Foreign Universities may enter India virtually

Why do a lot of people go abroad for higher education. There are many reasons, and I say them in no specific order.

1. If you have any skills other than doing well in exams, you may not manage admission in any good university in India (and there are only a handful of them). And in such a situation, if you can afford to study abroad, you would go out.

2. Even if you are skilled in taking exams, you may be unlucky on that one day, and you may not get admission in any of the Tier 1 institutions. So you consider studying abroad (typically next year).

3. You want to emigrate to a country where you think you will lead a more comfortable life. Indeed, this is a common reason as the number of students to a country varies drastically as they change their immigration policies.

4. You want to study a subject not so popular in India, or a combination that is not available in India.

What is clear is that students or families have to be either very rich or they have to take loans and to repay those loans you need to be able to work in that country after your graduation. Some universities do have need-blind admissions, and they do provide some scholarships to enable students from places like India to study, but such scholarships are very few, particularly at the under-graduate level.

The online degrees are slowly changing that. Now, there is an option for Indian students to study "abroad" at a lower cost and even if one takes loans for those costs, the loan can be repaid with Indian salaries. However, before Covid, an online degree, particularly at the UG level, was not in demand. There were student doing Masters online, but a UG degree sitting at home is considered low-quality, both from the perspective of poor learning of academic content (no peer learning, no direct contact with professor, etc), as well as from the perspective of lack of campus life (sports, other extra-curricular, learning about different cultures).

But Covid is changing those perceptions and business models. With all the US universities forced to teach online for half a semester, the online education no longer appears to be poor quality. If MITs and Stanfords of the world can teach online, even as an emergency measure, there must be something good about it. (Actually, they have been teaching online for a long time. They have been live telecasting their classes, and/or recording their lectures and making them available for later viewing.)

But what about the campus life. And this too is about to happen. Campus life within your country while you study online from a far away university.

The universities abroad are facing a problem. They offered admission to international students, but can't let them join in the coming semester. Either the university is not opening up and plans to have an online semester, or even if they open, there are going to be travel and other restrictions because of which the student cannot join. They can offer a deferred admission to the student, but they fear that the student may look for other options.

So one of the ideas on the table is this: Contact a good university in the country from where you have admitted many students. Have a deal with them that they will host your students for a semester only for the campus experience. So they stay in the hostel, eat in the mess, use all the sports facilities, sit in the library, use WiFi network, and interact with so many other students around them. The education will be completely online directly from the foreign university. (May be they can have a deal to use some labs too, or the deal may include proctoring exams.) Not exactly the experience these students were looking for, but better than learning from home or doing nothing for a semester or two.

And if this idea works, that is, if the students like this model, this can quickly gain a lot of traction. And that would enable a large scale virtual-entry of foreign universities in India. That is, they can have a large number of Indian students, do all the academic activities online, and hence have no physical presence in India. So no regulatory hurdles. No need for any permissions. And some enterprising campuses offer "campus support" within India. These could be campuses of existing institutions who could build more hostels. Or these could be campuses of institutions that are closing down. They would be happy to have such a business opportunity.

The foreign universities, particularly those, who are beginning to offer online degree programs, would welcome such a combination as it allows them to increase the admissions substantially while retaining their focus on education and not having to worry about campus services.

What is happening is unbundling of university services as I mentioned in my previous blog and that is making these new options available to students. Students may not want to be on the same campus for all 8 semesters. They may want to spend a semester or two in the university campus abroad. They may want to work for some semester(s) while studying online. All those combinations can be served easily in the unbundled world.

Is this a good thing for the country, or should we be concerned.

My take is that we should be concerned. If such a degree takes root in the popular imagination, and industry accepts these graduates (which is likely, industry will only worry about your skills and knowledge), the numbers could be large. If 50,000 additional students (over and above those who are going abroad today) take up these programs, it would impact quality of admissions in our Tier 2 institutions. Our Tier 1 institutions will not see any impact in foreseeable future as face to face classes in top colleges (that too at hugely subsidized tuition) will continue to be preferred over online education.

Unbundling of Higher Education

Before I start, let me make it clear that I am only stating what I am sensing as unbundling of higher education. Any such transformation will have positive and negative impacts, and the impact will depend on the context. As of now, I don't understand in what contexts, what kind of unbundling may be positive or negative. With these, let us begin.

30 years ago, who would have believed that an airline ticket would not include some refreshments, some luggage being checked in, and a few other services. But over a period of time, we have seen the "extras" being stripped off and sold separately. Can the same thing happen to university education. What would it be like to have an unbundled university.

A university is arguably the most complex entity in terms of the range of services it provides. Besides delivering education (which as we will see below is itself a bundled service), doing research, providing consultancy to industry, it provides student residences, food services, additionally runs cafes and restaurants, reading rooms, libraries, entertainment options, a large sports system, transport, medical care, counseling, guest houses/hotels, placement services, and so on. In India, they may even have a full township with residential colonies for faculty and staff, with all municipal functions being carried out by the university.

