflective of the quality of leadership that it has had in the last decade or so.

Let us look at the charges against Prof. Kumar, as reported. He had alleged that there is mass copying in IIT Kharagpur, could not prove it, and this tarnished the image of the faculty and students, and lowered their morale. Similarly, he made allegations about some wrongdoing in the laptop purchase process of the Institute.

How can an allegation of mass copying lower the morale of the faculty. Suppose I were to allege that Indian Army has killed 1 crore civilians in Jammu and Kashmir. This would tarnish the image and lower the morale ONLY IF people believe it. Otherwise, it would be treated as a stupid joke, and I cannot be punished for stupid jokes. On the other hand, if what I say is largely true, then I cannot be punished for just making a statement of fact. The only time I can be punished for tarnishing image is when what I say is wrong, but still believable. I am sure that IIT Kharagpur faculty (and academicians and other interested persons elsewhere) did not take his charge seriously. (And if several faculty members of IIT Kharagpur faculty did take the charge seriously, and actually got demoralized by it, students must avoid going to IIT Kharagpur to be taught by persons of such fragile egos. They will mistreat you also.)

There is a bit more problem with the laptop purchase in the sense that the model that IIT Kharagpur was planning to buy and the model that Prof. Kumar was planning to buy were not identical. They were very similar in specifications, and there could have been a confusion in the beginning. But as soon as it was pointed out that they were not identical, he should have apologized and closed the chapter. But think about it. This charge has stuck a bit more compared to the previous charge, because there is an element of truth in it. The way IIT Kharagpur treated his request, and tried to malign him on account of his asking his son to get an additional quotation, was not worthy of a world class institution. They made some statements and then retracted. They were not fully transparent either. Later, MHRD had to intervene and asked them to stop purchases of those laptops. Is this matter so serious and so one-sided that a Professor be suspended. Sorry, that is too draconian a step by IIT Kharagpur.

It is true that IIT Kharagpur reputation has been going down consistently since 2006, when Prof. Rajeev Kumar exposed the serious problems in the way IIT Kharagpur conducted JEE that year. In my earlier blog, Trends in JEE Counseling, I had mentioned that IIT Kharagpur has seen the sharpest decline of closing ranks of various programs amongst the oldest five IITs in the last five years, and my conjecture is that it is at least partly due to the bad press that IIT Kharagpur has received in this period.

IIT Kharagpur has received bad press on several counts. The issue of fake institute, which was apparently not just run by some faculty members of the IIT, but even alleged to have received some official support in the past. The issue of poor health facilities on campus, leading to death of a student, which resulted in Prof. Damodar Acharya submitting his resignation (which was promptly rejected after there was calm on campus). Director of IIT Kharagpur has been made an accused in AICTE Scam as per this ToI report. It may be noted that Prof. Acharya was AICTE Chairman before assuming the role of Director, IIT Kharagpur.

These issues have been far more serious, far more demoralizing, and tarnished the image far more than the laptop issue or the mass copying issue. But IIT Kharagpur is certainly not happy with the JEE 2006 case, which Professor Kumar has been pursuing for the last five years, and which has resulted in significant (but still not sufficient) improvement in transparency of JEE. So, they have now found relatively minor cases, which they can use to punish Prof. Kumar.

By the way, in the issue of Director being made a co-accused by CBI, which should demoralize the faculty a lot more, there is no move to make him resign, not just in IIT Kharagpur, but even outside. It is because, by and large, the academicians understand that an accusation is not the same as a proof of involvement or culpability. Everyone has to be presumed innocent, till proven guilty. But under the leadership of the same Director, IIT Kharagpur is now interested in silencing a prominent critic.

Educational institutions should not be seen as government departments. They must have value systems which are far more liberal than what may be permitted in other government departments. And, I am, of course, referring to the freedom of speech. Someone should read and understand what all is accepted by administrators of top universities in the world. The tolerance on IIT Kharagpur campus is really low at this time.

If IIT Kharagpur administration wants to consider itself as a Government Department, and therefore, charge-sheet a professor for talking to media, then it shows the vision of its leadership. Any potential student or faculty should think not just twice, but 10 times, before joining such an institute, which is agreeing through its actions that it cannot be a world class institute. Other IITs are at least trying.

There is another charge against Professor Kumar. He apparently threatened the Dean once. And as a proof, they have shown him a copy of the email that he sent. The email essentially says that because of the Dean's involvement in other cases, he should not be a member of the committee to investigate Prof. Kumar's letters, and urged him to recuse himself from the committee. Now, Prof. Kumar has mis-spelt the word and said rescue , which apparently is a threat word. You rescue yourself if you can, I will kill you, sort of thing. Can anything be more laughable, and does one still need proof that IIT Kharagpur is hell bent on destroying a career, because of the past genuine exposures of that professor.

What is the solution, now. I think it is clear that Prof. Kumar has gone overboard in some of his recent allegations. Also, there is too much negative feelings between him and a lot of people at IIT Kharagpur. This is not the environment where he can continue to live peacefully, and carry out his teaching and research. He and IIT Kharagpur administration should come to a settlement, which may include withdrawal of all charges and suspension against him, and he should immediately start looking for a job. With his credentials, he should not have any difficulty in joining one of the several other IITs. He could take VRS from IIT Kharagpur, so that he can get both a pension and a salary, which will be financially beneficial to him. IIT Kharagpur can then work towards finding other scapegoats for its problems.

But while all this play itself out, my message to JEE 2011 candidates: Avoid an institute where a significant part of time and energy of its leadership is spent on ensuring that its problems are not visible to the outside world.

JEE 2011 Admits Errors in Question Papers

2011-05-16T19:52:00.001+05:30

JEE has announced the answer key on its website.

It took JEE only 5 weeks to announce the answer key. And it must have hurt the organizers of the world's toughest exam to admit that they had SEVEN questions which were either ambiguous, or had a printing mistake, or were simply wrong. And these questions are worth 36 marks. That is huge when 4+ lakh students are vying for less than 10,000 seats.

And this is not all. Apparently, there are more questions, even in Chemistry, where the "official" answer is being considered unsatisfactory by the students. But IIT will not take cognizance of these complaints. The answer key is final.

And one wonders why did IITs take 5 weeks to announce the marking scheme. If they had done so in 5 hours, they could have taken inputs from all, and then finalized the scheme. But now, they have to announce the result on 25th May, and they can't change the key at this late stage, even if some errors are genuine. The doubt about JEE 2011 will always remain.

Of course, given that they weren't interested in listening to the students to begin with, they did the next best thing, in terms of giving marks to all, or giving marks for multiple correct answers.

But doing the best under the circumstances does not mean that it won't hurt anyone. For the ambiguous questions, if someone found the answer, what is now deemed correct, but did not write the answer, the candidate does not get any benefit. Of course, the hope is that there are very few such students, and some unfairness to them is more acceptable than to redo the exam and delay the entire admission process by two months. (And I agree that one needs to be practical about these things.)

The Right to Information Act has forced JEE to give out some information in the last 5-6 years, and in each of these years, there have been some serious doubts about the conduct of the exam. It makes me wonder. Was I lucky to have passed JEE a few decades ago. May be they were equally inept at conducting the exam at that time too, and I was declared selected by mistake. I must thank my stars that there was no RTI then. Otherwise, someone else may have studied in IIT in my place, and that someone would have been writing this blog, instead of me.

I think IITs should seriously consider giving up JEE. They just can't handle it. A professional organization should be entrusted with conduct of such an important exam.

My 2011 List of Recommended CS/IT Programs Outside the IIT System

2011-05-10T14:29:00.000+05:30

For last many years, I have been coming out with a small list of CS/IT Departments, which are in my opinion provide a decent quality of education, or have something interesting about them. I have formed my opinion about these departments, mostly through a visit, but sometimes by talking to alumni, other academicians, and reading information provided on their website.

This year, I thought I will put it on blog to have some amount of public discussion on this list. But "limited" is the operative word here. Please do not mind if I reject your comment, as I do not intend to make this a free-for-all forum.

I have primarily looked at CS or IT departments. In India, many Institutes (particularly NITs) built their reputation based on traditional engineering disciplines. When Computer Science was introduced to most of these institutes a couple of decades ago, they just could not find enough faculty, and most of the NITs (and many old government institutions) continue to have serious shortage of faculty. But the way things happen in India, if some institute is good in one discipline, we assume, without question, that that institute is good in every discipline. I have tried not to get influenced by the presence of good traditional departments on the same campus, and therefore, you would notice that some of the high ranking institutes are not on this page, because I believe that their high ranking is based on departments other than CS and IT.

I have also resisted the temptation of looking at the placement scenarios. I strongly believe that the placement is a function of current perception (which is no indicator of quality). One should be interested in long term career, and not in placement. Long term career is a function of quality of education (besides your own personality, hard work, life skills, and a good bit of luck). In my view (and I have talked to thousands of people on this), initial placement has no causal relationship or even a strong correlation with a good career. And hence I only look at parameters which ensure quality, primarily the quality of faculty.

But I also look at something interesting that the Institute is doing. So the list below does not just represent a set of Institutes with good CS faculty, but those who are unique in some ways.

Disclaimer: Do Not take this as my ranking of CS/IT Departments. These are good departments that I know of. I do not claim to know about all the Institutes in the country. And as I said above, I am also including some departments for their innovation, rather than an overall quality.

If I have not listed a department here, it can be for a variety of reasons. I may not have been able to visit the Institute in the last few years, and could not get enough information from the website. I may not have even tried to get information about the Institute, since it may not have been on my radar. And, of course, I may not have found anything exciting on my visit there, and I do not believe that they are doing a good enough job of education.

Other minimum requirements for listing here:

I only list institutes which are autonomous in academic processes (that is, they are either university themselves or a constituent college of a university). ( I am not listing colleges affiliated to any university.
I only list colleges which have an under-graduate program in Computer Science or IT. (So, great places like IISc, Bangalore, are not on this list.)

First of all, I would like to list four IIITs, that is, Institutes focusing on Information Technology, which in my opinion are providing excellent quality of education in IT related disciplines in India.You can jump to a brief note of each Institute by clicking on the name.

International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H), Hyderabad
Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-D), Delhi
Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), Gandhinagar
LN Mittal Institute of Information Technology (LNMIIT), Jaipur

Of course, there are many others who have impressed me for something or the other. The list is as follows.

BITS, Pilani
NIT, Calicut
Jadavpur University, Kolkata
NIT, Hamirpur
Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi
College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai

I consider IIIT, Hyderabad as the best alternative to IITs (from amongst the institutes I know or I have been told of). This Institute is already competing with IITs on attracting faculty, and every year it does attract some students who have got a good enough rank in JEE to get admission to IITs. They also get top students from AIEEE, and I believe that these students are as good as those in IITs. Basically, if you made a small mistake on the day of JEE, and did not do that mistake in AIEEE, you join IIIT Hyderabad. They have tremendous focus on research and human values. I have visited IIIT Hyderabad umpteen number of times, and I come back more impressed every time I go there.

