Multi-disciplinary Education: Why is it important?

NEP 2020 talks about universities becoming multi-disciplinary and offering programs which have courses from multiple disciplines. What is multi-disciplinary education?

It is simple. When you study to get a degree in a particular discipline, you don't just study courses in that discipline, but from various other disciplines as well. For example, if you want to do a major in Computer Science, you will study a significant number of courses in Computer Science, but you will also do courses from Mathematics, Engineering, Humanities, and so on.

This all sounds familiar. The important question is: Aren't all university programs multi-disciplinary in nature already. Why is NEP or educationists in general even talking about it. If everyone has accepted it, what is the point of this blog.

Well, everyone hasn't accepted it, and a lot of universities are simply paying lip service to it. And it is a matter of degree. If there is a program in which you have to do 40 courses in 4 years, should you have 10 courses from outside the major discipline, or 20 or 25. So details are important.

Frankly, students have not accepted it, and many universities haven't understood the reason to do it and therefore implement it in ways that goes counter to the reason why it should be done.

For a long time, good universities had a broad based under-graduate education because the education was supposed to make you a good citizen who should be aware of a lot of different things. It was felt that under-graduate program is to improve the breadth and to enable a large number of different careers. If students can pick up very different careers, they ought to have been trained on several different things. But lately, even in the western world, college education is being seen more as improving employability and preparing for a narrower set of careers. People are talking about education being an investment and looking for a return on investment (RoI).

In this new world, students are demanding to know why every course is being taught and how it is going to be useful in one's career. And by "career", they often don't mean next 30-50 years, but the first job that they expect through campus placement. And a large number of courses that we teach (even within the major discipline) aren't meant to help find the first job.

The reality is that your first job is often based on knowledge and skills that you can pick up through a good school education and perhaps six to twelve months of additional training. So if you are only looking for the first job and only want to study which will quickly get you that first job, you don't need to join college at all. (Of course, there is a signaling value in joining a college.)

If I look at the journey of an engineering student, s/he would have started studying for JEE (or other exams) while in 11th class (if not in 9th class, and sometimes even earlier). They had a goal to get into IITs or some other good institution. When they finally take admission to some college, their earlier goal has become irrelevant (whether they succeeded in it or not). To maintain their sanity and motivation, they need to quickly decide on their next goal and works towards them. And often, the goal they choose is to get a job at the end of 4 years (as distinct from thinking about a long term career, or to have a goal of becoming a good engineer independent of what job they will get). And they start thinking of how they will find that job. They figure that they will need to learn a few things and get some soft skills which will be useful in the interview process. Note that they are only focusing on getting a job and not doing a job well. Very quickly they figure out that pretty much no software company asks them questions on chemistry or physics, or a lathe machine, or sociology and so on. And they start questioning why these subjects are being taught to them.

The faculty members are often able to say that courses like partial differential equation will help solve some problems in future (do software developer even code matrix manipulation? no, they just make function calls). But even faculty members are not able to explain why a CS student needs to study Chemistry.

The fact of the matter is that the broad based education has different goals than a very narrow goal that the students want to pursue. And instead of explaining them how a course will help in their narrow goals, we should be talking about why broader goals are important. And the broader goals are not only to become a good citizen aware of a lot of different things from various different perspectives, but also to prepare for future jobs which are yet unknown, and since we don't know what the future requirements are, it is good to have a broad based education since that would increase the chance of success in that unknown world.

If one wants to be highly successful in one's career, there are often two ways to get there. One, you be amongst the best in your chosen field (top 1-2%). This way, you would have respect, you will rise quickly, you will make an impact. Two, you be very good in more than one field (top 25% in say computer science and music). Since most people focus on one field, people who are very good in two or more fields are in big demand and they rise quickly. And most people find it easier to be very good in two things than excellent in one. You have chosen one major discipline based on your interest or guidance you received. Now, you should think of another discipline to be good at. If your curriculum at the university is multi-disciplinary, you would be exposed to many disciplines, learn them seriously and think about what did you enjoy doing the most. That could be your second discipline to get very good at.

The other reason to study multiple things is that most technical knowledge and skills would be obsolete within a few years. A student entering college today would almost certainly be working 50 years from now. How does one survive if most things that one learnt in the university are obsolete. Well, you need to keep learning always. And how do learn as adults. We learn by connecting any new information with the old information we already have. If you know a wide variety of things, there is a better chance that the new thing you need to learn has some connection with what you already know.

In fact, when you learn a seemingly unrelated topic, you still get ideas from that course which can be useful in your primary discipline. Many problems that you will solve in future will require an understanding of its domain.

People become more creative when they study multiple subjects. Some people may be born creative. But a lot of people who are creative have seen many different perspectives in life and are able to use all that knowledge in coming up with a solution.

I can go on and on, but the point is that learning topics from different disciplines have several advantages if you consider broader life and career goals as opposed to just succeed in a campus placement interview.

Now, where do Tier 2/3 universities go wrong in implementing multi-disciplinary curriculum. Note that all the advantages we talked about are accrued by studying a wide variety of subjects. It is not about any specific subjects. While there may be some topics from outside the major discipline which are very important for that discipline (like some Mathematics for Computer Science), and hence can be made compulsory, for the rest of the courses, any set of courses will do as long as there is sufficient breadth. For a computer science program, we may insist on some maths courses, some science courses, some humanities and social science courses, and so on, to require breadth, but there is no justification for making these non-major courses as compulsory. If you want the student to have breadth, let the student decide what will constitute that breadth. If these courses are being done to help in an uncertain future, often your guess regarding what might help a particular student 20 years from now is going to be as bad as the student's own guess.

