>IIT-B student wins Chevrolet design award

>John Paul Xavier, an aspiring automotive design engineer, was declared the winner of the ‘Design the Next Chevrolet’ contest held in association with Autocar India, at an event in Mumbai on Friday. Xavier, 25, a student of Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) in the product design department, will get a Chevrolet Beat as his prize.

The contest, kicked off in September last year, received more than 1,200 entries. Commenting on the designs, Sumit Sawhney, Vice President – Sales, Marketing & Aftersales, General Motors India said, “They were outstanding. Students had done a great work over these models. In the coming years, we will see more Asian and Indian designs adopted by car manufacturers. I see manufacturers bringing their design studios to India in the coming years.”

“We are overwhelmed by the kind of response that we have received. Chevrolet has completed 100 years of existence and our investment in India has gone up substantially. We now have a full fledged technical and design centre in Bangalore with about 2,000 dedicated engineers working on various developments,” he added.

Apart from Sawhney, the jury for the contest comprised Karl Slym, President and Managing Director, General Motors India, design expert Dilip Chabbria, Hormazd Sorabjee, Editor-in-Chief, Autocar India and Anil Saini, Director – GM India Design, Global Network Teams.

Talking to the media at the event, Sawhney said the company will be introduce six new vehicles by the year 2011-2012 in about 14 different fuel variants. “At this time, I cannot share the specifics of this, but we will launch these six vehicles in 14 different fuel options,” he said.

Talking about a few plans which are on, he said that the company will be soon launching its Beat and Spark model with LPG fuel option. He, however, refused to comment on introducing an electric vehicle. “We will be showcasing something very interesting on this front very soon. We have already launched Chevrolet Volt in North America. GM is working on a lot of environmental friendly solutions and our Bangalore research centre in also supporting global research work,” said Sawhney.

Source: Financial Express, April 16, 2011

>New initiative to impart teaching skills to doctors

>The historical lack of formal teacher training for doctors may yet be reversed by recent trends offering degree and diploma courses for medical educators across the globe, Eamonn MM Quigley, past president, World Gastroenterology Organisation, said.

Very few doctors have had formal training as teachers, Prof. Quigley, who is with the University College, Cork, Ireland, explained. Teaching is a skill, and recent teacher training programmes that have emerged try to bring modern techniques into education, with a special focus on the intricacies that medicine demands. More and more countries are adopting such methods in order to teach their doctors to teach medicine, he added.

This is precisely what the WGO attempts to do with its ‘Train the Trainers’ programme — correct the deficit of a formal training as educators. The first session of the WGO’s TTT was held for the first time in Chennai, between April 10 and 14, for about 50 gastroenterologists. Some of the aspects that were dealt with during the session, conducted in association with the Indian Society of Gastroenterology, included modules on adult education, teaching techniques, how to conduct high quality research, and evidence-based medicine.

Prof. Quigley’s colleague at the WGO, its current treasurer David Bjorkman said the programme was a huge success and the discussions that took place were of the highest quality. The WGO was an organisation of national societies of gastroenterologists with the goal of improving digestive health across the world.

Twenty-five of the 50 participants were from India, according to conference chairman K.R. Palaniswamy. Though the response from professionals was overwhelming, the number of participants was deliberately kept to a low 50 in order to provide the kind of interactions and discussions that is an essential part of a WGO TTT.

The TTT will also be followed by a two-day continuing medical education (CME) programme to be held on Saturday and Sunday, conference organising secretary V. Balasubramanian, said. The lessons of the TTT programme would be encapsulated in a single session during the CME, he said.

Other issues that will be discussed are emergencies in gastroenterology, abdominal injuries, obscure gastrointestinal bleeds, chronic pancreatitis, dysphagia, and liver tranplants. A live workshop on endosonography and endobronchial ultrasonography will be held parallelly at the Apollo Hospital, he added.

Source: The Hindu, April 16, 2011

>American students here to learn business tricks

>With a view to interact with business leaders and acquire new insights into the regional economy, over 150 students from the United States-based Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business are now in New Delhi. The group is part of the Duke MBA-Cross Continent programme which takes students through Fuqua’s six global locations in India, China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Duke University’s campus in Durham, North Carolina.

The 16-month programme is designed for full-time working professionals and aims to provide a global perspective on business through immersing students in international business and cultural experiences and balances classroom and experiential learning.