IIIT Delhi is the newest amongst the IIITs. Though it has been in the existence for only 3 years, it has already started making waves. It has been able to attract excellent faculty, start strong research programs, have a great curriculum, and everything else that you would want from a good institution. It is supported by Delhi Government, though it is managed largely through a board which has very little representation from Delhi Government. Its Director, Prof. Pankaj Jalote, is a well known academician who has been writing a great deal about technical education for the last many years. He has a great vision and his presence as the founding director is really giving this Institute a great shape.

Another Institute, which is making an impact in IT education is DA-IICT at Gandhinagar. I am very impressed with the number of faculty members with PhD degrees from various IITs and decent US universities. And let me admit, being a faculty member myself, I think that an Institute which has so many of PhDs in their faculty, has to be on the right track. Of course, having "Dhirubhai Ambani" in the name of the Institute will ensure that the ADA (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani) group would never let it become a second-rate institution. Further, in their curriculum, there is a unique mix of Information Technology (CS) and Communication Technology, and depending on one's interest, one can go into the depth in either direction. And they seem to truly believe that under-graduate education is about broadening the horizons, and not become an expert. So not only do they have humanities courses in their curriculum, but they also have a six-week stay in a rural setting as part of curriculum.

LNMIIT is the fourth of the IT-focused institute which has potential to compete with the best in the future. The Institute has excellent infrastructure, beautiful architecture, and some of the best teachers in the country, who have retired from IIT system. Many of the young faculty members too have PhDs from IITs, IISc, and other fine institutions. Another great thing about LNMIIT is that they let you chose and change the discipline any time you want, with very liberal limits. You decide the discipline at the end of first year, and if after doing a few courses in that discipline, you think you like something else, just change it. They believe that a single exam on a single day should not determine the career of a young boy or girl. So they offer admissions through both AIEEE and IIT JEE. The curriculum is modern, and has only 40 odd courses. (Elsewhere, I have argued that a BTech curriculum should have no more than about 40 courses.) LNMIIT is a unique experiment of education in the joint sector. It is not a private college. It is a public private partnership between the Rajasthan Government and Lakshmi and Usha Mittal Foundation. And of course, Jaipur is arguably the best city to live in North India.

I admire BITS, Pilani for a lot of innovation that they have been doing in the engineering education. Whether it is the one semester training (Practice School) in the industry, or their online entrance exam, they always seem to be a step ahead of others in the new ways of doing education. They have an excellent dual-degree program, more flexible than any IIT can boast of. They have the best admission process, which takes some amount of language abilities into account. Of course, one concern that I have is whether BITS is spreading itself too thin by growing so fast. They have opened campuses in Dubai, Goa, and Hyderabad. Also, their focus on research seems less than other top class institutes in the country. (And, by the way, my strong recommendation is only for the Pilani campus.)

In September 2006, I had a chance to visit NIT Calicut, and I must say that I was very impressed. As you can see from the short list of institutes on this page, I do not get impressed easily. And let me tell you why. The first thing I noticed was that pretty much every faculty member in the department had a degree from either an IIT or IISc. They do hire people who have a BTech degree, but then ask them to do graduate education from outside. Most colleges run graduate programs (MTech or PhD) primarily to ensure that their own faculty members can get part-time graduate degrees. Even in NITs, most faculty members do MTech or PhD internally. But this in-breeding is dangerous for the quality of a department, and NIT Calicut has avoided the path of convenience to ensure quality. The maintenance of the campus is another thing that struck me as something great. The infrastructure is very good. The faculty is very cohesive. They have resisted the temptation of starting a program on IT. (Why shouldn't CSE and IT departments be merged in all NITs? There is hardly any difference in the programs, and these differences can be handled by offering electives.)

As one of the oldest engineering college in the country, Jadavpur University has made great contributions to the country. It was one of the early universities to start programs in computer science. It has a faculty, which includes 20 PhDs, which is rare, and almost impossible to find outside the IIT system. They have put out the number of their papers and other output on the website, which is good, though I would have liked to see the list of those papers, preferably with links to download them. The number of specializations is more than the number of faculty members. A large number of those PhDs are from Jadavpur University itself, and as I said above, I think there is something wrong with a department that encourages so many of the internal PhDs. This is particularly strange in their case, when fine institutions like IIT Kharagpur and ISI Kolkata are nearby. And the website is very poorly designed.

If there was an award for the most improved Institute in the country, it had to be given to NIT Hamirpur. Besides being the most beautiful campus that I have visited (and I have visited more than 100 colleges in the country), the improvements in the last five years are everywhere to see. You talk to anyone and they have a story to tell, a story of change, a change for the positive. The infrastructure improvement (computers, Internet bandwidth, buildings, and everything else) have taken place at a very rapid pace. It is no longer a sleepy NIT, with no link to the outside world. Now they welcome visitors from other NITs, IITs, and everywhere else. And once you go there, you are bound to fall in love with the campus. The curriculum has seen major changes (for the good). There is focus on hiring more faculty. They have started new MTech programs. They are starting to build relationships with their alumni. Everything that a college can and should do is being done at NIT Hamirpur, and it is no surprise to me that they have started appearing in some of the surveys of top engineering colleges. It also shows that while institutions are built through team-work, leadership makes a huge difference. Prof. I K Bhat, ex-Director of NIT Hamirpur, is one such visionary, who has made a huge difference. But the question being asked now is: Who after Prof. Bhat? The Institute has been without a Director for the past six months.

Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi has many strengths. It has been participating in the Joint Entrance Examination for several decades and that has really given it a good brand image. It is part of a great university and a great campus. That means that not only the campus has facilities of all sorts, but it also enables some cultural exchange between engineering students and non-engineering students, which is very good for wholesome education. And of course, it is expected that IT BHU will soon be converted into an IIT. The bill has already been passed by Lok Sabha, and Rajya Sabha is expected to pass it in the next session. And, as this list only contains institutes other than IITs, this is perhaps the last year for IT BHU to be on this list.

Another excellent place that I visited in 2006 is College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai. The CS department has a fairly large faculty, and lots of them have a PhD degree. There is an active research program, and one can find several publications from that department in literature. It is an active and vibrant department. Also, they have a very interesting part-time under-graduate program. As I said above, whenever I visit a department, I am looking out for something unique, an idea which is worth emulating, and I don't know of any other place which has such a part-time under-graduate program. The curriculum is based on a credit-based system, which is a big positive.

If you have a suggestion for including another institute, please let me know. But back up that suggestion with data. Not placement data. Not India Today ranking, or any other ranking. Not the closing rank of AIEEE. But data about quality of faculty or something innovative about the program there.

Allow BTech Students to Graduate in Less Than 4 Years

2011-05-06T01:13:00.001+05:30

Just read the ToI news about unfortunate death of a student of IIT Madras. Apparently he committed suicide because he would not have graduated in May but a few months later. He needed to do some more work on his project. He felt that he would lose his job, and the idea of staying back when a large fraction of his batchmates were graduating did not appeal to him.

The comments by the readers blame him squarely. It was just six more months. There are enough jobs for IITians.

There is no denying that graduating along with your batchmates and joining a job has become an extremely important goal for all students and the parents. Any indication that a student might not graduate in time introduces enormous stress, and every year, at the time of exams, one would find several bright young kids taking their own lives in different parts of the country.

How do we solve this problem. There are all sorts of suggestions on the readers' comments page. We must have professional counselors who would advise the students that six months is only a small fraction of the 50 year work life that they will enjoy. Even the professors should be trained to handle such students sensitively. The heads of the departments who are responsible to break this news to students must be trained to suitably advise the affected students. We must have Yoga or "Art of Living" as compulsory part of the curriculum. Basically, we must make sure that the student does not think of suicide when he comes to know that he has failed.

While all this must be done, there is an alternative, which might be easier to implement.

How about making sure that 80 percent of the batch does not graduate on a particular day. Or even 50 percent of the batch does not graduate on a single day.

Well, IITs have been offering the dual-degree (BTech and MTech together in 5 years) programs wherein the student does not graduate in the regular 4 years. They also have Integrated MSc programs. But that is not enough. A lot of people still graduate in 4 years.

We could ensure that less students graduate in 4 years, by offering more options to them: offer joint BTech-MBA programs, offer double majors (For example, BTech in Civil AND BTech in Mechanical), besides the BTech-MTech dual-degree programs. And then we advise the students that it is in their interest to go for this extra degree. But I suspect that this won't increase the number of students delaying their graduation significantly.

We should also introduce programs in which a student can have a break in studies after 4-5 semesters. He can work in industry or a research lab for a semester or two, get a wider world view, earn some money, and then get back to studies. These students would graduate later than 4 years. (At LNMIIT, we arranged some of the students to spend time at CERN, and other famous labs, doing cutting edge research.)

Another way to have less students graduate in 4 years is to fail a large number of students. But that would be rather mean.

So, we come to yet another (and my favorite) option to reduce the number of students graduating in 4 years - allow them to graduate in less than 4 years. It is high time that we shift to fully flexible credit based systems for all our degree programs. The graduation requirements should be in terms of credits that a student needs to earn, rather than the minimum number of semesters that he should have registered. (In my previous post, I had argued that if we move to credit based system, we would be able to offer an Executive MTech program, which is an urgent need of the industry.)

So students should be able to take an extra course (compared to the suggested program) in regular semester, and also do a course or two in the summer term. My expectation would be that there would be an odd student who would try to graduate in three years, but there would be 10-15 percent students would like to graduate in 7 semesters. Some more students would have done all course work, and would have left with only project work in the 8th semester, and they can graduate anytime during the semester.

So overall, we can have about 20 percent students graduate during or before 8th semester, another 20 percent students encouraged to go for dual-degree programs, and hence graduating after 9th semester or later, and about 10 percent students not graduating at the end of 8th semester due to failure in courses. All this combined would make sure that the number of students graduating at the end of 8th semester is only half the batch, or even less. And that would break the sanctity of a particular date of graduation in students' minds.

When that happens, graduation becomes a process and not a date, and a minor slip in that process will not be considered critical by the students and parents. Of course, industry also would have to become flexible in terms of its joining dates. But that is already happening. In most cases of a delayed graduation, industry is sympathetic and is able to adjust to the situation (at least in my experience at IIT Kanpur).

Of course, allowing early graduation also sends out a signal that we care about our top students. Currently, the feeling on campuses (at least amongst the faculty and the top students) is that all our time is spent on discussing how to help weak students. We must help weak students, but not by excluding good students from our thoughts and actions, altogether.

The Idea of an Executive MTech Program

2011-05-04T11:04:00.000+05:30

The MTech program in India is considered a research program, which one does leisurely over a two year period. There is a strong need, however, for different types of offerings at the Master's level, and the more innovative universities can create a program fulfilling that need.

NASSCOM (and many others who have studied quality of Indian higher education system) has pointed out that a large number of engineering graduates are not employable, and most of the graduates that the software industry employ, need significant training running into months. Companies also provide short-term training to their employees on a regular basis.

All this training ensures that the employees are aware of latest technologies and tools and they are able to execute projects incorporating those technologies and using those tools. However, after a decade of growth and promotions, many employees start reaching a plateau in the technical arena. If the college education did not teach basics well enough, all this training cannot take you too far.