But most Tier 2/3 universities do not understand the importance of multi-disciplinary curriculum. They are doing it because NEP2020 says so, and because the AICTE model curriculum suggests so. But they have this feeling that this is waste of time, and since these are not "useful" courses, there is no point in investing in them. So no choice to students. May be we can get temporary faculty (low-cost) to teach these courses.

Multi-disciplinary curriculum is so important that one ought to look at university programs from this perspective before confirming admission. And the way to find out whether the university is only paying lip service or is actually serious about multi-disciplinarity is the following:

1. Check the fraction of credits from outside the major discipline. If the major discipline has more than 50 percent credits, it is not good.
2. Does the university offer second major and minor programs (minor in other disciplines as opposed to specialization within the discipline).
3. Does the university offer non-major courses as compulsory courses only or are these electives.

 Once you have determined whether a university is serious about multi-disciplinarity, give that a significant weight while comparing your higher education options.

Note: I had recently given a webinar on this topic with iDreamCareer.com and the recording of that webinar is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85-InERkRWM

IITians in ISRO and other national missions

Recently, ISRO made us all proud by landing near the south pole of the moon, an achievement that no other nation has been able to do. During the festivities that followed, one thing that came out in media repeatedly was that there were very few IITians involved in this project. Indeed, there are very few IITian employees in ISRO.

When this was repeated, there were two implications. One is, of course, that we have a strong talent pool beyond the so-called top institutions in the country. This is very positive for the nation. But, the second implication is a complaint that IITians do not participate in the nation building through government projects. If you go through the comments on the newspaper reports, there is also a sense that if we can get high quality scientists from Tier 2 institutions (at a much lower cost), should we be spending so much on IITs. Should we force IITians to spend a couple of years after their graduation to work in the government sector.

What do numbers say. Well, everyone quotes a news report from 2014 in which it was stated that 2 percent of ISRO employees were alums of IITs or NITs. This information was received through an RTI application, and hence is largely believed to be true. But is this a good statistics to look at. When we look at ISRO employees, they include helpers, peons, drivers and so on. There will be many technicians, admin staff, security and what not. Even in technical staff, I suspect that there will be many jobs where they would prefer scientists over engineers. I couldn't find any distribution of employees in ISRO, but my gut feeling is that the number of jobs in ISRO where IITians can be reasonably expected to participate may be anywhere from one tenth to one fifth of the total number of jobs. Even if we look at one fifth as the number, it means that 10 percent of engineering jobs are taken by graduates of IITs and NITs. And 10 percent is not bad at all, particularly considering that IITs and NITs have never produced more than 3-4 percent of engineers in India.

Do IITians avoid government jobs since one often hears of very high salaries (even more than a crore) from MNCs. Far from it. You look at IAS, IPS, IFS, Forest Service, Revenue Service, Customs, and so on, you will find a lot of IITians there. You will also find IITians in all kind of services in Indian Railways, Military Engineering Services, Department of Telecom, DST, Public Works Departments (both at state and central level). You would also find a large number of them in government institutions and universities. So it does not seem like IITians are running away from the government sector. In fact, their contribution to nation building is truly admirable.

Still, if it seems that given the high profile nature of ISRO, more IITians should have been interested in the organization, there is one issue. A typical IITian prefer an on-campus recruitment or taking an exam which opens up a large number of good options. So the exams that many of them would be interested in include: Civil Services, Indian Engineering Services and now lately, GATE (since many PSUs have started shortlisting candidates based on GATE score). An organization having its own recruitment process which is not centered around on-campus recruitment will not attract IITians (or students from those campuses where there is easy availability of jobs). And there is no need to be judgmental about it. There is nothing wrong for an organization to have its own centralized recruitment process and there is nothing wrong in a student not interested in a process which they perceive as inconvenient. After all ISRO is attracting fabulous talent through its process. So why worry about someone not applying.

The last question is whether it means that we are over-spending on IITs (and by extension on other top institutions). If a smaller college with limited resources can produce such great scientists then why fund IITs and IISERs to such a large extent. I disagree. While you will find that the best graduates of Tier 2 institutions are equal to the best graduates of top institutions, the average graduate of a top institution is often better prepared academically than an average student of a Tier 2 institution. (Otherwise, the private sector wouldn't differentiate between the two.) The fraction of graduates of IITs and IISERs who are well trained is higher than the fraction of graduates of a Tier 2 institution who are well trained. And hence instead of thinking of IITs as wasteful, we should think of investing much more resources in Tier 2 institutions so that a much greater number of their graduates are in top league.

In summary, let us enjoy our moment of glory and success, let us feel good about there being talent in every nook and corner and not try to put down the top institutions. Everyone is contributing to the nation building.

Suicides in Kota: Students Need Career Counseling

Yet another young life lost. The average is more than one per month. Why is it happening.

The simple logic is that there are too few seats in our IITs (for engineering), or too few seats in good (read, government) medical colleges. The quality of education in the next level institutions is much worse. Parents have high aspirations. They push their wards to go to a far off place without the family support. They realize that the competition is extremely tough for those few seats. The students are afraid that they aren't going to come up to the expectations of their near and dear ones. Under that stress, sometimes an unfortunate extreme step is taken.

