Middle-class jobs are becoming obsolete faster than ever

When Tony Wagner, the Harvard education specialist, describes his job today, he says he’s “a translator between two hostile tribes” – the education world and the business world, the people who teach our kids and the people who give them jobs. Wagner’s argument in his book “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World” is that our K-12 and college tracks are not consistently “adding the value and teaching the skills that matter most in the marketplace.”

This is dangerous at a time when there is increasingly no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job – the thing that sustained the middle class in the past generation. Now there is only a high-wage, high-skilled job. Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried – made obsolete – faster than ever. Which is why the goal of education today, argues Wagner, should not be to make every child “college ready” but “innovation ready” – ready to add value to whatever they do.

That is a tall task. I tracked Wagner down and asked him to elaborate. “Today,” he said via email, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate – the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life – and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think – to ask the right questions – and to take initiative.”‘

My generation had it easy. We got to “find” a job. But, more than ever, our kids will have to “invent” a job. (Fortunately, in today’s world, that’s easier and cheaper than ever before.) Sure, the lucky ones will find their first job, but, given the pace of change today, even they will have to reinvent, re-engineer and reimagine that job much more often than their parents if they want to advance in it. If that’s true, I asked Wagner, what do young people need to know today?

“Every young person will continue to need basic knowledge, of course,” he said. “But they will need skills and motivation even more. Of these three education goals, motivation is the most critical. Young people who are intrinsically motivated – curious, persistent and willing to take risks – will learn new knowledge and skills continuously. They will be able to find new opportunities or create their own – a disposition that will be increasingly important as many traditional careers disappear.”

So what should be the focus of education reform today?
“We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need, and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over,” said Wagner. “Because of this, the longer kids are in school, the less motivated they become. Gallup’s recent survey showed student engagement going from 80 per cent in fifth grade to 40 per cent in high school. More than a century ago, we ‘reinvented’ the one-room schoolhouse and created factory schools for the industrial economy. Reimagining schools for the 21st century must be our highest priority. We need to focus more on teaching the skill and will to learn and to make a difference and bring the three most powerful ingredients of intrinsic motivation into the classroom: play, passion and purpose.”

What does that mean for teachers and principals?
“Teachers,” he said, “need to coach students to performance excellence, and principals must be instructional leaders who create the culture of collaboration required to innovate. But what gets tested is what gets taught, and so we need ‘Accountability 2.0.’ All students should have digital portfolios to show evidence of mastery of skills like critical thinking and communication, which they build up right through K-12 and postsecondary. Selective use of high-quality tests, like the College and Work Readiness Assessment, is important. Finally, teachers should be judged on evidence of improvement in students’ work through the year – instead of a score on a bubble test in May. We need lab schools where students earn a high school diploma by completing a series of skill-based ‘merit badges’ in things like entrepreneurship. And schools of education where all new teachers have ‘residencies’ with master teachers and performance standards – not content standards – must become the new normal throughout the system.”

Who is doing it right?
“Finland is one of the most innovative economies in the world,” he said, “and it is the only country where students leave high school ‘innovation-ready.” They learn concepts and creativity more than facts, and have a choice of many electives – all with a shorter school day, little homework and almost no testing. In the U.S., 500 K-12 schools affiliated with Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning Initiative and a consortium of 100 school districts called EdLeader21 are developing new approaches to teaching 21st-century skills. There are also a growing number of ‘reinvented’ colleges like the Olin College of Engineering, the MIT Media Lab and the ‘D-school’ at Stanford where students learn to innovate.”

Source: The Economic Times, March 31, 2013

Harvard again tops Shanghai’s Jiaotong University survey

A ranking of the world’s top schools compiled by a Chinese university has put Harvard first for the tenth year, in a list dominated by US institutions. The rankings of the world’s top 500 universities, released by Shanghai’s Jiaotong University today, have previously provoked controversy for placing an emphasis on scientific research.

Harvard University has taken the top spot for the life of the survey, which was started in 2003. Of the top 20 schools in 2012, only three were outside the United States, including Britain’s Cambridge in fifth and Oxford in 10th. The top Asian school was the University of Tokyo in 20th place.

The annual list uses six indicators, including the number of Nobel prizes and Fields medals won, the number of highly cited researchers on staff and the number of articles by faculty published in Nature and Science magazines.

The top five this year was rounded out by Stanford University in second, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in third and the University of California at Berkeley in fourth.

For Continental Europe, the highest ranked was the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 23rd place, followed by two French schools, the University of Paris-Sud 11 at 37 and Pierre and Marie Curie University at 42.

The list was originally conceived to benchmark the performance of Chinese universities, amid efforts by Beijing to create a set of world-class research institutions. But some European officials say the criteria neglect the humanities and are thus biased against Europe’s universities.

Greater China — including mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong — has no universities in the top 100 but is second for the number of schools in the top 500 with 42, according to a statement released with the rankings.

Mainland China’s top ranked school was prestigious Peking University, which was in the top 200, closely followed by Jiaotong itself, beating out Tsinghua University, which is often called China’s MIT.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), August 14, 2012

Xander Group founder Siddharth Yog gifts $11 million to Harvard Business School

On the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011 at 11:11 a.m., Siddharth Yog gifted $11 million as ‘guru dakshina’ to his professor Arthur I. Segel at the Harvard Business School, his alma mater. He added a dollar to that amount as ‘shagun’, or a token for good luck. The 38-year-old founder of Xander Group Inc., a global investment company focused on emerging markets that manages over $2 billion of equity capital, follows in the footsteps of prominent Harvard alumni who have given back to the business school that played a major role in moulding them into successful business people.

