Collaboration with Indian institutions

 A few days ago, someone sent me the link to a news item, Cluster system to be initiated in nine Hyderabad colleges. These 9 colleges are working on an agreement with each other to allow students of other colleges to take their courses with a process of credit transfer. Later, there would also be faculty of one college teaching a course in another college.

This caught my attention. Of course, NEP 2020 talks about creating clusters of nearby colleges, and this seems the first such step to implement the same. The reason this caught my attention was that we often hear of Indian institutions signing MoUs with foreign universities, but not so much with Indian universities. And I have pointed this out repeatedly in my social media posts. So happy to see that NEP2020 is beginning to address that at least for colleges which are physically close to each other.

 But what about institutions geographically far apart. Even if just consider teaching, it should be possible to register for an online course sitting anywhere, and in the post Covid era, even spend a semester fully at another institution.

And collaboration is not necessarily only for student exchange. As I have personally done in the past, faculty can teach a course in another institution. Of course, joint research projects are something that faculty in good institutions are already doing. But there can be collaboration in other processes also.

For example, can we collaborate in admissions. We already see government institutions doing join counseling. We also see that technical universities doing joint counseling for all engineering colleges affiliated to it. But what about universities. Slowly the number of students enrolled in private universities is increasing and the number in affiliated colleges is decreasing. If some of the private universities join hands and do admissions together through a common portal, similar to that offered by technical universities, this would be a great convenience for the students and parents. They don't have to fill a large number of forms, they don't have to pay money to multiple universities to reserve their seats and every time they get a better admission offer, seek refund from the previous one, and so on. And it is not just the convenience of students and parents. It also reduces the cost of student acquisition for the universities. The amount of money spent in admission publicity by private universities is humongous. If there is a common portal then all participants in the common admission process can reduce their advertising cost. And note, it is possible that every college may have its own admission criteria. They don't have to have a common merit list for them to use a common portal. Just like NITs and IITs don't have a common merit list and yet they use a common portal. So we all keep our academic autonomy and freedom to decide our admission criteria and still use a common portal. One huge advantage is the geographic reach of the university increases. If there are 5 universities who all have their sphere of influence in their region, a common portal will mean that students checking out the university in their region will notice the universities of other region as well.

This is my long cherished dream that I have been writing about for more than a decade. I recall when I was at LNMIIT more than a decade ago, I had written to private universities within Rajasthan making this suggestion. It didn't happen then, and it may not happen in near future, but I will keep working on it.

Similarly, why can't we have joint degree programs between two universities of India. In fact, one of my dreams is a program where a student spends time at 3-4 institutions and get a joint degree signed by all these institutions. Again, we work with foreign universities for these things and not within the country. This will allow each institution to leverage their strengths and contribute the most in that area.

I hope there are others out there who think similarly, and I would be happy to take any collaboration proposal which is of mutual benefit to the board of JKLU for consideration.

Examination Cancelled, Results next month

Title of this blog is from a headline on 2nd June, the day after CBSE was asked to cancel its 12th class examination. And I wonder if anyone felt that there was something strange about this headline. Result of what, if exams are cancelled.

No, I am not suggesting that CBSE should have waited indefinitely for situation to improve and then conducted the exams. That would be too stressful and we needed a closure on this batch. But suggesting that we should have an artificial method to guess how many marks a student would have got if the exam was conducted is something I find very strange.

But this is nothing new. Last year too, we had scores of some subjects been filled as average of other subjects. In many universities, marks of courses done in 3rd year were put as average of previous two years. Nobody thought that assigning marks in history on the basis of marks scored in Hindi was strange.

Was there an option. Of course, there was. CBSE could say on the 12th class marksheet that no public exam was conducted and the marks are as assigned by schools (with some regulations) and hence cannot be compared. So CBSE would have said that they had the confidence that if a school was declaring a student passed, they too could declare that the student had enough capabilities that they expected from someone passing a 12th class exam. What this would have meant is that CBSE was not commenting on the specific marks assigned by schools and was not recommending that marks assigned by one school be comparable with marks assigned by another school.

Would this have been acceptable to stakeholders, particularly those who till the month of May were shouting that our system is bad because it considered examinations as sacrosanct. No way. While exams are considered bad, marks are important. How would university admissions take place unless CBSE certifies that marks are comparable.

But shouldn't that be a problem of the university system. May be they would have still treated marks of different schools as equivalent just like they treat marks of different boards as equivalent today. Or may be this would have forced the universities to come up with a better system of admissions.

But the nice thing about the whole issue is that no one cares about lying (or certifying marks in one subject based on how student had performed in unrelated subjects two years ago), and no one cares about quality or merit. Universities need a metric, however bad it may be, but which can be used to rank all admission seekers in a serial order and which will not be quashed by the courts. The only value of 12th class marks is to satisfy courts that admissions were done without any favoritism.

Note that I am not at all suggesting that there should have been exams. I am not at all bothered that everyone seems to have passed with high marks. My only concern is that a Board is certifying those marks which are not based on any exam.

BTech@JKLU: Can high quality education be free of cost?