How do we handle this. Of course, we must provide counseling to these students (I really think all schools should provide counselors in 11th and 12th class at least). But what else.

In the discussion, it is assumed that the stress is the result of too few seats in IITs and the next level institutions being much worse. While the statement is true, I disagree that this is the reason for the stress. I have myself talked to several coaching guys a few years ago when my son was in 11th class. A lot of students coming to coaching have no hopes of cracking IIT. And the coaching institutions tell them that it is important to do well in JEE Mains since that is a ticket to admissions in next level of institutions, including NITs. And stress happens when they realize that they aren't likely to be in the top 50,000 ranks, thereby even the next level institutions that they were targeting weren't quite within the reach.

Now, you may argue whether the stress is for being within the top 10,000 or within the top 50,000, it is all the same and the solution will be the same. I think the two situations are very different and therefore the solutions are very different.

My basic premise is that the quality of education that a top 10,000 person gets is much better than the quality of education that a 20,000 rank student gets. But the gap between the institution that a 20,000 rank student studies in and a 1,00,000 rank student studies in isn't very high.

If the assumption is that suicides happen because the gap between IITs and the next level is too high, then the solutions proposed would be a major restructuring of the education system. Let us expand IIT education. Let us put in a lot more money in NITs. Let us allow more autonomy to top private institutions and allow them to charge more fees. It could even be to hide the difference between IITs and the next level. Let us not talk about the placements, for example.

But if we were to believe that the suicides happen when the student feels that they can't even get 1 lakh rank in JEE Mains, then the solution is just career counseling which is doable now and we don't need a major restructuring of the education system. I mean, telling the students about other options that they will have if they were to get 1L rank or worse, which will be only marginally worse than what they could have been admitted at 40-50 thousand rank. This requires changing perceptions while the earlier assumption required changing reality.

There are so many institutions which provide a good quality education but aren't well known and one is unlikely to believe in their quality just because one person says so. The right thing to do, in my opinion, is that the student after the JEE Mains result is out, should seek information from various sources about the possible colleges to get admission at that level of performance. Go through their websites, get whatever information they think is important, and select 10 colleges. Take the risk and include 2 such colleges about which you are unsure but someone tells you that they are good but unknown. And now visit all these 10 colleges even if they are in 5 different cities. Remember the cost of coaching in Kota would be much more than this visit of 10 campuses and this is the most important decision of your career.

So, basically, what I am suggesting is that if there is career counseling available to students in coaching (and indeed, in all schools across the country) whereby the student is told of several options at various ranks, told that the gap between the well-known colleges and the next level ones isn't too much, encouraged to do research on colleges and shortlist, and visit to finalize the college, I think we can reduce the stress. We don't have to wait for the country to restructure entire education to save lives.

At least in Engineering and Computer Science, they can be told of online resources that they can use to get quality education even if they get admitted to lesser known colleges. They can be told of programs such as BSc of IIT Madras which they can do along with their other degrees. Overall, a student with 1-2 lakh JEE Mains rank has many good options in life and career counseling will make a difference to his/her stress levels..

Is India a super-competitive place for youth?

I recently read somewhere that India is a super-competitive place for youth. Everything is so difficult. There are 2.5 crore babies born in the country in a year. If you want to succeed in any sphere, you need to compete with all these people. JEE is so difficult, NEET is so difficult, and so on. And of course, this leads to stress, anxiety and other mental health issues.

Is it really true? On the face of it, yes, of course. We have a serious shortage of quality education opportunities. For 2.5 crore babies born, only 2.5 lakh of them will get to really good quality college education like IITs, Ashoka, BITS, NIDs, and so on. To be in the top 1 percent of the population is not easy in such a large group.

But what if I change my goal to be in the top 2 percent. Is it still difficult?

And the answer is surprisingly in negative. There are enough decent quality institutions in India where getting admission is relatively easy. You have to invest time and effort in finding places which are not so well known, visit them personally and select one of them and take admission. (JK Lakshmipat University is one such example.)

After getting admission, make sure that you divide your time between academics and fun judiciously. And you do take your academics seriously. The interesting part of Indian education is that a very large number of students copy assignments and even projects. The universities compete with each other in providing simple question papers with lots of options in exams. The lab exams are a joke and neither students nor faculty take academics seriously. 

Every student entering colleges have been told numerous times that they needed to do hard work only in 11th and 12th class and then the life will be easy. They have done that, and now expect life to be easy which means that they should not have to work hard in college. This attitude and the quality of faculty implies, to take an example from Computer Science education, that 98-99 percent students don't even learn to write good quality 500-lines of code. So, if you want to be in the top 2 percent of the country, the only thing you need to do is to teach yourself quality coding and pass all courses. And this only means that write a few programs yourself over the four years of college. And at least in Computer Science, you can learn all this on your own through online courses even if the faculty in your college is not upto the mark.

Now, if you can be in the top 2 percent of the country (at least at the time of exit from college) by simply doing all the programming yourself (and not copy), would you call this super-competitive education. I won't.

I think India is the easiest country to build a career. Nowhere else in the world it would take so little to be in the top 2 percent.

 

Marketing by Universities: What should parents do?