For these employees, it appears as if the only way to climb the corporate ladder is to go through the management route. This perception of the employee is taken advantage of by the management institutes who have made executive MBA (or equivalent) options easily available. Management institutes have realized that it is unrealistic to expect a working professional to take a long break in career and do a degree at leisurely pace. But the MBA route to career growth is not a scalable option. As long as industry was growing at rates upwards of 20 percent, it could absorb large number of management graduates. But the need for people with higher technical knowledge is becoming acute.

As stated earlier, all the training that the companies provide cannot compensate for education that happens on a campus. A large number of current employees had gone through a relatively outdated curriculum from faculty members who did not know much better. If Indian industry has to go up in the value chain, they will need employees who are better educated, and not just well trained. This means that there is likely to be a large market for an executive (one-year) MTech program, and if some university starts it, it would be doing the industry a huge favor.

It is common in US universities (and elsewhere) to have multiple options for a master's degree. One can do very few courses and significant research work, or some more course work and a project, or even just course work. One can complete a course-based master's program in one year, though the thesis option would normally take six months longer.

If we look at the way MTech programs are structured in India, it is easy to compress them into a shorter duration programs. At IIT Kanpur (and I believe the credit requirement at other IITs would not be significantly different) one needs to do about 8 courses over 2 semesters, and a thesis work over another 2 semesters where the expected effort is equivalent to 8 courses (with minor variations across departments). Till a few years ago, the requirement was 6 courses and thesis equivalent to 6 courses, which could be completed in 3 semesters.

Why is it that a BTech student does 5 or 6 courses a semester, while an MTech student does only 4 courses a semester. Well, most of the MTech students are expected to provide some support to teaching or research to their department for about 8-10 hours a week. They get financial assistance for doing this work. Because of this requirement, they do only 4 courses. But, if someone does not want this financial support, and would rather do additional courses and finish early (and get a much higher corporate salary in the period that one saves as a result), it should be possible for someone to do 6 courses a semester. MTech students in general, and working professionals in particular are more mature than under-graduate students. They do not spend much time on partying, Internet surfing, movies, and games.

The rest is straight-forward. If the MTech program starts at the beginning of the summer term, a student does 2 courses in the summer, 6 courses each in the two semesters, and another 2 courses in the next summer, and in a total of 14 months, one has completed the 16 courses required for an MTech program. This does not reduce the credit requirement for the MTech program, only replaces thesis with courses, keeping in view the requirement of the industry.

Notice that it is possible to start the program in the beginning of the summer term, since the target audience are the working professionals. So no issues regarding having to wait for the result of the BTech program.

In fact, one can further reduce it effectively to one year, by requiring a project work to be done in the second summer, which would be equivalent to two courses. And this project work can be done in the company where the student is getting employed.

To run such a program at a very high quality, one can follow the ISB model. In the ISB model, one does not have an 18-week semester, but rather 6-week terms (including a couple of days break between two terms). So a student does not do 6 courses in parallel, but only 2 courses at a time, which get over within 6 weeks. It is easier to bring in high quality visiting faculty for 6 weeks, rather than for
a full semester of 18 weeks. So overall, the year is organized as seven 6-week terms. The exact dates can be tweaked to make it convenient for the visiting faculty. One could have a break of 3 weeks after four terms, which could be used for placement activities.

The puritans will balk at compressing the courses so much, but I believe that at the master's level, when one has only the motivated students and high-quality faculty, adequate learning can take place at the fast pace. But I concede that this may not work at the under-graduate level.

The program makes financial sense for all stake holders. If we assume that we would be able to attract high quality faculty by offering a compensation of about Rs. 10,000 per lecture hour, then the cost of faculty is about Rs. 4 lakh per course. If the physical infrastructure already exists in the institute, normally one would expect all non-faculty costs to be roughly equal. So the total cost to the institute for one course is about Rs. 8 lakhs. Assuming that there are only 40 students in a course, the average cost to the student is about Rs. 20,000 per course. If the student has to do 14 courses, the total cost to the student is only Rs. 2.8 lakhs. Even if we throw in goodies like a free laptop, invite a few foreign faculty at a higher cost, include personal costs of the student like mess food, the total cost to the student will still be within Rs.4 lakhs for the entire program.

In the current two year programs, typically the student earns enough during the program to take care of tuition and other expenses. So there is generally zero cost to the student. In the one-year program, the cost is Rs. 4 lakhs, but this is peanuts compared to what the student will earn in that one year that s/he saves.

Students will be attracted towards this program, if either their current employers promise to retain their jobs after they return, or there are other employers who have promised to consider the graduates for employment (of course, at a higher salary than what most of these students were earning). So one has to have agreements with employers for providing support to this program. Also, some students would have cash flow problem to pay high cost in the beginning. Therefore, arrangements have to be made with banks for student loans.

To summarize, universities need to innovate to solve real problems of industry in terms of not having sufficient number of people who can become technical leaders. The idea of an executive MTech is a step in that direction.

AIEEE Paper Leak

2011-05-02T11:12:00.003+05:30

Yesterday, there was chaos across the country. The AIEEE paper was found in the possession of a person in Lucknow (and later in coaching Mandi of Kanpur, and other places as well). Apparently the paper was being sold for huge sums, some media reports mentioning figures as high as Rs. 6 lakhs. Why on earth someone will pay lakhs of rupees for a paper, when the probability that such a leak will be found out is very high. But that is not what I want to discuss.

I am amazed by the handling of the incident by CBSE. It was quite remarkable that CBSE had thought of this possibility and had a full back up in terms of duplicate exam material which was already stored in each city where there was a center for the exam, and this material could be distributed to most of the centers within a couple of hours.

(Contrast this with JEE paper leak in 1997, which, co-incidentally also happened in Lucknow. We had to postpone admission by 5 weeks, causing havoc to admissions in all other engineering colleges in the country, since most students who get admission to IITs, will leave their other college, causing vacancies there. There was no plan B.)

Unfortunately, there was AFMC exam in the afternoon, and thousands of students were scheduled to give both. Worse, some schools were centers for both AIEEE and AFMC exam, and therefore, could not re-conduct AIEEE after 3 hours. CBSE lost no time in giving relief to all affected students. They announced that those who had to give AFMC or those whose center cannot conduct a late AIEEE exam will be able to give AIEEE on 8th May. Taking such quick decisions must be applauded. Of course, the problem did not end here. Some students complained that they had both AFMC on 1st afternoon, and another exam on 8th. CBSE again came to their rescue and said that they will be able to give exam on 10th May.

What this means is that CBSE was ready with not just one extra set of examination material, but is also ready with multiple sets of question papers. That is excellent planning. So despite a major problem on hand, CBSE will stick to its timeline for announcing results.

When 11 lakh students are told that they have to stop writing an exam, and give a different exam a couple of hours later, this is bound to cause problems. Chaos is bound to happen. But the fact that more than 10 lakh students could give the exam the same day is something that speaks volumes about how AIEEE is planned (as opposed to JEE where we take double the time to announce the result for less than half the number of candidates, with no transparency).

And now an interesting outcome of this. Since the students would have given several different exams (the question paper on 1st, 8th, and 10th, and the online version would be different), there would be some way to compare the performances of the students across those exams. And if the exam can be held on 1st, 8th, and 10th May,
why can't it be held on 1st December, 1st January and 1st May (just giving three random dates to make a point that it is possible to organize the exam on multiple dates through out the year - and may even allow students to sit for 2 of those exams - something that I have been arguing for in many of my posts).

Added on 3rd May: CBSE has announced that the exam will be held on 11th May for all those who could not give the exam on 1st May. So, it will not be on 8th and 10th, but only on 11th.

Let me add that all the information above is from media, and if you are an affected student, please contact AIEEE/CBSE for authentic information. Do not hold me responsible, if any of this information turns out to be incorrect.

Common Admission Portal for Engineering Colleges

2011-04-30T10:52:00.000+05:30

In my previous two posts, I have suggested that it is not practical to have a common entrance exam, and that multiplicity of exams is really not the reason for stress amongst students. It is the logistics behind multiple exams that is at the root of the problem.

In this note, I will argue that the admission process of various colleges and universities is a much bigger nightmare for a common student than taking a couple of extra exams. And then suggest a solution which creates a win-win situation for all stake holders.

Starting January every year, the 12th class student has to monitor various websites to know when the admission forms for different colleges and universities are available. There are lots of places, which do not hold their own exam, but admit students on the basis of performance in other exams. They all have their own separate forms to be filled in, along with the application fee. If you miss any deadline, you won't be considered for admission by that college.

The problem starts in June when results of all these entrance exams and the 12th class board exams is declared. You need to make sure that all the places you had applied to has the updates on your result. And then you start receiving admission offers.

One deposits fee in one university, and then receive admission offer from another university. One somehow manages funds to deposit fee there. And now, one is in dilemma. Should one withdraws admission from the first university, and seek refund. Or should one hold on to that admission offer in the hope that one might get admission into a more preferred program there. Notice that most universities will not consider you for the higher preference, if you withdrew your admission to the lower preference. And while you are debating all this with your friends and family, a third university makes an offer.

Arranging funds to keep admission offers alive at multiple universities is not an easy task, when all of them ask you to deposit at least the entire fees of the first semester, along with all security deposits (and sometimes even fees for the second semester).

Also, most of these places would want to see you in person to check your documents, etc., and you have no more than 3-4 days between the offer and the last date to report. There is no way you can get train reservations on such a short notice. So you either go unreserved, or by bus, or if you can afford it, fly. Airlines in India do roaring business in July (which is traditionally the lean period for tourism) because of admission related travel.

Even worse, some universities will want you to deposit your original documents with them, to ensure that you don't take admission in any other university. This is illegal, but still prevalent.

This is the real nightmare for students, and not giving a couple of extra exams in April/May. But unfortunately, not many in the government are concerned about this.

Is there a solution to this. Of course, there is an easy solution. Someone just needs to implement it. Consider an alternative scenario. There is one common admission portal for a large number of engineering colleges. A student registers there, and applies to as many universities/colleges, as he is interested in. There is a single form to be filled in, which has all the questions which any of these universities ask an applicant. So, you don't type your name 20 times, if you are applying to 20 universities. You give your registration number or roll number of various exams that you have given (and any of these universities are interested in knowing). You pay a consolidated application fee, which is sum of application fees of all the universities that you have applied to, in one online transaction (though there are offices across the country, which will accept drafts, if someone prefers that).

Each university will give this portal information on various programs - how many seats in each program, including any reservations, etc. A student can give one's choices for admission in the order of preference. These preferences could be across all universities, or just within a university.

When the results are announced, this portal will have a link to all boards and all exam conducting bodies, and will be able to download all results. So, the student is not responsible for informing each university the result of each exam.

Each university will tell the portal its process for creating the ordered merit list - it could be as simple as just following the AIEEE rank, or it could be in conjunction with some filters (like minimum 60 percent marks in 12th class), or it could be a combination of various factors.