Is your JEE Mains performance in the year 2020 or Jan/Feb 2021 higher than 80 percentile. Do you know someone who meets this criteria and is looking for admissions to engineering programs. Then this blog post is for you.

I am only explaining the scholarship policy for BTech admission this year. A small blurb about the program is written below. But I would be happy to answer any questions on the program itself. Please write them as comments below or send me an email.

Most universities provide scholarships to some of their students. JKLU also does. Most scholarships are meant to cover a part of the cost and not the entire or even substantial cost. We also did the same. And in many institutions, the criteria for continuing the scholarship is restrictive and as a result, the number of scholarships in successive years are much less than initial offerings. We followed the industry practice. We were always more liberal in providing scholarships than our peers, but we now want to go much further. After all, we are completing 10 years.

We are making it easier for good students to have free education in all four years, and for a very large number of students, we will make costs very low. This, together with the opportunity to learn with a pedagogy and curriculum designed in collaboration with the best in the world, with international gateways, innovative faculty and unique inter-disciplinary curriculum, makes it a very special opportunity.

Sample this: Male applicants with a JEE Mains score of 91 percentile or higher will get complete waiver of both academic fee and hostel fee. Female applicants get free education at 90 percentile or higher. This means, going by JEE numbers last year, an unprecedented opportunity of free high-quality engineering education.

Academic fee includes everything that is normally charged by universities, be it tuition, development fee, exam fee, registration fee, and god knows how many different lines are there in the fee schedule. We have only one number and you get complete waiver of the same. And even the hostel room is free for these students. The only thing you pay for are utilities and mess bill to make it even for day scholars and hostelers. That is it.

What is more. You get to keep this 100% free education for all four years if you maintain a CGPA of 8.0. Easy for students who are in the top 10 percent of the country. And by chance, you slip below 8.0. We don't remove scholarships completely. You still get a 75% waiver. So almost free. You can see details at the scholarship webpage.

We also have other levels of scholarships. 75 percent waiver for JEE Mains percentile of 89 to 91 (for female students: 87 to 90), 50 percent waiver for JEE Mains percentile of 87 to 89 (for female students: 84 to 87) and a 25 percent waiver for JEE Mains percentile of 83 to 87 (for female students: 79 to 84). We want to encourage female students to go for engineering education and hence the JEE Mains performance required for the same level is significantly lower than male students. Again, please do check out our scholarship page for details.

We will consider both the performance in JEE Mains 2020 as well as performance in JEE Mains 2021 (January and February rounds that have already happened). If you take JEE Mains multiple times, including in both years, we consider the best performance.

Here is the link for admissions page for more information and application.

Is there a catch? Of course, there is. Internally, we do have a budget for scholarships which is very liberal this year but not infinite. The current policy is applicable only for applications that we receive till Monday June 21st, 2021. We will make admission offers by 25th June, and a small initial payment will be required by 30th June. (For those who are offered 100% fee waiver, the initial deposit will be equivalent to the security deposit that we charge, that is, Rs. 10,000, and for others the initial deposit will be Rs. 25,000 only.)

An immediate question will arise. What if one changes one's mind and decides to take admission in another institution. We respect your decision. And we will refund your deposit but for a small fee of Rs. 1,000. And we will be quick. Very unlike many other institutions that may take months to refund and deduct 5,000 or even 10,000 rupees.

Another question: I took JEE in Jan/Feb. I have a percentile score of 89.5 which as per your table makes me eligible for 75% waiver. But what if I take next round of JEE and get a score of higher than 91 percentile. Would I be considered for 100% waiver.

Answer: Your scholarship depends on the policy as on the date of your application. If you apply before 18th June, we will offer you 75% waiver and if you accept that offer and deposit the initial fee, and later you show us proof of improved JEE score, we will upgrade your offer to 100% waiver. But if you do not apply and do not accept admission by 30th June, the scholarship policy as on the date of application will be applicable.

About the program:

JKLU offers BTech programs in Computer Science, Electronics & Communication, Electrical, Mechanical and Civil Engineeringwith exciting areas of specializations. We have a strong Project-based learning pedagogy that has been developed with the help of Olin College of Engineering, USA ranked among top 3 Engineering undergraduate programs (non doctoral) in the US by US News & World Report for 2021 and 2020, and was named along with MIT, as the top leaders in engineering education globally. We have close interactions with industry and in fact, it is necessary to spend one semester in industry. We also encourage our students to spend a semester in another fine institution in India or abroad. Our students have been to IIT Gandhinagar, University of Florida, University of Amsterdam and other places. Committed to our students’ entry into and long terms success in their chosen careers, our Centre for Communication & Critical Thinking helps them become confident, articulate and independent thinking professional. Our Director of Engineering, Prof. Sanjay Goel, an alumnus of BITS Pilani and IIT Delhi, is a well known academician with rich experience in leading innovations in engineering education. Similarly, the faculty is mostly with PhDs, and has been recruited from fine institutions.The infrastructure of JKLU is state of the art and we welcome all potential students and parents to visit us (if Covid situation permits) before taking a final decision. When you apply for admission, ask the admissions office that you wish to speak to some faculty member. Get answers to as many questions as you have. The career choices should be decided very carefully.