All my life, I have been in institutions where marketing was taboo. I had, of course, seen ads in print, on TV, on hoardings and in magazines, and often wondered the utility of these. Do people really take the most important decision of their career by looking at the ads. And once I joined the private sector myself, I realize that the answer to this question is an unambiguous YES. Even the NAAC accreditation team that visited JK Lakshmipat University last year wrote amongst its suggestions that we do greater amount of marketing so that more students are aware of the excellent opportunities that we provide.

I am told that advertisement revenue from education sector is greater than almost all other sectors in the country. Most private colleges spend more than 10 percent of their revenue on marketing and the total spend is more than a billion USD. That is a lot of money which could have been used to improve the quality of education.

Marketing is, of course, essential in any business and it is essential that universities reach out to potential students and tell them about its strengths. Only a few top universities can avoid marketing and depend purely on word of mouth. My concern is whether there is too much focus on marketing, too much money being spent on marketing which could have been spent on improving education, and whether the potential students and parents are taking decisions based on what they see in advertisements or do they only shortlist based on marketing and then try to get additional information before taking the final decision.

Taking decisions based on marketing is ok and perhaps the only way to buy a lot of goods and services. It is alright to buy a TV based on the ad that you saw. The maximum loss is that perhaps another TV would have given you a better value. In that sense, you perhaps took a small loss at the most. Same is true for most things. But education is different. Choosing one program over another, or one university over another, could impact your entire career. Choosing a program at a university only based on the highest package advertised by the university could mean a poor job at the end of your program while in another university, you could have done so much better.

Also, unlike most goods and services where it is very difficult for a lay person to compare the offerings, in the education field, it is not too difficult to get a sense of quality offered by different universities if you invest your time into it. Not trivial, but not impossible even for a layman. Marketing essentially assumes that all customers have very limited amount of time in which they want to decide and hence if certain messaging can be communicated a few times consistently, the customers will respond to it. And, for most goods and services, as we said above, it is ok. But it is not ok, if the consequences are very serious.

How many people will buy their homes based on advertisements. I would guess, very few. Advertisements can at best tell them about the potential projects, but they will visit a lot of places, want to see a model apartment, may be visit multiple times with their families and friends, talk to people living there in the neighborhood, and so on. Isn't college education more important than that. College education will determine whether you can buy that property or not in future. So, one needs to spend even more time to decide college education than buying a property.

I sincerely hope that students and parents will use advertisements only for shortlisting the top few choices (say, 6-8) and then get more information about them and there is no shortcut to actually visiting the university, talking to current students and faculty randomly (not the guys in admissions office), ask a lot of questions, see the facilities. Yes, it can be time consuming and if one is looking for universities outside the home town, there is additional expense of travel, but this is the most important decision of your career, and you should at least do as much due diligence as you would do in buying a property.

How to Pay for Quality Higher Education

 Higher education is accessible in India. Scratch that. Worthless degrees are quite accessible in India. How do we change that and ensure that quality higher education is accessible to most in India.

Let us do the numbers. NEP2020 has set a goal of 50% GER in a little over a decade. As of now, the total number of people in India in the age group of 18 to 23 are over 12 crores. 50% GER would mean that there are 6 crore people doing higher education. If we assume that quality education would cost about Rs 5 lakhs per student per year, the total money to be spent is Rs. 30 lakh crores. That is pretty much the entire receipts of the central government in a year, and this is the money needed only for higher education. Clearly, it is not possible to have free high quality university education for all in India. A vast majority of Indian youth is dependent on private sector to get college education and cannot afford this level of costs.

Note that the current solution to this problem is to provide quality education to a few who can do well in various entrance exams for a few top government institutions and to provide quality education to a few who can afford a few institutions in the private sector. Many of the resourceful people go abroad to get that quality education. Everyone else gets poor quality education. How do we change this.

We need to work on two sides. One, reduce the cost of providing quality education. And two, do some financial jugglery to match the expenses with the income flows. All universities have an incentive to reduce their costs and become more competitive. So I am not going to talk about that in this blog. Suffice to say, we need to use technology for this - online education, simulators, virtual labs, and so on. But the interesting problem is to enable a student from under-privileged background to get quality education in private sector.

The tuition and other expenses of the student can be borne through five channels:

1. Government subsidies
2. Private philanthropy
3. Cross subsidy through resource generation by the university
4. Payment through current incomes and savings by the student/family
5. Delayed payments (in some sense, like loans) 

Let us discuss how we can innovate in all these five channels to ensure that a much greater number of people in the country have access to quality education. Note that dependence on only one channel may not suffice when the gap between costs and income is very large.

The first issue is how government subsidies can reduce the burden on students. As we have said in the beginning, our current public finances do not allow every student to be financed for quality education. But it is certainly possible to expand the current support. As of now, government provides scholarships to students from under-privileged backgrounds (even if they study in private institutions), and also some scholarships for board toppers, etc. It is definitely possible to expand this to more students. May be government can provide graded support like top 5% in all boards get a scholarship of Rs 2 lakh per annum, next 5% getting Rs. 1.5 lakh per annum, and so on. There can be other models. If you need additional help, the government can have schemes like the graduates will have to work for the government for X number of years after graduation, or will have to serve in rural or less popular geographies, and so on. Support from government will reduce dependence on other channels of funding, particularly payment through savings/incomes and payment through loans.