Based on all this information, the portal will create a merit list for each university, put out the information as to which student has got admission in which university/program. If the student had indicated his/her preferences across universities, then s/he is offered admission in only one university/program. But if the student had indicated preferences only within each university, then s/he may be offered multiple admissions, but has to choose only one within a limited amount of time. As one chooses one option over the other, waiting lists are automatically triggered.

The student can pay the fee online again, and upload any documents also on the portal. The physical verification of the document can then be postponed to the time of actually joining by the student.

The portal will also know the refund rules of each university, and in fact, need to ask each student only that much amount immediately, which is the non-refundable part of the fee. The rest of the fee can be paid on the last date, after which the refund rules of the university changes. For example, if a university says that the fee is Rs. 1 lakh, out of which Rs. 90,000 will be refunded, if withdrawal happens by 15th July, and this admission offer has to be accepted by 5th July. The portal could ask the student to deposit only Rs. 10,000 by 5th July, and the remaining Rs. 90,000 by 15th July, to confirm the admission. So the students and parents won't get into cash flow problem.

If a student is offered admission in University 'A' and then later in University 'B', the student may decide to opt for the program in University 'B' while vacating the seat in University 'A' (so that the wait list can move immediately), but without losing the right to be considered for a higher preference at University 'A'. All this is trivial to program on the portal.

The portal can communicate with students using email, SMS, and postal letters, whatever mechanism is convenient to the student. The university will have an interface to generate all sorts of reports and statistics. By ensuring that a student has limited time to accept one of the multiple offers, the portal will ensure that universities are able to have quick movement of waiting lists, which result in early offers of admission to students and higher chances of filling up of seats for the university.

If someone can come up with such a portal, I am sure many universities will like to seek the services of such a portal. This will be a win-win situation for both students and universities, and a very profitable business for the organization running this portal. And if no private sector company is coming forward, perhaps NIC can run this. They already run the counseling site for CCB (which does joint counseling for all NITs and several other universities who base their admission on AIEEE ranks). This site can be upgraded to include features mentioned in this note.

Yes, it is possible to reduce stress from the admission process.

Stress due to multiple entrance exams: A Proposed Solution

2011-04-28T08:44:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, I had written on this blog why it is difficult have a common entrance exam for all engineering colleges. While discussing the blog with a few colleagues, I realized that the problem or the source of stress is not preparing for multiple exams, but the logistics of taking multiple exams.

A student typically sits for 5-6 exams in the months of April/May. Having 1 or 2 less exams is not going to remove or even reduce preparation effort. If the exams have very different syllabi, then either of them cannot be removed anyway. The two universities want different skills or knowledge to be tested presumably for some genuine reason. For example, the engineering admission test would have a different syllabus from the medical admission test. On the other hand, if two exams have similar syllabi, then preparation for the second exam is a small incremental effort, and removing that exam will not reduce the effort much.

The major problem for the student is not the number of exams, but the associated logistics. Sometimes, two exams are on the same day, or they could be on consecutive days, but the centers are in two different cities. Scheduling of exams is inflexible, because they depend on availability of schools in different cities. Most Schools are only available on Sundays, while some schools are also available on Saturdays. So large exams like JEE and AIEEE are held on Sundays, and exams with smaller number of candidates are held on Saturdays. And as I argued in my previous post, all these exams have to be held within a 5-6 week period in April/May, so the number of distinct dates available is much smaller than the number of exams to be held, and some clashes cannot be avoided.

So the primary problem is that the number of exams to be conducted is more than the number of suitable days available to conduct those exams. This results in scheduling conflicts. This results in having to find ways to reach from one city to the other in time, and find appropriate accommodation and transport options, that too, just before an important exam.

The obvious solution that all administrators have been suggesting is to reduce the number of exams. That will take away scheduling conflicts, and will give some peace to the student before every exam and would be easier on him/her to work out the logistics for each exam. But as I explained yesterday, this is extremely difficult to achieve (and perhaps not even desirable, since it gives more options to the students).

There is another solution to the problem. That is to increase the number of days over which these exams can be held. There are two ways it can be done. If we want to hold these exams only in April and May, then find ways to hold them on working days. Alternately, consider the option of holding them prior to April, perhaps through out the year.

To hold the exams on weekdays, we could have dedicated infrastructure only to hold exams. Suppose we were to create about 2-3 lakh seats just for examinations, spread over the 50 largest cities of the country. Given the number of exams of all sorts that we have (not just the admission tests, but exams for jobs in all PSUs, exams by UPSC and State PSCs), such a facility will be in use on most days of the year, and can be a profitable investment. And when there is an exam like AIEEE, which has more than 2-3 lakh candidates, only these large exams need to be held on Sundays, since they will need schools in addition to this dedicated infrastructure.

Alternately, the exams, particularly the big ones, need not be held only in April and May. They could be held on several days, including dates prior to the board exams. In such a scenario, the students can chose the dates for such exams in a way that there is no scheduling conflict with other exams they are planning to take. Of course, as I argued in my previous blog, holding an exam on multiple days invariably would mean a computer based standardized test. And once we have a large question bank, and the process of such tests has been streamlined, there is no reason why these tests can not be held through out the year.

I believe that increasing the number of days on which admission tests can be held is a much more viable option than to reduce the number of tests to one in each discipline (engineering, medicine, law, and so on).

Can we have a common entrance exam for all engineering colleges

2011-04-27T09:00:00.001+05:30

Most people connected to education in India agrees on one thing: There are too many exams. Recently, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council to Prime Minister (SAC-PM), Prof. C N R Rao, wrote a letter to Prime Minister, saying the same thing, and amongst many suggestions asked that there be only one entrance exam for all undergraduate courses in technical education in the country. He gave example of US where the admission is based on a single exam, GRE. (He probably did not know that GRE is used for graduate admission and not under-graduate admission.) Here is the link to Indian Express news item.

T Ramasami committee, charged with the task of JEE reform, has also made a plea that there should be a single exam in the country for admission to all engineering colleges. Here is the link to Indian Express news item.

Whenever I read such news item, I wonder, why they are wasting their time. If this is a dominant viewpoint for more than a decade, and there has been absolutely zero progress despite several committees, there must be a significant problem in achieving the goal. Why don't these stalwarts think of those problems first, and either tell us how those problems can be resolved, or advise the government that this is an impractical goal.

After all, when the Ministry of HRD asked CBSE to start AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Exam), it was done with the definite goal that this will be that single exam for all engineering colleges. Why did that not happen. Why do some states continue with their own engineering entrance tests. Why do many private universities continue to have their own tests. But most importantly, why do IITs continue to have their own test.

I am particularly asking this question about merging AIEEE and JEE, since this should have been the easiest to achieve administratively. After all, both CBSE and IITs are supervised by Ministry of HRD. MHRD can call the stake holders of both the exams, and thrash out any issues. If you can not convince your own organizations to do a single exam, then you should forget about a grand unification of all exams in the country. It is a waste of time even attempting it.

Why can't we merge AIEEE and JEE. I don't know, but I can do some loud thinking. First is the issue of trust. I don't think IITs really trust that AIEEE is organized as honestly as JEE (though there is really no data point to doubt the integrity of AIEEE, if anything they are more transparent). Second, there is a difference of opinion on whether the entrance test should be to select those who are good students and understand the 12th class science, or the entrance test should select those who don't need to be taught science in the first year. And lastly, let us not forget that both the exams earn a handsome amount of money for the organizers. And then, of course, IIT system has time and again shown that they are rigid, and would adopt changes only when the Minister has the guts to call their bluff and force them to change (and then we will all crib about loss of autonomy). So we will not give up JEE unless Minister forces us to do so.

I don't think there are any insurmountable problems in merging AIEEE and JEE. And unless it is done, you do not have any moral authority to ask other universities or states to not conduct their own entrance exam. If IITs have a special need for their own exam, when they test the same subjects, with roughly the same curriculum, then how can you argue that the University of XYZ, who actually has a different admission criteria (may be they test the language, or they give different weights to Physics, Chemistry and Maths, or they have a different syllabus, etc.), does not have that special need for its own exam.

Also, people suggesting a single entrance exam would do well to study the admission process in US universities. If they do that, they will realize that while US does have its SAT, it is only one of the many parameters that the admission office will look at. There is a subjective evaluation of multiple parameters, which is important since different universities may want to (and indeed do) give different weights to components of that evaluation. In Indian scenario, having subjective evaluation of admission applications is unthinkable because of the pressure that it would entail on the admission office, to give admission to well connected ones. So, if a university genuinely wants to evaluate different skills, it has no option but to go for its own admission test.

We have this important requirement that the admission test should be after the board exams in March. We need to finalize admissions by July, and therefore, all results must come in June (preferably early June). All this means that we only have about one month for all the exams, from 1st week of April to 1st week of May. Therefore, we cannot have the luxury of allowing a repeat of the exam, if a candidate does not perform well in that exam on that day. This is too dangerous for students, if we are going to have a single exam. Multiple exams actually allow mental peace to students as they know that if they don't perform well in one exam, they still have hopes of getting admission in the next best set of Institutes.

To have a single exam, we will have to have a system by which a student can give the exam twice or even thrice within the same admission cycle. This would mean that the exam would have to be conducted throughout the year. It means that the syllabus to be tested can only be 11th class syllabus, but that is not standardized across the country. (The combined syllabus of 11th and 12th has a reasonable overlap across the country, but the order in which these topics are taught in different boards vary.)

And, of course, the exams are a major money earner for the state technical universities as well as the private universities. (But this is changing. Private universities have realized that they can charge Rs. 1000 per candidate as application fee, even if they are using AIEEE score for admission. So why conduct one's own exam, which is an additional cost.)

Based on all the reasons I have stated above, I do not see a common entrance exam for all engineering colleges in near future.

So, is there no hope at all. Well, I think there is a possibility of a common entrance test, but it will have to be very different from anything that is going on right now. First of all, it will have to be a computer based test, with a large question bank in every subject, generating random questions for every candidate form that bank. Second, it will have to be conducted through out the year, with students allowed to take it multiple times, and improve their score. Third, it will have to have several optional components so that different universities can consider scores in different sections, depending on their needs. Different sections may be not just physics, chemistry, maths, biology, engineering drawing, english (and other languages), aptitude, general knowledge, and so on, but could also be Maths (low level), and Maths (high level). Also, within a section, the test could be adaptive like GRE, where by the questions asked depend on the level of the candidate. If a candidate is answering most questions correctly, then the computer starts asking more difficult questions from the question bank (and of course, it has historical data to standardize all questions' difficulty level), and the reverse happens, if a candidate cannot answer many questions. This would imply that the higher score is not just by answering more easy questions, but indicate an understanding of the higher order by that candidate.

All this will take at least 7-8 years from now. JEE preparations start an year in advance. So, no change in 2012. The earliest that AIEEE and JEE can be merged is 2013. After its experience will it become easier to convince others. At least 3-4 years will be needed for those negotiations. So if your kids have gone past the primary school, do not hope for the common entrance test for him/her.

Rules for Deemed Universities

2011-04-22T23:28:00.000+05:30

The higher education in India continues to be over-regulated. Last year, University Grants Commission (UGC) notified new rules for any college who desires to be a university under Section 3 of the UGC Act, 1956. These are called “UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2010.”