Acknowledging the need to give students an exposure to social, political and economic environments in important countries of the world, the course recognizes that “India is one such geography” and is “one of the most important cultural and industrial hubs and will continue to play a central role in the world’s economy through the 21st century”.

The residency includes corporate classroom lectures, corporate visits and meetings with business leaders. The university also plans to set up a full fledged campus in India.

Source: The Hindu, April 16, 2011

>More Indians apply for courses in U.S.

> The number of Indian applicants to graduate programmes in the U.S. universities has increased by 7 per cent this year. This follows a 1 per cent increase against the previous year. According to the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), the overall graduate applications to the U.S. universities from overseas students had risen by 9 per cent over the previous year, the sixth year running of continuous increases.

International students form an integral core of the graduate student population in the U.S., accounting for 15.5 per cent of the total. The most popular fields among international students for studies at the Master’s and Ph.D. levels in the U.S. are engineering, physical and earth sciences (including computer science and mathematics), and business studies. These fields account for 62 per cent of the total graduate-level applications.

Applications from prospective graduate students from China and the Middle East & Turkey rose by double-digit percentages in 2011 for the sixth consecutive year in a row, increasing by 18 and 12 per cent respectively. Applications from prospective graduate students from India rose 7 per cent in 2011 following a 1 per cent gain in 2010 and a 12 decline in 2009.

The CGS International Graduate Admissions Survey collects data on four key sending countries or regions: China, India, South Korea, and the Middle East and Turkey. China, India, and South Korea are the top three countries of origin for international graduate students in the United States. Collectively, students from these three countries account for about one-half of all non-U.S. citizens on temporary visas attending U.S. graduate schools, according to research from both the CGS and the Institute of International Education.

A copy of the CGS report is available at: http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/R_IntlApps11_I.pdf

Sources: U.S. Embassy, New Delhi & The Hindu, April 16, 2011

>’A problem with IIMs is they have no real stakeholders’

>Faculty at the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have objected to quite a few of the Bhargava committee recommendations on restructuring these B-schools. Such as the one that the managing society at each IIM should function as an ‘enlightened owner’, wherein corporate entities can become members on payment of Rs. 20 crore (Rs. 200 million), individuals on payment of Rs. 5 crore (Rs. 50 million) and alumni by paying Rs. 3 crore (Rs. 30 million). This, the faculty say, will lead to privatisation of the IIMs. R C Bhargava, Chairman of Maruti Suzuki India and author of this report on new governance structures, tells Kalpana Pathak the teachers haven’t understood. Edited excerpts:

What was the committee’s rationale behind this idea of allowing membership by accepting donation?
It is not a new idea at all. I believe two or three existing IIMs have been allowing this since inception and nobody objected to it so far. The amounts were considerably smaller. All we have done this time is to have increased the amount. If you convert the money that IIMs accepted in, say, the 1960s, it will work out to be a very large figure anyway. So, no new principle is involved.

Why did the committee increase the amount?
Two fundamental reasons. One, to build a corpus for the IIMs. All these years, they have not been able to build any significant one for themselves. Whatever money is available is largely in the form of government grants. The IIMs have not been successful in getting any significant donation from outside parties and using that corpus to do things leading to academic excellence.

Today, the bulk of the money that IIMs generate is through the Management Development Programmes (MDPs) or executive education programmes they conduct. If they did not have these, they would all still be running at a loss or just marginally breaking even.

Every IIM has a scheme that the money earned via MDPs is shared between the faculty member who carries it out and the institution. Of a 100-odd faculty in the IIMs, only 50-60 per cent are able to do MDPs. Some of them are able to earn as much as Rs 60 lakh each year.

Thus, there is a strong interest in carrying out MDPs. However, a result of doing so is limited teaching and research. When the Ajit Balakrishnan committee recommended that about 160 hours of teaching be put in (a year) against around 90 hours at present, which is the case in most IIMs, this was made in the interest of bringing in a healthy development, as you want more MBA teaching and more research to happen. The issue is how to make up for the loss of revenue from the MDPs.

A corpus is a way out and building one is a priority. If we implement the other recommendation of more teaching and more research, it means less MDPs and in turn less income for not only the professors but also for the IIMs. To make up for that income, either you increase the fee or find some other source of money. Else, the budget of IIMs may go for a toss. The corpus income can be used both for making IIMs financially viable and giving extra income to professors who do good work in teaching, research or in conducting MDPs.