The second channel of support is private philanthropy. A large number of US universities have huge endowments that goes into billions of dollars with Harvard at the top with 50 billion USD of endowment. Princeton gets 55% of its alumni donating regularly. We need to create a similar culture of giving gifts to educational institutions in India. Government can help in this. The tax incentive needs to be rationalized. Currently, donations to IITs and other central government institutions get 100% tax exemption, but donations to universities like JKLU only get 50% tax exemption. This discrepancy should go and all educational institutions should get 100% tax exemption. In US, it is very common for industry to match individual donations. This needs to be encouraged in India too. Companies should be able to match donations by their employees through their CSR kitty (perhaps even otherwise). The process to support education through CSR funds should be smooth. At JKLU, we get a majority of our funding from such donations (and not tuition money), and hence able to keep our fees reasonable, but we are a rarity. Most universities manage their budget only through tuition income.

The third channel of resource generation by the university is an interesting one. The most common thing is research funding by the government (and sometimes by industry too). In India, the overhead on research project is so little that every research project is a loss to the university. Of course, it is much better to do research through government support than to use tuition income in research. But the government really needs to increase the overhead very substantially. This will encourage all universities to do better research and if not cross subsidize tuition, at least not use tuition money for research. The other common revenue stream is continuing education programs. Unfortunately, till now, only management schools have been able to generate substantive revenues through this route and that too only a few privileged ones. But I think if universities really focus on this, they can get a decent revenue stream through this route. Other revenue streams institutions have tried include setting up research parks, having commercial establishments on campus, generating and leveraging IPRs, etc. But frankly, this channel hasn't really helped reduce tuition burden in any substantive way in most institutions. Of course, all universities have a bit of cross subsidy through the system of scholarships. But scholarships are meant for a variety of reasons like academic performance, performance in sports and so on, and therefore, means-based scholarships can cover only a small number of students.

The fourth channel is of payment through savings and current incomes in the family. In this channel, the innovation that can be done is to provide well paying campus jobs to students, particularly in the vacation period, but even part-time during the semesters. For example, at JKLU, we provide some campus jobs at a rate of Rs. 200 per hour only to financially needy students. The government can introduce small savings scheme which are meant to be encashed only at the time of college education and are attractive in terms of rate of interest and income tax applicability.

There is another way to self-finance education which somehow is not taken positively in India. What is the need to do a 4-year program in four years. It would be of immense educational value to the student if s/he takes a semester off, works in industry and returns to the university. This would provide a deep insight on what is the need of the industry, what does the student likes and dislikes, and on return to the university, can take electives accordingly. This system is of value to everyone, but for someone with poor financial status, this can earn moneys to sustain education and have less dependence on other channels like loans.

The fifth channel of delayed payment is what most people talk about to enable quality education to financially weak families. And the most common instrument for this is a loan. But there are other possibilities as well that we will talk about a little later in this article. The system of education loans has serious limitations.

The first limitation of an education loan is that of a guarantee or a collateral. Students from under-privileged backgrounds aren't able to provide either a collateral or a guarantor. And hence banks are often reluctant to offer loans to those who need them the most. Government has mandated that upto a certain amount, the education loans need not have any collateral or guarantee. But in the absence of these, getting repayments from even well-to-do become an issue sometimes.

The second limitation is that students who do not get a good enough job struggle to repay the loan and that stress keeps on growing. In fact, in some cases, the graduating students feel compelled to take up jobs that they won't like only because they are paying better. If a student wants to work in social sector (NGO) or if someone wants to go for higher studies, the loan repayment becomes a bigger challenge.

A related problem to repayment is the concept of EMI - the Equated Monthly Installments. Payments in terms of EMI makes no sense for a recent graduate and that too in a medium or high interest economy. A recent graduate typically starts with a low salary and after a couple of years of experience starts climbing the corporate ladder with higher pay. In the initial part of the career, the EMI is extremely difficult to pay and defaults happen, while it would be much easier to pay the same amount when the pay has doubled. The EMI concept requires the borrower to pay the entire monthly interest and some part of the principle. On the other hand, if we allow the borrower to pay only the real interest (interest rate minus inflation), then the loan amount is essentially remaining the same for the first few years while the capacity to pay is improving and hence the person will be able to pay it much more easily.

If I have a loan of Rs. 10 lakhs when my income is Rs 5 lakhs, the lenders have a certain risk. Assuming that the inflation is 5%, the rate of interest is 11%, and my income increases by 10% in a year. If I pay 6% (or Rs. 60,000 in the year), I have a loan of Rs. 10.5 lakhs next year while my income is Rs. 5.5 lakhs, the lender's risk has actually come down as my capacity to pay even the increased amount has improved. So we need to have an Increasing Monthly Installments or IMI instead of EMI.

In terms of collateral, one possibility is to use the degree certificate as collateral. For this to happen, there will have to be a tripartite agreement between the student, university and the lender. The university will not provide the degree certificate to the student till the loan is paid off. Yes, any time, the student takes up a job, the new employer can directly ask the university to verify the degree status. In fact, if we can make it a legal requirement for all large employers to seek either a copy of the degree or a copy of the loan agreement, and if there is a loan agreement, the employer agrees to deduct an agreed upon amount and pay it to the bank, this will further reduce the risk of default.