Among other things, these rules require that the trust or the society that sets up a college will have pretty much no control over it, once it is declared as deemed to be university. The university shall be run by a board of management, which will have widespread powers. Half the board shall be the employees of the university, including, Vice-Chancellor, two deans, two professors, Registrar, and the Pro vice-chancellor, if there is one. The sponsoring society or trust can have only one nominee, while the central government will also one nominee on the board of every deemed university. The central government nominee must also be an academician. Three eminent academicians can be nominated by the Chancellor to the board.

There shall be no one from industry on the board (unless the sponsoring society nominates one as its nominee). There shall be no alumni on the board, something totally against the current best practices for good governance of universities. All members of the board, other than the Registrar and the nominee of the society must be academicians.

The promoters do not even have a free hand in appointing Vice Chancellor. There will be a committee with a nominee of Chancellor, a nominee of the Government, and a nominee of the Board (and remember that the board is not controlled by the promoters). This committee will select the Vice Chancellor.

Lest the promoters try to control the board by appointing dummy deans and professors, who are then nominated into the board, the rules clarify that Deans and Professors will be members of the Board by rotation.

The Chancellor’s post itself cannot be occupied by the president of the society or any of its relatives. It is expected that the society will nominate someone who is a distinguished public figure.

There are far too many problems with this model.

First, is it fair to ask promoters to leave most control of the university? Would it be fair to ask Birla family to have nothing to do with BITS, or to ask Thapar family to have nothing to do with Thapar University, two of the best educational institutions in India, set up with so much passion and hard work (not to mention resources) by these two families.

Second, is it alright to assume that a board consisting of almost exclusively of academicians would have sufficient breadth of experience to manage the university? When most universities in the world are talking about having alumni and people from industry on their boards, India is moving in the direction of having neither.

Third, the Vice Chancellor has to be the Chairman of the Board. In such a situation, who can possibly evaluate the performance of VC on a regular basis. Having someone as the executive head whose performance cannot be evaluated in a routine fashion, does not appear to be a good governance model.

Fourth, if the government believes that this is indeed the best model for university governance, why is it not bringing this model of governance for universities that it has promoted? Let IIT Board have only academicians, only one government nominee, and Director as the Chairman. Let a similar management structure be there for all central universities. Over the last decade, there have been numerous demands for increased autonomy by IITs and IIMs. On every such occasion, such demands have been rejected by saying that as a promoter, government must have some control over these institutions. If Government feels that IITs and IIMs cannot be given autonomy, or their boards cannot be re-constituted without many government nominees, simply because government has funded these institutions so far, why does the same logic not apply to privately funded universities?

Recently, UGC started sending reminders to deemed universities for implementing all these changes. But interestingly, the government promoted deemed universities, including IIITs, IIST, etc., have not bothered to ask government to change their boards. Are they above the law of the land?

The rules go on to even specify even small details like a 15 day notice requirement for holding a meeting of the Board, and a quorum of 8 members. I have never heard of a quorum requirement of 8 persons in a Board of 10 persons. They even specify the membership and functions of Academic Council in detail. They also list the standing committees of the board and the functions that should be delegated to them. The message is clear. Innovation is not to be allowed in India.

Beyond governance, the rules take away most of the autonomy that typically universities should enjoy. The admission, they say, should be made strictly based on an All India examination. Many deemed universities give direct admission to toppers of various boards in under-graduate programs. This will now be illegal, even though the research has shown that 12th class marks are a better predictor of success in higher education than performance in various competitive exams. Many universities consider GMAT for admission to MBA programs, which will now stop. Similarly, having a limited number of seats under sports quota to encourage sports will become illegal. And, once again, the government universities can continue to do all this. No one will ask them any questions.

The rules also mandate that a deemed university must be residential. While most good universities are residential in nature, it is by no means a requirement to achieve excellence.

Deemed universities are no longer autonomous to decide which programs they want to run, and which one they wish to discontinue. Any time a new department is to be set up, permission of UGC will be needed. If they want to grow beyond their current campus, they will need the permission of UGC. And, of course, offering education in distance mode has always been highly restrictive.

The new rules forbid offering of joint programs by deemed universities, without approval from UGC. And it is not just that UGC wishes to control back-door entry of foreign universities through joint programs. Their approval is required even if two Indian universities wish to collaborate and jointly offer a program.

These regulations also bar the use of the word “university” in the name. Only those deemed universities, who started using the word “university” in their name earlier and have a stay from a court, can continue to use this word. Again, the logic is not clear. If these are universities, why not allow them to call themselves universities.

A deemed university will have to have a minimum of five disciplines. In general, universities with undergraduate programs should provide diverse exposure to their students, but there have been several examples of successful educational institutions that are narrowly focused. ISB is a great example of such an institution, which cannot become a deemed university under these rules, even if it wanted. (I am sure they don't care.)

These rules also threaten to take away another aspect of university autonomy – that of determining fee for various courses. It says that deemed universities shall have to follow any fee regulation that central government may impose. One of the most important reason why deemed universities have been able to provide good quality education compared to thousands of affiliated colleges across the country is that they are free to charge higher tuition. Good quality education costs money, and one cannot provide quality education at the fee that the current levels of fee various state governments allow to colleges.

Overall, the rules are a disaster for higher education. They remove the role of promoters from the universities, thereby discouraging companies and rich individuals to invest in education. They take away all autonomy from the universities and strengthen the role of regulator to an unacceptably high degree. They intend to destroy what has been the island of quality amongst the sea of mediocrity.

Trends in IIT JEE Counseling

2011-04-20T06:55:00.001+05:30

I have the closing ranks of all the programs offered through JEE from 2003 through 2010. I thought I will spend some time studying the trends and see what patterns emerge as a result. I have done two kinds of analysis. One, comparing 2003 preferences to 2010 preferences. This gives us the longer term trends. Two, comparing 2009 preferences to 2010 preferences to capture any sudden or recent trends. This was particularly done for programs in recently started IITs.

Please note that there are far too many variables which could have affected the preferences and the closing ranks. First of all, in these 8 years, the number of seats in IITs have almost doubled. We now have reservation for OBC (Non creamy layer) candidates. We also have two rounds of counseling to fill up vacant seats after the first round. There have been several new programs started in these 8 years. Also, the number of selections from each zone influence the closing ranks each year, as people tend to prefer the IIT of their zone. All this would affect the preferences and closing ranks. But the hope is that if consider the closing ranks for programs which have continued in existence for all these 8 years, the changes in other conditions should have roughly affected them in similar ways, and therefore, this study is at least indicative of what the students and parents are thinking about.

I did briefly notice the trends from one year to the other for a few popular programs in various IITs. I noticed that such changes are minor in nature. However, the changes over the 8 years' period are very significant. This happens mainly because most candidates fill up their choices under the influence of their parents. And the parents have generally no idea about various programs (not that candidates are much better at it). So the parents insist on looking at last years' closing rank and barring a few minor changes (generally related to geographical preference), ask the candidates to fill up in that order. A few brave souls do things differently, talk to a lot more people to seek advice, and actually follow that advice. These small changes become a trend over longer duration.

For the 8 year trends, I have only considered those programs which have been in existence over these 8 years.

First the programs where the closing ranks have gone down. Architecture programs are the worst affected. BArch (Roorke) closing rank has gone down from 4365 to 9490, and BArch (Kharagpur) closing rank has gone down from 3624 to 8721. Next the Design program at Guwahaty, where the closing rank has gone from 3773 to 6582. Almost identical decline is in BPharma (IT BHU), going from 4349 to 7087. All programs that have anything to do with Bio (Bio Science, Bio chemistry, Bio technology, etc.) have seen the closing ranks becoming worse in this period. (This is surprising as a large number of academicians believe that this century belongs to Biology.)

Generally, the science programs (resulting in MSc degree) have lost popularity, but where the science departments have started offering an engineering like programs, they have done better. So the programs in Engineering Physics, and Maths and Computing, have done better than programs in Chemistry and pure Physics.

The programs that have really improved their perception and ranking are those of Civil Engineering. None of the Civil Engineering programs closed within 2000 ranks in the year 2003. Now, despite such a massive expansion of IIT system, the BTech programs in Bombay and Madras closed around 1500, while at Kanpur closed just before 2000 in the year 2010. In fact, Civil Engineering has shown the most consistent improvement of closing ranks throughout this 8 year period.

There are some interesting short-term trends about other engineering disciplines, but that is later.

In terms of locations, the preference for IIT Bombay kept increasing throughout this period. Popularity of IIT Delhi has also improved quite a bit in this period. While IIT Madras has shown some improvement, IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur have not been the favorites of today's generation. In general, increasing number of students are preferring bigger cities over smaller ones. (This is not to say that the meteoric rise of IIT Bombay in this period is only due to its geographic location. Far from it. There are some solid improvements in their programs, faculty, and infrastructure, last decade.)

A decade ago, when IIT Kanpur started its decline and IIT Bombay started its rise, Metro IITs offered a very regional experience, with most students from nearby areas, and non-Metro IITs offer a more cosmopolitan experience, with students coming from all over the country. And I used to recommend that people should prefer non-Metro IITs for a more diverse experience. But that has changed now. Metro IITs are offering an equally (or even better) cosmopolitan experience, with people from all over the country preferring them over non-Metro IITs.

Comparison of 2009 with 2010

If we just compare the closing ranks of 2009 and 2010, one thing that comes out strongly is the improved closing ranks for lots of programs of IT BHU. I would attribute this to the news at that time that IT BHU would be soon converted to an IIT. Since, now the bill to convert IT BHU to an IIT is already in the Parliament, I would expect this trend to continue this year.

IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi continued their improvement in closing ranks. Many more people showed willingness to opt for Guwahati last year. I think this is because of the improved connectivity through cheap airlines as well as a few more trains to the city. IIT Madras could not maintain its closing ranks, primarily due to decreased number of selections from nearby areas. Surprisingly, the number of selections from Tamilnadu, Karnataka and Kerala are minuscule, and that affects the closing ranks of IIT Madras. IIT Kharagpur continues to get bad press, and hence fewer preferences. Given that this year, it has probably seen more scandals than ever before, I would expect even more candidates to avoid IIT Kharagpur in 2011.

In terms of programs, some of the longer term trends continue. Decline in Architecture, Design, Sciences, Bio-related programs, and so on. The core engineering branches were on strong upsurge, primarily Mechanical, Chemical, and Civil. Surprisingly, Aeronautical and Metallurgical engineering were in less demand, despite the fantastic news from ISRO and continued upturn in metal industry - primarily, aluminum and steel making. I guess the problems in setting up greenfield plants due to land acquisition and environmental concerns has been causing concerns amongst the students. So no hope for Metallurgy this year too.

Computer Science lost its sheen this year. For the first time in over 30 years, the first closing program was not computer science. BTech program in Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay closed at 98. But besides IIT Bombay, everywhere else Computer Science was preferred over Electrical or Electronics. But the gap has narrowed down significantly. I expect Electrical/Electronics to continue gaining over Computer Science in 2011.