Why does a university provide so many complex services and not focus on its core strengths. Why should it not ask the students to rent an apartment outside the campus, and live on their own. Why would it not ask the students to depend on medical care available in the city. Every such service can be justified by saying that it helps improve learning. If a lot of students live together and eat together, they will interact with each other and more peer-to-peer learning will take place. If students don't have to go far for medical help, they can spend more time on studies, will have less stress, etc. But surely, some of these services add lesser value at higher cost. Why shouldn't a university look at each service as how much does it cost, and how much it adds to the quality of education. Or at the very least, unbundle the charges, and give flexibility to students to pay for some services and not for the other. Of course, all universities have unbundled residential and food services. But all other services are part of tuition or compulsory fees.

The universities do this bundling for a couple of reasons. One is to ensure that they tightly control the quality of every related service. Further, bundling allows a service provider to increase charges by an amount higher than the cost of that incremental service (but only if the service provider has some market control,which the top ranked universities do). On the other hand, when we look at government supported universities, often the argument is that if the university will not provide all the services in a subsidized bundle, the poor will not be able to afford it.

But things are changing. Even if we look at the most basic function of a university - providing education - that itself is facing unbundling. If you look at online service providers, for example, the basic service of learning a course through online recorded lectures and a bunch of exercises, completely computer based and no human intervention, could come to you for free or at a very low cost. You want a certificate of successful completion. Well, they will throw in some limited form of evaluation, usually computer graded, some limited form of identity check (just taking a picture before the exam and password for logging in), charge you extra for it, and you get the certificate. Even our own Swayam, charges Rs. 1000 for the evaluation, while learning is free. You prefer interaction with other students and teaching assistants, you can pay a bit more for that access. You prefer that the certificate is signed not just by the platform but by a university, you go through some additional exams, this time proctored online through some AI based software, and you pay more. You want access to the faculty for some synchronous sessions, contact him/her during some "office hours",you further pay more. So, even the most basic function of a university is being unbundled with the result that the learning is available to everyone free or at a very low cost.

Unbundling in education is happening in other ways as well. A lot of students in US are doing basic courses at a community college who provide education without any bells and whistles at a very low cost, and then transfer those credits to regular universities, thereby spending less number of semesters at regular universities thereby reducing costs.

Online education is causing unbundling in other interesting ways. Can we unbundle campus services. Can I be a student of a university in US, but use campus services provided by some other entity in India. So I would register for all courses in the US university, obviously all lectures online, submit assignments, and have all academic activities being directly provided by this US university. But I need campus services. I want to interact with other students face to face. I want sports, culture, entertainment. I want the experience of living in a hostel. Can I check into a campus who will provide me all this for a cost. Believe it or not, it is starting to happen. I can then choose which "campus" to stay in which semester. May be some semesters, I will save cost and stay at home itself. Universities can then have some relationships with these providers of "campus" services, and see if they can also provide some academic support like labs, or face to face advising, etc.

Other forms of unbundling are more obvious. Do I need to seek admission for a "degree" program or can I just seek to do an odd course or a few courses. Again, online courses are allowing for such unbundling easily. In an on-campus face to face classes, it was too much of an overhead to have an "admission" process for just one course. If employers have an independent way of judging my skills and knowledge and I don't need a university degree for getting their attention, it will result in more and more people doing a few courses from diverse places and collecting course-wise certificates rather than a degree. Universities must consider this as an opportunity and not a threat, since this also encourages older people coming back to university for courses to upgrade their knowledge and skills.

I foresee that in future, even for a degree program, a university may not have any content of its own, or any other infrastructure. It will pick and choose from vast number of courses available online and ask its students to select from those. It will have agreements with service providers who can provide campus like services in different parts of the country/world. In fact, students can stay in different parts of the world in different semesters and what a great learning experience it will be. (Minerva Institute already does that - let students spend different semesters in different countries.) So without owning any content and without owning any infrastructure, it would be able to provide quality education and degrees to students.

This future is exciting, though there are too many unknowns and hence a bit scary as well.

Covid19: Will there be jobs for graduating students

In the last few days, several local media outlets have asked me about placements. And my reply has been that with economy all over the world going down, it is bound to have an impact on job scenario for the graduating students. For the batch graduating in 2020, it would be a few withdrawals and several delayed joining, which is excellent news considering the pandemic situation.

In my opinion, the real problem will be faced by 2021 graduates. The companies in India have traditionally not fired people or gone back on their job promises (though it will happen in some cases given the economic scenario). Also, the government has been requesting companies not to fire their employees, and also honor their job commitments. So most of the companies already have excess manpower, and they have commitments to hire more. Even if they can somehow manage this, making more commitments for 2021 later half does not seem to be a good idea, unless the companies believe that economy will be back on track by July, 2021 or soon thereafter. In some sectors, this may indeed happen, but is unlikely across all sectors.

So, it is likely that fewer companies will do campus recruitment, they will make fewer offers, and perhaps those offers will be for a slightly lesser salary than in the past. Let me hasten to add that I am saying all this in the context of engineering education only.

How should students plan for this tough scenario. Only two mantras: Stay positive and Work hard.