Are you implying the IIMs should stop MDPs?
No. But the IIMs have not been set up by the government to carry out MDPs as the main objective and earn money. They are supposed to create managers and leaders. We looked at the kind of MDPs being done. By and large, these are for fairly lower levels of people from the public sector. Higher level management people do not come to the IIMs for MDPs. They are being done for these lower level people as they generate money. A corpus would lead to people getting more time for research and MBAs.

We also thought a corpus would be required as the new IIMs need professors. There is dearth of faculty and if you suddenly add seven new IIMs, where do you get the teaching staff from? One way is to get Indian faculty teaching abroad. They need to be paid. However, they cannot be paid over and above the government’s salary structure fixed through the Pay Commission. So, you can compensate them with board approval through money generated from the corpus. The ministry has recognised this need and approved this method.

Have the professors approached you to clarify the recommendations?
No, none of these professors have spoken to me. I would like to ask them what they mean by privatisation of IIMs. In public sector units, privatisation means reducing government equity to below 50 per cent. This is not happening here. The IIMs will remain Board-managed. The government will remain the promoter and its overall power of control and superintendence will not be diluted.

So, how will some corporate donating money and joining the Society hurt? How will it lead to privatisation? Today, people can give a few lakhs and become members of the Society. Have those IIMs become privatised? If much fewer number pay a few crores, the IIM gets privatised? The logic is hard to follow.

IIMs will always have to seek grants from the government because in the next 20 years, I do not see any of the IIMs having enough resources to fund their capital expenditure. If the faculty members mean the board will suddenly get controlled by the Society, it’s not valid. The Society does not elect the board. You may be a member of the Society but the latter has only one or two members out of 14 on the board.

The issue of privatisation is misconceived and misunderstood. Faculty members are not the governance of an IIM. They certainly do, and should continue to, determine the academic side of the IIM but they are not responsible for governance of the IIMs.

Under the law, the board is supposed to manage and administer an IIM, nobody else. That is the legal position. Subject to whatever powers the government keeps to itself by virtue of its actually being the person who has promoted the IIM and funds the IIMs.

How does alumni being on the board help?
That alumni should be part of the management of the IIMs is something that has been supported by even faculty members. This is how it works with international B-schools. Alumni members take interest in an institution; we talk of people with some sense of ownership and commitment, and who are worried about the reputation of the alma mater.

Getting people who are on the board for three to five years and then leave will serve no purpose. You need people who can care about the institution and have some stake in the institution. A reason why IIMs have not progressed the way they should have is because there are no real stakeholders. Alumni are clear and important stakeholders.

Source: Business Standard, April 15, 2011

>World Bank Group’s new education strategy focuses on ‘learning for all’

>From its overarching goal of ‘schooling for all’ as its education strategy in the past, the World Bank Group made a paradigm shift in its new Education Strategy 2020 to ‘learning for all’ in the developing countries. This is driven by the conviction that the driver of development eventully is what individuals learn, “both in and out of school, from preschool through the labour market,” the Bank said.

In its Education Strategy 2020 unveiled in Washington on Tuesday with the accent of investing in people’s knowledge and skills to promote development, the World Bank Group said since launching a project to build secondary schools in Tunisia in 1962, it had traversed a long way by investing $69 billion globally in education via more than 1,500 projects in developing countries including India over the years.

Its financial support for education has risen over the decade since the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were set, surging to more than $5 billion in 2010. Alongside, its private sector lending window, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) began focusing on the education sector since 2001, it has invested $500 million in 46 private education projects.

Sector-wide financing
Stating that the Bank Group has not stood still since it adopted its last strategy in 2001 by moving closer to client countries by decentralising its operations with 40 per cent of staff now in country offices, the Bank said it has also innovated financially through greater use of sector-wide financing, pooled funding, performance-based instruments and other approaches. It has also recognised the burgeoning role of the private sector in education by carving out a Health and Education department at IFC.

The new education strategy, while aiming at building on these changes, focuses on learning because “better learning for all students worldwide is vital to economic growth, better development” with ”significantly less poverty depending on the knowledge and skills that people gain, not the years spent in classrooms.”

The strategy explicitly concedes that “while a diploma may open doors to employment, it is a worker’s skills that determine his or her productivity and ability to adapt to new technologies and opportunities. Knowledge and skills also contribute to an individual’s ability to heave a healthy, fulfilling life, an educated family and be involved in their community as citizens and voters.”