Amongst the six new IITs started in 2008, the size of the city certainly appeared to be the main draw. Both Hyderabad and Gandhinagar saw improvement in their closing ranks in Electrical (compared all IITs on Electrical, as everyone had this program). The surprise was IIT Ropar, which has improved the most in terms of closing rank. I expect this year too, candidates will prefer IITs at Hyderabad and Gandhinagar.

Amongst the IITs at Indore and Mandi, Indore showed much greater improvements in the closing ranks.

Education Bubble in US - a response

2011-04-19T10:14:00.001+05:30

A couple of days ago I had commented in this blog on Peter Thiel's article about education bubble in US. My friend Ajay Bharadwaj sends me link to a blog by Robin Cangie, where she argues that Peter Thiel is wrong, the situation is worse than a bubble.

Here are some of the points she makes:

"Students pay top dollar, not for quality, but for a name brand education. Classes, even at elite universities, can top 500 students and are disproportionately taught by poorly paid adjuncts and graduate students, not professors. Cheating and grade inflation are rampant and quietly tolerated. All of this points to a spectacular betrayal of the educational principles that these institutions are supposed to uphold – namely, to educate." Was she writing about US education, I wonder.

At IIT Kanpur, undergraduate students don't pay top dollars or rupees, but they come not for quality, but for name brand education. More than half the students have no interest in the specific program they are pursuing, and will not get into a career related to that program.

Classes at IIT Kanpur exceed 500. For decades, we have followed the model of a large lecture followed by smaller tutorials. But it was a success when the class size was 200-300. Faculty does not necessarily believe that the model is scalable to 500+ size classes, but quality of education is less important than the faculty workload, and splitting the class into two will require one additional faculty member. (This was the reason given for large classes in a recent meeting that I attended.) The tutorial section size has gone up from 30 to 40. The tutors are increasingly graduate students, and not faculty, as they used to be. But we do not have any formal mechanism for training these students on how to handle a group of 40 students. (By the way, I am fully in favor of using graduate students for tutorials and labs, but someone should be telling them what to do.)

Cheating is not rampant, but is quietly tolerated. In last few annual reports of the disciplinary committee, there is hardly any mention of cheating cases. And now, it has been decided that in most cheating cases, the matter can be resolved by the instructor hirself, and it may not even be reported to the disciplinary committee.

Grade inflation has been encouraged in the last few years. The failure percentage now is little over 2 percent - mostly those who did not give the end-semester exam, or were ill. And the graduation requirement has been reduced from a CPI of 5.0 (on a 10 point scale) to 4.0 (from 2011 batch onwards). If you can pass JEE, you deserve to get a degree from IIT Kanpur.

And yet, I have no doubts that IIT Kanpur continues to be one of the best technical education providers in the country. I shudder to think what will be happening in thousands of other colleges across the country.

Education Bubble in US

2011-04-17T01:47:00.000+05:30

My friend, Sunil Bajpai, shared this interesting article, based on an interview of Peter Thiel, who is claiming that there is an education bubble in US. Some quotes from the article:

[It is intensely believed] that you will always make more money if you are college educated.

It used to be a given that a college education was always worth the investment– even if you had to take out student loans to get one. But over the last year, as unemployment hovers around double digits, the cost of universities soars and kids graduate and move back home with their parents, the once-heretical question of whether education is worth the exorbitant price has started to be re-examined even by the most hard-core members of American intelligensia.

There have been other reports which have questioned whether spending a crore of rupees on a bachelor's degree is a good investment for an american.

I think India must take advantage of this situation. In India, the most expensive (not for the student but the total cost to government/student/others) engineering education is in IITs, where the total cost to government and student combined is about Rs. 5 lakhs per year, including tuition, hostel, mess, and all sundry expenses. The top US schools may be providing a better quality education, but certainly not worth 5 times the cost.

Would it be worthwhile for some foreign universities to setup a campus in India, solely to bring in students from US (and other such countries where the cost of education has reached a stage of bubble), and provide the education experience here, since the cost of faculty, staff, building, and everything else is less here. To attract the best faculty, they could pay a significantly higher salary than IITs. And they could provide them with an even better research environment than IITs. The student services (hostels/food) could be improved too. But with all these additions, the cost to the student would still be a fraction of Rs. 25 lakhs a year that students are spending to study in top US universities.

Of course, since this model does not increase the availability of faculty in India, at least not in the short term anyway, it will lead to poaching of existing faculty in IITs. Not a very comforting feeling, I must say.

Medical tourism is passe. Get ready to welcome education tourists.

Plagiarism case in IIT Kanpur

2011-04-16T11:04:00.004+05:30

Just to refresh the memories of the reader, a journal retracted two review articles published by an IIT Kanpur faculty member (and some students). This came to the notice of IIT Kanpur in September 2010. Nothing was done about this till the media published this news item. Here is the link for news item by Times of India on 9th October. At the same time, faculty of IIT Kanpur also demanded that the charges be investigated and a quick decision be taken. Soon a committee was formed to look into the charges. Here is the link for the news item in Indian Express. The committee was expected to give its report within 10 days. It was promised by IIT Kanpur that the report and the proposed action will be discussed in the next Board of Governor meeting on 2nd November 2010.

Of course, one does not expect IIT Kanpur to release the report of the committee till someone asks for it under RTI. But no final decision has been taken on this issue.

The News report in Indian Express tells us that Director has promised that the final decision will be taken by May 2011.

Why is so much delay. We criticize judiciary all the time for postponing trials. But do we complete trials that we are responsible for. When we are in an administrative positions, how many times do we put that file in one of the drawers and forget about it. How much time does it really take to read two papers, and the papers from where the alleged copying has taken place, and talk to authors and seek explanation, if something unusual is there.

In the meanwhile, the faculty member does not know what to do. With such a charge, he will not be able to write project proposals, get PhD students and carry out research as usual. If the charge is false, he should be cleared at the earliest. If the copying is such that it constitutes a minor offense, then he should be admonished, or given a warning, and allowed to get on with life. But if the copying is such that it constitutes a major offense, then a harsh decision has to be taken, perhaps asking him to find another job.

Why is it that IIT Kanpur is delaying the matter. One can only guess, but my feeling is that it is waiting for the faculty member to resign. No one wants to take any decision in such a case. So they will just let the faculty member remain in the state of stress for a long enough time that either the press and public forgets about it, or the faculty member for his own sanity resigns and moves on.
And once the faculty member resigns, no decision needs to be taken.

The administration is not comfortable taking a decision, since it opens up all the past cases where no decision has been taken for years.

IIT Joint Entrance Examination Completes Half Century of Secrecy

2011-04-11T13:43:00.000+05:30

Finally, it is over. The 50th edition of Joint Entrance Exam (unless you count the 1997 JEE twice, when the first exam was cancelled because the question paper was leaked) is very different from the first edition in 1962, in format, in terms of number of students, number of IITs and programs, and of course, the hype that JEE generated then and now. But the two editions are not different in one important way - everything about JEE is confidential. The whole organization lacks transparency despite the flaws which has been repeatedly pointed out. At least now we have RTI, and we do come to know of some information about JEE, but often this information is delayed past the time it becomes useless.

JEE always raises more issues than other exams. This is supposedly the key to the greatest career, and hence media reports every little detail about JEE, much more than it cares for AIEEE, even though latter is taken by 2.5 times as many students as JEE.

This year, media has latched on to a couple of announcements by the organizing IIT. The first one said that the answer key will be available within 48 hours of the exam. The second one said that a scanned copy of the answersheet (ORS) will be posted online for all students, even before the result is formally announced. The third one said that the marks obtained by every candidate will be put on the website on the day the results are announced.

The links to media articles are as follows:

Deccan Herald

Times of India

Indian Express

Hindustan Times

These were great announcement. But sceptics were not convinced that this was really going to happen.

JEE already has the answer keys prepared by the same group who prepared the question paper. But the key is not announced because there is a fear that some mistake might have crept in, and if that mistake is detected, there will be a loss of face for the venerable IITs. This time, they promised that the keys will be announced soon after the exam is over, so that students and others can point out mistakes, if any, and then JEE can take those objections into account to decide the final key or grading policy, which will be fair to everyone. Seems like an excellent idea, but an organization built over secrecy for 50 years is not going to let out even the genuine information. It does not matter whether this is fair or not. And sure enough, JEE has gone back on this announcement.

Here is the link for the news report:

Times of India

Now, the key will be announced only after 15th May. How will this enable others to offer feedback before the result is out. We don't know. Why couldn't it be done on 11th April. We don't know. But JEE is sacrosanct within IIT system. You don't ask such questions about God.

Posting of scanned answerbooks (ORS) was to give confidence to students that the technology used by IITs in scanning and recording answers is fool proof and does correct evaluation in all cases. Of course, if it did make an occasional error, then the student can point that out and IIT will fix it before the result is formally out. Seems fair enough. This was done after Allahabad High Court gave a ruling in another exam of BHU that the students should have access to the ORS sheets. (As one would notice that almost all "reforms" in JEE are forced either by courts or by RTI or by Ministry, and the only role of IITs is to delay those reforms till they can.)

However, just putting the scanned copy of the ORS on the web was not good enough. This does not help the student at all, unless you also put on the web how each has been graded. Ideally, the website should have a scanned copy of ORS and what was the right answer for each question, and what is the answer that the JEE evaluation mechanism has recorded. If all this information is there, only then a student can request correction. But this was not to be.

Even the announcement of putting scanned ORS on web has been diluted and now there are doubts whether it will be done before the result is formally announced and counselling process is launched, giving time to students to request correction. The link to the media is:

Hindustan Times

Why is IIT doing this. Apparently, they are afraid that a large number of students may request regrading. Actually, that can be handled very easily. Put a charge of Rs. 1000 for regrading request. After several boards handle many more students, many more exams, and still allow the option of regrading. And the regrading requests are small because one wouldn't pay the regrading charges unless there is a real chance of making to IITs or improving the rank. The real reason is different. I don't think IITs have the confidence in their own processes. There is a fear that if they give out all this information, there may be a large number of cases where the scanning has resulted in significantly different marks. And if that indeed happens, then IITs lose respect, and there is a delay in admission process. And for IITs, the brand equity and the timetable of admission process is lot more important than the fairness to all candidates.

JEE is also afraid that some students will go to court on frivolous counts if a lot of information is revealed before the admission process is over. (Later on, they are forced to reveal it through RTI anyway, but it is too late for most students to approach courts.) But is this fear out of some genuine experience. Have courts stayed admission process through AIEEE which is much transparent than IIT JEE, and which provides the basis for admission into hundreds of engineering colleges. Have JEE lost court cases in the past which were frivolous in nature. What they are really saying is that they don't trust the High Courts of the country, and they can act like that since they are the IITs.

There is still time to act. One hopes that if enough people put pressure on IITs to do the right thing, they may actually do what they promised last month. Improved transparency will be a great move forward by JEE in its Golden Jubilee Year.

IIIT Allahabad Closed Sine Die

2011-04-05T07:14:00.002+05:30

Some sad news from our neighborhood.
As per the ToI Report, a student of IIIT Allahabad was run over by the Institute's bus.