How do you stay positive in the middle of a pandemic. You have a choice: You can feel unlucky that just when you were entering final year, pandemic happened. Or you can feel lucky that you are part of a higher education system that is of such poor quality that you can be among the top with very little additional effort, and there are going to be jobs for the top students.

Covid is not going to change teachers, curriculum, infrastructure, and given that instruction is moving online instead of face-to-face, the quality will only go down in most places. However, staying at home also means that you have huge opportunity to learn on your own through some excellent online resources. The same teacher teaching online is likely to be worse than that teacher teaching in class, not only because there is a lot peer learning in class and in hostels, but also that teacher has a lot of experience of teaching in the class and no experience of teaching online. However, we have a lot of faculty around the world who have learnt the art to be excellent in online education, and these resources are likely to be better than not only the online education provided by faculty of Tier 2 and Tier 3 institutions, but even the in-class teaching by them.

Invest effort in learning from such resources.

Today, the perception of students in our engineering colleges is that academic learning is useless. That none of the courses are of immediate interest to industry. The curriculum is outdated, and so on. They have been told by their seniors that in the placement interviews the technical questions that are asked can be answered mostly by studying 5-6 courses. The other 40-odd courses that they do are there only because the faculty is sadist, the regulators have insisted that engineering be a 4-year degree with a certain minimum credits. And in those 5-6 courses, the best way to prepare for an interview is not really to learn the concepts well, but read up of answers of a question bank.

From my experience of advising 1000s of students in various institutions, I can say that students don't believe that academic learning is useful in career. Instead they believe that while CGPA is important from the point of view of crossing the shortlisting threshold, the extra-curricular and personality and soft skills is what clinches them a job, besides the ability to answer technical questions in those 5-6 courses. A common question that I have asked these students is the number of hours they study on their own, and typical answer is that unless there are exams coming up or there is a project deadline (in which case they may work overnight), they will spend no more than 7-8 hours a week on academics. That is about 1 hour a day. So no revising the content. No self-study. Of course, extra study is totally out of question. That one hour is usually to complete the assignments, or copying notes, if one missed the class. How could you complete all your assignments in such a short period. Well, many instructors don't give any assignments (not even readings), if they do, they don't require to be submitted (so, no need to solve those problems), and if they are required to be submitted, it is best to copy them. So, one hour a day is enough.

What is interesting is that the placement data often shows that there is a correlation between CGPA and the jobs. The most sough after jobs typically come to those with good academic standing. But every year in every college there will be a few students who, despite an average CGPA would have been selected for one of those sought after jobs. Everyone will know of those examples. They often are the role models for next batches (so they can justify not working hard). And no one would believe that there is correlation between CGPA and jobs.

But here is the thing. In most courses, the important learning is not the specific context of that course. The important learning is often more generic like problem solving, critical thinking, etc. And these generic skills are what will enable you to do well not just in the interviews but also in your career. If you are unable to give an absolutely correct answer to a question, it is not an issue in most cases. If you can show that you know how to think about it, how to attack the problem, that is good enough. And that ability you would have if you had tried to solve problems in a variety of scenarios. That is the value of learning all those courses.

Also, adults learn by connecting dots, by putting your learning in the context of other things you know. So if you know more things, you learn new things better. This is another reason to take your academics seriously.

No, I am not suggesting that extra-curricular or having fun is not important. But there is time for both in your life. For example, a good engineering college will tell you that they expect you to spend about 50 hours a week on academics (including lectures, labs, etc.), and that too for only 8 months in a year. That leaves a HUGE amount of time for all your hobbies, passions, both during the semester and during vacation (even with internships).

Not focusing on academics may have been alright till now. But in this year, the competition for jobs is going to be much higher. You have a choice. You can continue to do what you have done in the first 3 years of your engineering education. Or you can work harder in these times and improve your chances of finding a job.

Just ask yourself a question. How have you used these forced stay at home. Did you make use of a large number of free courses available online. Did you complete a few Swayam or Coursera courses. How much time did you spend in doing programming exercises on various sites, if you are from CS/IT or are looking for an IT sector job. How many webinars you attended in these two months to learn some new knowledge. If you didn't do these things, don't blame Covid.

Of course, learning things better would open other options for you. In difficult times, spending extra year(s) in universities could be a great strategy. You get another degree, hopefully from a better known institution, and the economy would certainly be better in a couple of years, and you start a great career at a higher level. So you need to take exams like GATE where it is so easy to improve your scores with just a little bit of additional effort.

I am sure there are others who will advise you to continue ignoring your academics. I hear so many people saying what sectors will have jobs, and what one should focus on to get those jobs. In short, these pundits are telling the students that may be the set of 5-6 courses that they should be preparing for placement interview has changed. May be they should include a course on Machine learning in that set. But the insistence is still on learning just the bare minimum. My take is that if you invest some more hours, you would be able to learn so much more that you will be ready for most jobs.

Covid is not for ever. This too shall pass. Economy will be booming again in a couple of years. But you must prepare yourself for a difficult two years, and be ready when an opportunity knocks at your door.