It reaffirmed its commitment to helping countries get all children into school by the 2015 deadline for the MDGs. But with conditions in the world changing rapidly — from a record surge of young people at the secondary, tertiary levels in West Asia and emerging economies to the rise of new middle-income countries anxious to boost their economic competitiveness by training more skilled workforces — developing countries must “transform gains in schooling into improved learning outcomes,” it cautioned.

New strategy
While skill levels in the workforce predict economic growth rates far better than average schooling levels even as the skills young people acquire in school are inadequate, “the bottom-line of the Bank’s new education vision for 2020 is: invest early, invest smartly and invest for all,” according to Ms. Elizabeth King the World Bank’s Education Director and lead author of the new strategy.

The new strategy calls for robust systems to improve the quality and reach of education in three areas. First, the Bank’s Group would prioritise and finance reform of countries’ education systems as a whole to improve the quality of student learning. It will thus focus on increasing accountability and results as a complement to provide school buildings, teacher training and textbooks. Strengthening education systems meant aligning their teacher policies, governance, management, financing and incentive mechanisms with the goal of learning for all.

Second, the Bank Group would match new education financing with results. Highlighting instances of recent innovative projects in Bangladesh, Jamaica and Vietnam that have used results-based financing and other spurs to improve student and school performance, it said these could serve as models for other countries.

Finally, the Bank Group will build a leading knowledge base for education reform of what works and what does not in education reform, using impact evaluations, learning assessments and benchmarking tools that are being developed. By benchmarking education reform progress against global best practices, the Bank Group will help countries diagnose the strengths and infirmities in their reform bids and better target future investments.

Source: Business Line, April 15, 2011

>500 technical colleges may face closure over violations

>The government could soon ask 500 management, engineering and other technical education colleges to close for varying offences ranging from violating land rules to cheating students. A senior official in the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) said this was the outcome of a review of complaints by parents and students, and a scrutiny of documents submitted by the colleges to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), India’s apex technical education regulator. “At least 500 technical education colleges have already been raided in the last few months across India,” added this person, who did not want to be named. M.K. Hada, member secretary, AICTE, confirmed the development and said the exercise was aimed at “cleaning up the system and bringing transparency in the technical education space.”

The ministry official said the concerned authorities have already prepared a report based on the “surprise raids” and are hearing what the erring institutes have to say. “We believe in fair play and hence have given a chance to these colleges to give their version. At least 210 such colleges have already made their points by person to the AICTE.”

The move has come nearly one-and-a-half-years after the University Grants Commission (UGC), the key university education regulator, “blacklisted” 44 deemed universities for failing quality and infrastructure parameters. The deemed university issue is now pending in the Supreme Court following these institutes moving court.

After hearing the colleges, the expert panel, comprising 21 experts and officials from the technical education field, will decide on how many should be sent closure notices, the official added. Both AICTE and the ministry official said the names of the institutes would be made public after the entire procedure is completed. Without giving names, Hada said at least 10 colleges have already been served the withdrawal-of-approval notice. “This is a first-of-its-kind step by AICTE. We want fair play for all—students, parents, educational institutes and the education system. They are free to appeal again.”

The surprise checks are conducted by three persons—two educational experts and an architect. They verify several credentials such as land transfer and ownership, building plans, infrastructure, quality of education and faculty among other things. The ministry official says of the 500 colleges, a majority of them are teaching engineering and management courses. States such as Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu lead in the number of colleges being examined.

There are some 8,000 technical education institutions in the country, with at least two million students pursuing technical education courses. An estimated 50,000 students are enrolled in the 500 colleges under scanner, according to the ministry official. Once an institute faces closure, the concerned state government will be responsible for shifting the students to another institute, the official said.

Such scrutiny is critical for maintaining standards, said. Veeraraghavan, a former education secretary. “Powerful people are running professional colleges. (They) are making money and AICTE must come down hard on them,” he said. “I believe AICTE should engage in constant inspection and work with them with a focus on substance in curricula and teaching methods.” The quality checks should be conducted by permanent employees rather than temporary ones as is the practice now, Veeraraghavan added.

AICTE was cleaned up after some of its top officials were arrested for corruption in 2009. After their removal, the ministry restructured the council, which has taken several pro-active measures to streamline the technical education sector in the country in the last 18 months. The most important of these was the e-application and e-approval system adopted by AICTE since the last academic session. It also asked all colleges for details of both physical and intellectual infrastructure, including details of faculty and their qualifications.

Source: Mint, April 15, 2011