Students have set up a blog in protest. Here is the link to Students' Appeal.

The Institute has been closed sine die. Here is the ToI Report on this.

I must also add that I did not find any mention of either the accident or the Institute closure on the Institute website, though friends in IIIT have confirmed the news.

Dr. Mahendra Singh Dhoni and the state of education in Jharkhand

2011-04-04T13:06:00.000+05:30

Well done, India. Theirs have been an exceptional performance. Beating all past WC winners convincingly. And while the credit in a team game must be shared by all team members, there is no doubt that the captain plays an extremely important role in executing the strategy and fine tuning it on the ground. The team members and the captain deserve every accolade, prize, gift, etc., that are being announced by one and all.

But there is one announcement that has bothered me. If news papers are to be believed, The Human Resources Minister of Jharkhand has announced that the state government will confer an honorary doctorate on MSD. To me, this is a clear indication, if any was needed, of the state of education in Jharkhand (which I suspect is not too different in many other states). A degree, whether honorary or not, is awarded by a university and not by a government. Each university has its own process for determining who qualifies for a degree, including an honorary degree. And government should have absolutely no role into this.

So the statement of the minister shows how much autonomy does a university have in the state of Jharkhand. The minister must be absolutely sure that he can just call up a vice chancellor and ask him/her to go through the motions, but none dare to oppose the motion, since the minister has already announced it publicly. Can education flourish in an environment where a university cannot even determine whom to give a degree.

(As an aside, even central government is culprit on this count, though not on the same scale. Central Government Institutions cannot award an honorary degree without approval of the central government. So they hold a veto power on an honorary degree. But thankfully, they don't force universities controlled by them to award an honorary degree.)

I was there at Motera

2011-03-27T01:00:00.002+05:30

March 24, 2011. The world cup quarter-final between India and Australia. And I decided to watch my first ever ODI match live in a stadium.

The atmosphere was electrifying, and I was asking myself again and again, why did I wait for so many decades. When just before the match, they played the national anthem, 40,000 people sang along. It was an emotional moment, and I couldn't hold back my tears. Each time Australia lost a wicket, the cheers were loud enough that I am sure people in Ahmedabad city could tell without catching the game on TV. But yet, when Ponting completed his century there was a round of applause for him. When Sachin started moving to the pavilion after his dismissal, and the umpire asked him to stop till he had verified whether it was a no ball or not, there was a prayer on everyone's lips. Your personal religion did not matter. There was only one religion on display: Cricket. And there is only one God in this religion: Sachin.

At the end of 39th over, the required run rate had creeped up to over 6. For the first time in the match, people started losing hope. Some people started leaving. But those would regret their decision to leave because right after that in the 40th and 41st over, Yuvraj and Raina scored 27 runs, and brought the required run rate to below 5. Singh was King that night.

But while the game was exhilarating, everything else about the event was horrible. The ticket sales, to begin with. Why couldn't they have an online auction or an online lottery depending on whether you believe in capitalism or in socialism. It is ridiculous to make people stand in queue for hours together waiting for the counters to open, only to be told that the tickets are sold out.

The traffic management was so poor that we took about 1.5 hours in the car for the last 1.5 KM. The reason - people weren't informed that there was adequate parking available near the stadium. So people parked on the roadside, making less road space available for traffic. Then those brave souls who decided to go up to the stadium in their cars were pleasantly surprised to notice that there was parking space available, but security checking of cars was so slow that the the traffic backed up for more than 5 KM. Can't someone do some back-of-the-envelope calculation and plan. If there are going to be 40,000 people coming, and there is no public transportation available, then expect at least 4000 cars to show up, and will need to be parked in about an hour. So have enough security guards to check enough cars in parallel to achieve that capacity. There is no reason to have a long queue.

Then there was this sign pointing us to the direction of Gate number 12, but there was no gate number 12 in that direction. Different policemen would give us different directions, and finally we figured that there is no gate numbered 12. We had to enter from gate number 11. The signs could have been less frustrating.

Well, we finally entered the stadium. We were stripped off water bottles, and no food packets. Presumably the food may have some poison in it, and we may attempt feeding the players on the boundary line. We knew in advance that mobile phones and no other electronic gadgets will be allowed. But what we did not know was that even a plastic pen could be used as a weapon. Perhaps someone in the police hierarchy had read that the pen is mightier than the sword, and if swords are security risks, then of course, pens are security risks too. I wanted to ask the policeman on duty - what if I try to throw my shoes into the ground. But I desisted. They may actually start banning footwear into the stadium. Anything goes in the name of security, and no body bothers asking a question - is there an alternative. (If the main problem with water bottles was that there have been several incidents in the past of spectators throwing water bottles into the ground, then the solution is not to ban water bottles, but to increase the height of the wiremesh barrier between the seats and the playground from 8-10 feet to may be 20 feet. Also, they should ask the security guards to not congregate at one location and watch the match, but to be dispersed throughout the stands and watch the spectators.

One would imagine that the hosts, whether it was ICC, or BCCI, or Gujarat Cricket Association, would have made some arrangements for food and water. After all, people were going to be there for 10 hours, and not everyone was in the mood to keep a fast. There were kids and there were old people in the crowd too. To be truthful, there was a contractor who was supposed to sell these. Every once in a while, there was some noise indicating that the contractor has gotten another 100 bottles of water, and there would be a stampede. People would fight, people would argue, and the one man who was doing the selling would pour water from one bottle of 10 rupees into three glasses and sell each glass for 10 rupees. Never mind the cost. But how do I carry multiple glasses through this huge crowd. By the time I will reach my seat, I would have lost half the water. But wait till the next round of bottles arrive, and this was for a stand which perhaps had more than 3000 spectators.

Food was even rarer. So at the innings break, there was a massive argument between lots of hungry and thirsty souls and the handful of policemen at the gate, and they had no option but to allow people to go out of the stadium, and bring back bottles, food packets, and anything else they wanted. There was no way police was going to be able to check what all was being brought in. We thank our stars that terrorists did not think of this as an option to bring in whatever they wanted to bring in. (And yes, people did throw some of those bottles onto the ground proving the police viewpoint that these can be used to disrupt the match. But as I said earlier, there has to be an alternate way of ensuring that bottles don't reach the ground.)

I was really shocked, seeing the arrangements. You have thousands of captive customers, who have nowhere to go, and who mostly could afford any monopolistic price for food and water. (Most people in the stand were talking about how many thousands they had paid for the 800 rupees ticket.) And we were in Gujarat, the land of entrepreneurship. Didn't someone think that a lot of money could be made by providing a bit of service.

The toilets were filthy. (May be that is why they were not selling water. To ensure that you don't have to face the stench multiple times during the 10 hour period.)

The seats were narrow and very uncomfortable, and were designed to encourage everyone to stand up every time even mildly positive thing happened on the field. Standing was so much more comfortable than sitting on those chairs.

From our stand, we couldn't see the replay board conveniently. So at times we would miss the action and there would not be any action replay.

And I was doing some mental calculations. (Remember my pen was confiscated in the name of security.) If they had charged Rs. 801 for the ticket, instead of Rs. 800, they would have had enough money extra to clean the toilets continuously for 10 hours. I am sure there would be no spectator in that stand who would not have happily paid that one rupee extra for clean toilets. They could further raise the ticket price to Rs. 802, and hire a few cleaning staff who would take away the empty bottles, plastic glasses and all the other waste that was being littered everywhere.

Indeed, I am sure that no spectator in that stand would have minded paying a bit more extra for hiring a few LCD TVs and putting them on the roof, or on the pillars, etc. This would have made the match experience much better.

So on one hand I am kicking myself for not being part of such a fantastic experience earlier in my life, but on the other hand, I am not sure whether I want to go through the mismanagement of the type that I experienced at Motera that day. I know the biggest of the world cup games is on 30th at Mohali, but I am tempted to stay home and watch it on TV.

Education Loans: What is a good collateral

2011-03-22T15:23:00.000+05:30

Most discussions on how to improve quality of education start with the suggestion that the colleges be allowed to charge a much higher fee than what they are being allowed currently. And immediately, someone will point out that our citizens cannot afford the cost of quality education. Predictably the discussion moves on to bank loans. While in theory, educational loans till Rs 4 lakhs are without any collateral, and easily given, in practice, students keep complaining about banks' reluctance to provide the loan to students from financially weaker background. Apparently, the default in education loans is rather high, and banks feel comfortable giving loans to only students of highly reputed institutions, or those who has a guarantor or a collateral.

One way out of this problem is to have the degree itself as a collateral. When the student applies for bank loan, there can be a tripartite agreement between the student, the bank, and the educational institution. The educational institution agrees that any certificate/diploma/degree/marksheet, etc., that the institute will give to the student will have a line that the student has not yet completed the loan repayment, and only after the bank informs the institute that it has been fully paid that the institute will provide a degree (or diploma, etc.) which will be "clean," that is, will not have any mention of the unpaid loans.

Assuming that the students will be very keen to have a clean degree, they will try their best to clear the dues. At any stage in life, some employer may insist that they have a clean degree (and hopefully, a lot of employers will insist that at middle level or senior level, all degrees be clean).

And if all students can be given Aadhar number on priority basis, and their degrees and certificates can be put in a national depository (as is being planned by the government) so that any employer or stake holder can look at the status of the degree, then it will not be possible for students to fake a clean degree.

Of course, this does not solve the problem fully. Some students will fail the course and never get a degree. Some students will go abroad where employers may not care about the loan, and, of course, even Indian employers may not care about this line. Also, if one is self employed, then one can ignore having a clean degree. But all these cases put together are still a small part of the graduate community, and the scheme will, I hope, improve the loan recovery by banks. And that will encourage banks to increase the amount disbursed as educational loans, and also reduce the interest rates a bit.

Transparency in Educational Institutions

2011-03-18T01:53:00.000+05:30

Last weekend was a treat. So many distinguished IITK alumni gathered on campus for various alumni related events - the Alumni Day, Giving out of Distinguished Alumnus Awards and Satyendra Dubey Award, 35-year reunion of 1976 graduates, the Student-Alumni Interaction Day, etc. It is always a pleasure to meet and listen to great minds. But the biggest treat of all was a 2-hour session by Mr. Shailesh Gandhi, the Central Information Commissioner, on Right to Information Act. Mr. Gandhi was here to receive the Satyandera Dubey Memorial Award from IIT Kanpur.

This set me thinking about transparency. Do we follow transparency in our dealings as an educational institute. I also discussed the matter with a few colleagues. Unfortunately, the answer every time was, "we are far more transparent than others." That may very well be the case, but is that enough.

We have seen that the holiest of the holy cow, the JEE, has a tarnished image today because it had no transparency (it still has less than desirable), and till now, there has been no explanation for some of the past acts.

When we give our awards, like the Distinguished Alumnus Awards we gave on Saturday, there are always some murmurs. Would it not be proper to put out a list of all nominations with a brief summary of their achievements (if not all the details) on the website. Anyone can then see that there was no "much better" nominee who was overlooked by the awards committee.