There are other possibilities that various fintech startups can explore. For example, it is not necessary that the loan is to be sanctioned at the time of admission only. A nimble player can have an agreement with a university that the university will share all data (anonymized for privacy reasons) of placement in an honest fashion (which many universities will refuse, but universities like JKLU would love it, and I am sure others will fall in line when their students are disadvantaged in the loan market). The university will also share the current transcript and any other relevant details of the loan applicant. Let us assume that this loan application is being made after the first year of college. Now, the lender can make a much better guess about the potential earning of this student after graduation and hence can sanction loan based on potential.

In fact, universities can help further by delaying the payment of first year tuition. One can seek tuition later in the program, say after the first year. Now, the student can be evaluated by the potential lender, an amount can be sanctioned based on that potential and the university can be paid first year fee and the future fees at that time. It is already happening for very short term courses like six months courses. The provider provides education without asking for upfront payment. At the end of the course, if the student gets a job, there will be lenders who can sanction loan which is paid to the education provider. (Check: Masai School.)

We mentioned earlier that there are possibilities of delayed payments other than loans. One of the prominent ones emerging in the world is an income sharing agreement or ISA. Under an ISA, the student agrees to pay a certain fraction of his/her income to the lender after the graduation. The agreement would typically mention a minimum income level below which no payment will be made. It will also mention the period for which this agreement is valid. And in case the student gets a very high salary, the agreement would typically state the maximum amount of money that the student will have to pay. So different people will pay different amounts depending on their incomes but noone will pay an inordinately large amount. Of course, the details will depend on what the two parties agree with and what the law permits in that jurisdiction.

Many people (and governments) are uncomfortable with ISAs because it seems unfair that different people are paying different amounts and that the person with the best jobs are effectively paying a very high rate of interest. It is possible that if someone does not understand the implications of the agreement or was forced by his/her circumstances to sign such an agreement, s/he will end up paying a very large sum in case of an excellent job. But if there can be legal safeguards to avoid exploitation such as model ISAs, this is an interesting model of financing higher education.

Yet another way of delayed payment is through differential taxes. This is like an ISA between a student and the government. The government can say that everyone seeking substantial government subsidy (like studying in a university well funded by the government) will pay, say, 2% extra income tax for a pre-defined period of time. Again, this would mean that if the income of the person is below the taxable limit then the person does not pay this extra amount also.

So the take away is that there are a large number of models for financing higher education. A poor country like India should not think of a single model like loan. A combination of several models is what is most likely going to work for us.

Faculty Selections: Preference for PhDs from top institutions?

 Recently, Prof. V Ramgopal Rao, Vice Chancellor of BITS Pilani, commented on LinkedIn about the practice of giving higher weight to PhDs from certain institutions in shortlisting criteria. In the specific example, the institution has given 25 marks to PhDs from IITs and top 500 ranked universities in the world, 20 marks to NIT PhDs, 15 to CFTI PhDs, 10 to state government institutions and 5 to others.

While his specific comment was use of source of funding to judge the quality of PhDs, the larger question is whether any criteria that gives preference to the students from certain set of institutions is a good criteria.

Let me admit that the specific criteria was very poorly designed even if such a criteria is needed. For example, a PhD from a university which is ranked in 501-1000 in the world will be considered amongst the worst category in this list. But assuming that someone can do a better categorization of universities, would it then make sense. Almost everyone who commented on Prof. Rao's post (barring a few exceptions) seem to agree that it wouldn't make sense even then.

One of the rare rebuttals had this to say:

"Prof. V Ramgopal Rao It's seemingly easy to successfully play to the gallery. I will be happy to see at least one "excellent faculty candidate from a non-descript institution" at BITS.

As a matter of unwritten rule, top pedigree, foreign post doc and at least one Q1 paper always mattered in IIT faculty candidate shortlisting process. On the other hand, barring a few, almost all NITs till recently nurtured Godfather's candidates or a deep regional bias in the faculty recruitment process. Course correction has just started with the plethora of applications as IITS are churning out Ph.Ds in hundreds of not in thousands and some directors are determined to shed nepotism, parochialism and regional culture.

This is precisely because if you don't disregard the non-descript institutions, you run into thousands of applications in search of fire in their belly at the cost of tilting the faculty quality balance in your own institution. Truth is better told louder (by e.g NIT Hamirpur) than practised in silence by all directors of prestigious institutions.Does maintaining public transparency amount to trivialising the recruitment process ?"

Interesting debate, and it made me think. Of course, almost everyone use pedigree as a signal. In fact, a lot of people have argued that the value of the university is more in signaling than anything else, and if somehow we are able to evaluate a large number of people quickly, the top universities of the world will face tremendous challenges in attracting good students. After all, the next best institutions aren't that bad but cheaper, easier to get in and all that. (And it is happening slowly with AI evaluating millions of CVs on a portal - which, by the way, has its own problems, but that is for another time.)

But I still disagree with the specific rebuttal. It almost gets personal. I think there is a difference between factoring in pedigree as one of the many indicators of quality informally, and formally saying that we have a strong preference for pedigree and it will impact shortlisting. For example, at JK Lakshmipat University (JKLU), we always say in our faculty ads for engineering faculty, "Preference for IIT PhDs." To me, that line is a signal to potential job seekers that my quality requirement is at least an average PhD from an average IIT. If you think that you are equal to that, please do apply. (And in the last two years as VC of JKLU, we have made several offers of faculty positions to non-IIT PhDs, though the majority offers are to IIT PhDs.) There is no doubt in my mind that the best PhDs from NITs are better than worst PhDs from IITs, and hence a blanket ban or reducing the order in the shortlist without checking any other parameter of the quality is problematic.

But the rebuttal raises an important question. What is to be done if there are a large number of applications. And this is where, Prof. Rao is silent. Indeed, I feel frustrated in reading a lot of posts from Prof. Rao because he will raise questions but either no answers or the answer is a single word, "leadership." He does not explain what leadership should do. Raising questions is a good service to the nation, but I think someone with his pedigree should also analyse the situation in greater detail and suggest solutions.

The way I look at the issue is this. What is the problem being solved through this mechanism by the specific institution. The problem today is that the government in 6th pay commission and later in 7th pay commission raised the faculty salaries tremendously. This did lead to improvements in faculty selections in some government institutions (though poorly funded government institutions stopped hiring regular faculty and started getting dependent on ad hoc faculty). But these salaries are beyond the capacity of an average Indian student to pay for. Therefore, the private institutions salaries are much less (in most cases the fees is capped so even if the private institutions were to try increasing the salary, they can't). Now, the private sector employs 80% of the faculty. So whenever a government institution like an NIT advertises a job, a very large number of applications pour in since the salaries and perks are so good and along with that they are funded well for research (again, something that private institutions are unable to do) and there is stability in job. What should be the process to deal with such a deluge of applications and select the best faculty.

There are two processes really. One process is to do the shortlisting, and the other process is to do the selection. Now, if there is a deluge of applications and it is understood that faculty is the most important resource for an educational institution, the first thing that should happen is that the institution should be willing to have a larger number getting shortlisted and spend time and resources to deeply consider that large number of shortlisted candidates. If an NIT is using a shortlisting criteria to decide interaction with only 5 individuals for a post, they are not serving themselves well nor are they being fair to the applicants.

On the other hand, shortlisting a large number of candidates will also not lead to good selections. If we shortlist 50 candidates for a post and interact with each of them for 10 minutes each, that selection will eventually lead to some bean counter counting the number of papers and other parameters.

To criticize shortlisting is to miss the point that a large shortlist will compromise the selection process badly and while it may seem "fair," it actually will be much worse.  For example, if research output is one of the most important criteria then I can either shortlist 20 candidates based on number of papers, citations, ranking of those journals/conferences and so on, and then read a few papers, get a few experts to comment on them, get these 20 to give research seminars and interact with them, and all that. Alternatively, I can shortlist 50 candidates, and then I don't have time to do any of the above. I interact for 10 minutes each and I have no option but to only decide selection based on the CV. Taking a call based on this 10 minute interaction will usually not result in good selection.

So shortlisting is important and it is important to shortlist a reasonable number - not too small and not too large a group. (I am using 20 as just an indicative number, it is not a magic number.)

Now, ideally, the shortlisting too can be subjective like selection often is. But there is a crucial difference between the two processes when you have such a deluge of applications. As an NIT, you can request an external expert to come for 2 days and interact with 20 candidates over 2 days (and even more, if needed). It will be very difficult for an NIT to seek help from an external expert in reading 100s of CVs and then record their comments on each of them and then help in shortlisting. Remember, you need multiple experts who should have a deep insight into their area and have some understanding of the discipline at large so that they can work with other experts to compare candidates across sub-disciplines. Frankly, not a very practical approach. And hence it becomes necessary for them to use numbers as a proxy to quality.

Also remember that regulators like UGC and the politicians have been strongly encouraging objective criteria. UGC has been sharing a methodology to give marks for every SCI paper, or every FDP, or every year of experience and so on. So you have a large number of applications, you don't have strong internal resources for evaluating them, and you have the government telling you that you must use objective criteria. What are your options now?

So the only thing you can do is to choose those numbers carefully. Anything that you will choose will be criticized. This is because your choice of parameters can only be dictated by statistics (or perception of it) and individuals cannot be evaluated based on statistics. For example, statistically, an average PhD from an IIT could be in some sense better than an average PhD from an NIT, and hence we may be tempted to assign higher marks for an IIT PhD over an NIT PhD, but we all know that the best PhDs of NITs are certainly better than worst PhDs of IITs (they could even be similar to the best PhDs of IITs). Similarly, someone with 10 SCI papers is likely to be a better researcher than someone with 5 SCI papers, but there are far too many exceptions to this.

So any objective criteria will lead to missing out of talent. But remember not doing shortlist or doing a very liberal shortlisting will compromise your selection process to the extent that you will miss out on talent there. So the question to me is the following:

Assigning 5 extra marks to an IIT PhD compared with an NIT PhD will lead to some talent missed. At the same time, assigning 1 mark for each SCI paper will lead to some talent being missed. The solution is to have subjective evaluation but I do not have the capacity. What should I do. And frankly, there is no easy answer. Whenever anyone has asked me for an answer in the past (when I was not VC), my solution has been that I can personally help you with the subjective process in Computer Science if you do not have the capacity to do it on your own. If enough faculty members of top institutions are willing to help the next tier institutions, this comparison of two bad policies will not be needed. That is when the leadership of NITs will come into play because they will have to defend the subjectivity. A large number of applicants will point out that their number of SCI papers was larger than those shortlisted. They will put in RTI queries, they will go to court, the government will ask questions, and the leadership will have to stay firm. But if the leadership knows that they don't have the capacity and it is not easy to get several experts in each area to do this semester after semester, I wouldn't blame them for using objective criteria.