We spend good money to attract students for summer internship at IIT Kanpur. But are we selecting the best ones amongst those who applied. I think we should put up a complete list of all applicants with their brief credentials, and those who are selected.

When we collect feedback from students about our courses, shouldn't such a feedback be available in the public domain. Shouldn't it be known to taxpayers as to how the highest paid faculty members in the country supported by their taxes are doing in terms of tasks that they are expected to do - teaching, research, institution building, etc.

When we set up committees to inquire into misdemeanors, shouldn't the reports of the committees be made public.

When we are constructing buildings at the cost of 10s of crores, it should be mandatory to put up the building plans and the estimated cost (and the final cost) on the web.

When we terminate the programs of academically weak students, and then consider their appeals, shouldn't we be giving reasons as to why some appeals are accepted and some are not. After all, it is a serious matter of career for those whose appeals are turned down.

Doing all this and many more similar things would improve the public confidence in our system, and encourage other institutes to follow our processes, and hopefully, this will improve accountability in all institutions, and thus excellence.

Of course, I can submit a series of RTI applications to the Public Information Officer of IIT Kanpur, each with a check of Rs. 10 only, and ask for all this information, and then I can share that with the rest of the world.

But that is not good enough as far as the Act is concerned. The RTI Act says that the public authorities will take steps to inform public about the information that could be asked under RTI. So all this information should be put on the website suo moto by educational institutions before anyone asks for it by filing an RTI application. If one is not doing that, one is violating certainly the spirit of the act, and perhaps the letter of the act as well.

Thank you, Mr. Shailesh Gandhi.

Suggestions regarding lateral entry

2011-03-15T13:04:00.000+05:30

A couple of weeks ago, I had written about a proposal to have lateral admission into IITs. I received a large number of emails and comments. There are two ideas that some institutes are seriously considering to attract research students through lateral admission. (Both ideas are not fully developed, and are not currently implemented. Hence I have been advised that naming the institutes or persons would be premature.)

In one of the ideas, some IITs are considering offering PhD admission directly to students at the end of their 3rd year of studies. These students will join the IIT immediately thereafter. The remaining credits for the BTech degree will be done at the IIT. It is expected that the under-graduate institute of the student will agree to transfer those UG credits that have been earned at the IIT, and whenever the UG requirements are complete, will offer the degree to the student. So the IIT will not offer the BTech degree to these students, but hopefully, being in IIT for the final year will cause the student to adapt to IIT system quickly, and will be productive sooner.

Another Institute is planning to offer admission to the dual-degree program directly in the 3rd year to those who have completed 2 years of studies at another institute. (Most good institutes in the country have a 5-year program at the end of which the student gets both an undergraduate degree and a post-graduate degree, for example IITs have BTech-MTech dual degree programs.) This institute will consider research preparedness and research aptitude as the primary criteria for admission, and will be willing to offer credit transfer for the courses done in the first two years, if they are relevant to the program that the student wishes to pursue in this institute.

I see these two as examples of innovation that academics institutes are thinking of bringing about, and I hope that they will succeed.

Pricing Engineering Education: How to Reduce Tuition

2011-03-12T10:17:00.001+05:30

After my earlier blog post on pricing engineering education, it has been pointed out to me that not only affiliated colleges, but even universities are now coming under fee regulation in some states. Even Gujarat, an otherwise progressive state, has been controlling tuition for professional courses in the private universities in the state, and that too at levels much lower than what we discussed in that blog post.

Many people asked me that considering the political reality, is there something that the universities could do to manage their finances, and offer cheaper education, with only a limited reduction in quality.

So, here is an attempt to give a few suggestions. Please note that these suggestions are more in terms of "thinking aloud" and may not be well thought through ideas. Feel free to improve/decimate them, as well as give more such ideas.

First of all, let us understand why state governments want to control tuition to such low levels. Obviously, they want to provide access to residents of their state (read, voters) at a low cost. They believe that it is more important to provide low-cost education, even if low-quality, than to provide high-quality education at higher cost. If this be the case, I believe it should be possible to convince the state governments to have a lower tuition for students from within the state and a higher tuition for students from outside the state. Most US state universities have the concept of in-state tuition and out-of-state tuition, and there is no reason why that cannot be replicated here. Currently, states do allow a higher tuition for students under management quota, or NRI quota, and the same can be allowed for out-of-state students. To make sure that colleges and universities do not only admit out-of-state students in such a situation, one can have 50% seats for in-state students. This will be a politically acceptable way of improving the yield.

On the cost front, some of the AICTE norms are simply luxurious in the current scenario. Having a 1:15 teacher student ratio for a teaching only institution is luxury. We need this ratio when we have a substantial post-graduate program. So what AICTE can do is to allow a 1:25 teacher-student ratio for UG programs, and a 1:10 ratio for PG programs. So, if an institute only has 1000 UG students, it should need to have only 40 faculty members. On the other hand, if it has 600 UGs and 400 PGs, then it should have 24+40 = 64 faculty members. This would reduce the cost of faculty substantially for the honest players (most dishonest players anyway have 1:25 ratio or worse). We really need to look at all their norms and cut down the requirement. For example, there is no need to have as many PCs now, since most students come with their own laptops. The library size too should be determined by taking into consideration that most of the material is available online.

The technical universities should realize that it is counter-productive to teach a lot of courses. The students cannot really concentrate and learn 6-7 subjects in a given semester. If they are taught only 5 courses (or god forbid, even 4) in a semester, they will learn much more, and the cost of teaching comes down substantially.

Technology should be leveraged to reduce costs further. Having a campus management software should reduce the number of staff members. Having cameras at important places can reduce the need to have physical security. A digital library can provide access to material more easily to every student without the need to have a large library to host the large printed material and have lots of reading spaces.

Colleges also need to look at alternate sources of revenue. One way to augment revenue is by sharing one's facilities with outsiders. For example, there is nothing wrong in having a coaching center use the lecture halls in the evening. If you have a guest house, rent out empty rooms to outsiders (subject to local laws and tax rules). Similarly, your primary health care room for students can also double up as a doctor's clinic for outsiders at other times. Commercial establishments on campus like a book store, photo-copier, canteens, etc., need not be given space for free or very low rent. Somewhat higher charges by these businesses is a politically acceptable way to get students to pay a bit more of the cost incurred on them. Similarly, a higher charge for hostel and mess facilities and generating a surplus there is generally tolerated by governments. Of course, all this will be minor unless the institution has excess land at disposal and can plan its commercial establishments properly.

Another revenue source, at least, for institutions providing higher quality of education, are workshops and short term courses. Most institutions anyway do these things for their students and faculty. If marketed properly, they can attract a lot of high paying industry persons. Management institutes already earn significant revenues through this route, and there is no reason why other professional colleges cannot do the same.

The faculty should be strong encouraged to write research proposals to both government an industry sponsors. The research cost should preferably come from such funding sources instead of dipping into student tuition. In fact, the monitoring of such funding is so poor in India, that most institutes (primarily government ones) who are in this game, are able to buy excess equipment from projects and use them for teaching.

One source of revenue which Indian institutions seem reluctant to tap into are philanthropists, foundations, and alumni. IITs have been trying to attract some money through this route for the last two decades, but the amounts are still not very large, compared to what their alumni are capable of. This apparent failure of IITs has discouraged other institutes to get into this mode of revenue generation. But, I believe that IITs have not reached even a fraction of their potential because they haven't yet learnt how to do it effectively. Of course, government can help by giving tax incentives for the same. Currently donations to educational institutes give you income tax rebate on 50% of the donation (except institutes of national importance like IITs, where you get income tax rebate on 100% of donation). The new budget proposes that a company giving money to educational institutes for research can deduct 200% of the expense from its income. There is a need to give that 200% rebate to contributions towards teaching as well.

If there are any more ideas, I would love to hear from you.

Language skills and JEE

2011-03-10T23:19:00.000+05:30

Recently, there was a strange drama in the parliament. Due to some confusion, some Rajya Sabha MPs thought that JEE was conducted only in English. The Minister HRD added fuel to the fire by responding to the question in English, and maintaining that the decision on the language is best left to IIT Council, an autonomous body. Finally, the Rajya Sabha had to be adjourned for 15 minutes, to bring the situation under control.

Of course, JEE question papers are available in Hindi too. So the whole discussion was unnecessary. But just imagine the uproar that will happen if IITs were to decide that they will introduce a language test in JEE. The language test could be in multiple languages - it is only to test linguistic abilities of the candidate. But there will always be criticism that English test is simpler than non-English tests. And, therefore, forget about testing language in JEE.

A few years ago, I met a German student who was carrying out research on the success of Indian IT sector. He told me that he is shocked by whatever he had learnt about the Indian higher education system. One point that he made was that India was a unique country in the world (well, amongst the 50 largest countries anyway) in that it did not consider language skills for the purpose of admission to professional courses. There is a huge amount of research which shows that the language skills are the best predictor of being a successful professional, and that is why the entire world considers these skills as amongst the most important parameter for both under-graduate as well as post-graduate admissions. But India did not do it. (And as I said above, language skills are not synonymous with English skills. It should be possible to design a language test in multiple languages.)

Today, I met a professor of another institute, who has been doing a lot of traveling to various institutes in India, and he told me that he found BITS Pilani students to be amongst the best, and we started discussing this. We felt that the reason for this (perception?, how does one really check this?) could be that BITS Pilani is the only institute in India amongst the top rated institutes which considers language skills as important, and includes them in its admission test. (And also a section on logical reasoning.) It also happens to be the institute with perhaps the highest cutoff for the 12th class marks. (It requires 80 percent in aggregate of Physics, Chemistry and Maths.) And of course, there is a lot of research which shows that the performance in school has a better correlation with the performance in college compared to the correlation between entrance exam with performance in college.

As a result of different admission processes, while a lot of good students in schools (including those who are really good at at least one language) do manage to get through JEE and join IITs, but a lot of students who manage to get admission to IITs do not have good performance in school or do not have good language skills.

Is there a way to influence stake holders to include an exam component in JEE on a language (of the choice of the candidate), and also increase the cutoff marks in 12th from 60% to at least 65%.

Young India Fellowship

2011-03-08T06:44:00.000+05:30

Recently, I came across this new program, Young India Fellowship, which is being touted as India's own Rhodes Scholarship.

If you check the website, you will find that the first batch will have 50 students, those who are graduating in 2011, or have graduated at most 2 years ago. These 50 students will go through a one year of fantastic experience. They will be taught by leading experts, with workshops, and guest lectures thrown in all the time. I was so excited about the program that I immediately contacted one person associated with the program and asked if they could make just one exception and allow someone who graduated 25 years ago. Alas, they did not agree.

This is a one year program, divided into 8 terms of 6 weeks each, with some time in between for on campus interviews. Yes, the program will provide help with placements as well.

And the best part of this program is that it is free. It costs about Rs. 8 lakhs, including tuition, lodging and boarding, but all participants will get full scholarship to cover all these expenses.

The list of founders, mentors, sponsors, and faculty is truly awe inspiring, and include the who's who of Indian industry, truly outstanding academicians, and distinguished persons from many other walks of life.