Of course, one still has to see what objective criteria is likely to retain most of the talent in the shortlisted pool. Ideally, one should decide the shortlisting criteria after one has seen the applications. I would like to do the experiment of tweaking the criteria and seeing that with each tweak, what applications get missed out and what comes in and then study those applications to see what works better for the institute. This is where I would blame the leadership. Most institutional leaders would love to announce the shortlisting criteria upfront and keep it same for all disciplines which is frankly, stupid. It is because in financial matters, tenders, it is assumed that if you do not reveal the criteria upfront, you will manipulate it later to benefit someone and CAG/CVC have taken exception to this. Yes, the same thing can happen in faculty selection also, but a leader should be confident that s/he will not let it happen in the final selection where external experts will play an important role.

Finally, should we have 5 extra marks for IIT PhDs over NIT PhDs. I don't think the answer is as straightforward as Prof. Rao makes it out to be. It is very nuanced as I have explained above. I wouldn't want to do it myself, but would I criticize others who do it, may be not.

JOSSA Counseling: Confusion in ordering choices

 I am no longer a Professor at IIT Kanpur and I have not posted any new blog on JEE counseling for many years now. But still, I keep getting emails, phone calls and even personal visits to seek clarity on ordering choices. It is indeed a very stressful period for students and parents.

What amazes me every year is the lack of application of common sense from people who are the "best" students of the country. When someone asks me whether they should prefer choice 'A' or choice 'B', my first question is what is the source of confusion. In my thinking, the source could be that they don't have enough information about the two choices and they are seeking information from me, or they are unable to interpret that information into positives and negatives for the two choices and they are seeking my help in doing that, or they are unable to evaluate those positives and negatives in the context of this particular student and they are asking me how to do that.

Often, it is none of these. The source of confusion is this. Last year data shows that many students preferred 'A' while many others preferred 'B'. So I don't know which herd to follow. Between choices where the closing ranks last year were widely separated, there is no confusion at all. I know what the herd decided, and I believe in the wisdom of the masses. But if the masses were not sure, how can I be sure.

My response is that if there are two programs such that 50% students preferred one and the other 50% preferred the other, and if you believe in the wisdom of the herd, then you should perhaps decide on the basis of convenience (geography, for example), or on the basis of a toss of a coin. And people take offense, because even though just admitted that most of their choices were based on last year's closing ranks, they still want to portray that they are evaluating choices on some merit criteria that they can't explain.

Having done this for almost 30 years, my take is that the stress happens when there is a conflict between the thought that the decision should be based on merit of each program (whatever that means) and the thought that doing it on the basis of wisdom of the herd will give them maximum brownie points in the community. (You choose Civil over CS, and you will have to face a barrage of criticism from all near and dear ones.)

If you were to consider the choices logically, it is actually not a very big problem. Just yesterday, a student asked me for advice between 5-year BTech-MTech dual degree in CSE at IIT-KGP versus a 4-year BTech (CSE) from IIT Roorkee. In this particular case, the student was very logical, and I wrote to him a 2-line email, and he understood and came back with the right way of choosing. But I was thinking of hundreds of discussion on similar lines and I thought I will illustrate how I have dealt with this particular choice issue in the past.

I will first ask: What would have been your choice between 4-year BTech (CSE) at KGP and the same program at Roorkee. The answer is always, KGP.

I will ask why KGP. And there are some mumblings. Obviously, the student hasn't thought through and it is purely wisdom of the herd. But the claim will be that we have heard better this or better that at KGP.

Me: Now, KGP is putting a condition on you. They are saying that you will have to spend an extra year. But in this extra year, we will not charge you any tuition, and we will give you enough scholarship to take care of all your costs. So you won't be dependent on your parents. And to top it, we will throw in an extra KGP degree at the end of the year. Isn't all adding value to the 4-year program. If you would have preferred the 4-year program and the 5-year program is better than the 4-year program, then shouldn't you prefer the 5-year program.

The student is confused and has no reply. I would then suggest to think of what could make the 5-year program less attractive than the 4-year program (and some of that is in my old blogs). The student remains confused but with some prodding, is able to point out that you lose one year's income in a 5-year program.

I will then say how strongly you would prefer the 4-year program at KGP over 4-year program over Roorkee. If that preference is very strong, and you really believe that this will help your career in a significant way then wouldn't you recoup the one year loss of income during the 50-year long career you are expected to have. Would you not believe that the "better" education would result in even 1-2% higher income or higher happiness per year. So if the preference of KGP was strong then at least to the extent of this logic, one should accept the 5-year program. If the preference of KGP was mild, then perhaps 4-year at Roorkee is OK. Note that if earning as soon as possible was a necessity (when the student is from a very poor background and need to start supporting family at the earliest), the student would not be having this discussion. They will choose the 4-year program only.

Why is 4-year at Roorkee OK in case of mild preference for KGP. Well, because, I am not a big fan of asking a 12th class student to commit to doing a thesis 4 years from now. That is a personal preference.

So once you have noted down pluses and minuses of the two choices, it will boil down to whether you believe that the so-called advantage that you perceive of studying in KGP is so much that it compensates for the so-called disadvantage of an extra year. May be you will start believing that there is no disadvantage of an extra year. And once you have noted down these things, the choice becomes easy. And one is confident about making those choices and not be stressed about this process.