Other Indians to figure on that list include Anand Mahindra, Ratan Tata and Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy. In early October 2010, the Vice-Chairman & Managing Director of Mahindra & Mahindra had given $10 million to support Harvard’s Humanities Center; days later, the Tata Group donated $50 million to fund a campus building; and earlier in the same year, the Murthy family gifted $5.2 million to publish ‘The Murthy Classical Library of India’.

Yog’s gift has its distinctive elements. For one, it figures amongst the single-largest personal gifts an Indian has made to Harvard University. For another, it follows the ‘shishya-guru parampara’, or the age-old Indian disciple-teacher tradition. “I can never thank Arthur enough for what he has taught me. The gift is to the institute and specifically to Arthur for bringing about a life-changing experience (in me),” said the class of 2004 alumnus in an interaction with this writer during a recent visit to New Delhi to be part of a lunch hosted by Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust.

On his 30th trip to India in seven years, the guru, a co-founder and co-owner (between 1982 and 2001) of a private equity real estate development and investment advisory company, is a tad embarrassed by the ‘guru dakshina’. “Teaching is such a joy… but the idea of a gift in my name is preposterous. It is very nice, but unnecessary,” says Segel with a grin. Yog convinced the good professor to accept the offering by narrating the story of Eklavya from Mahabharata, who cut off his thumb and offered it as dakshina to his guru Dronacharya.

So why is this maverick – who now rubs shoulders with the likes of Tata, Mahindra, Murthy as well as western donors such as David Rockefeller – so indebted to Harvard University? Well, it’s thanks to the university, and to Segel, that Yog turned entrepreneur. Before that, since 1993, Yog was involved in global real estate and infrastructure. Between 1999 and 2002, Yog was based in Singapore and Hong Kong as founder-director of CB Richard Ellis’ (CBRE’s) Asia-Pacific strategic consulting practice. Prior to that, from 1994 to 1998, he helped set up CBRE’s India operations and led the consulting, valuation and research groups. He has also worked at Bain & Company in New York, Deutsche Bank Real Estate Investment Management GmbH in Frankfurt, and Feedback Ventures in New Delhi. But after nine years of working, Yog found himself asking the quintessential mid-career question: where do I go from here? Answer: the Harvard Business School, where he landed in 2002.

Segel recalls his first meeting with his shishya when Yog walked into his office at Harvard; Yog knew only real estate, and Segel taught the subject. “He was among the top students of his 900-strong batch,” the professor recalls. Yog went on to write a case with Segel on real estate major Eldeco; Segel still teaches it. Like most regular MBA grads, whose next destination is a coveted job in the financial services industry, Yog was set to start JPMorgan Chase’s private equity business in the Asia-Pacific after graduating in 2004. “But, as they say, life happens,” recalls Yog.

In New Delhi to get his visa stamped, none other than Segel prodded Yog to start a business of his own. Yog, with Segel and a clutch of investors in tow, duly founded Xander Group Inc. The private equity business of the group has investments from Lord Rothschild’s family, RIT Cap Partners, The Getty Family Trusts, and of course Segel and Yog, who is currently based in London. Over the past seven years, Xander Group has grown to 75-plus employees with offices in New Delhi, Singapore, London, Boston, Mauritius, Bangalore and Mumbai, among other outposts. The focus is primarily on companies and assets in real estate, retail, entertainment, infrastructure and hospitality.

Yog says the exposure to Lord Rothschild’s philanthropy played a big part in his decision to give back to Harvard. “It was a desire to start early. As Steve Jobs said: stay hungry, stay foolish. I did that and I am hungry and foolish again.” The gift of $11 million spans multiple Harvard schools and focuses on innovative science, educational access, public service and academic-public policy collaborations. The financial aid and fellowships have an India and emerging market focus, says Yog.

To be sure, India is top of mind for Yog. “The company is named after Alexander the Great, who first tried to marry East and West. The idea is to create an ecosystem between the East and the West and to tie back the opportunities in India specifically along with other emerging markets.”

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), January 28, 2012

Mumbai calling: Harvard provides the answers

US-based Harvard University has, in principle, agreed to partner with the Maharashtra government to provide training for its elected representatives, bureaucrats, executives and academicians on issues relating to governance and development. This will be the first time Harvard University has agreed to be part of such a venture in Maharashtra. The university expressed its desire in this regard during its recent interaction with a high-level delegation led by Maharashtra’s minister for higher and technical education Rajesh Tope.

Sanjay Kumar, higher and technical education secretary, who was part of the delegation, told Business Standard: “We kept all four proposals for consideration of Harvard University which include training for elected representatives, propelling of a quality research programme in Mumbai University and other universities in Maharashtra, and the university’s engagement in the development of a world class traning institute and using its expertise in the resource mobilisation for the education sector.”

With Harvard University giving an “in principle approval” to take part in the project, the government will submit a detailed proposal which will be cleared by the university’s board of directors. He said the state government would provide the necessary funds for the same.

Harvard University has also agreed to be associated in a capacity-building exercise for Mumbai University and other institutions in the state. “The objective is to build capacity of the stakeholders in higher education, including vice chancellors and academician administrators,” said Kumar. According to Kumar, Harvard University also responded positively to help the state government in setting up a world-class training centre. “Harvard University’s in-principle approval is the result of the government’s regular interaction with its officials.”

The move comes at a time when the Centre is yet to pass the Foreign Education Bill which would allow foreign universities to have campuses in India. Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had tabled the much-awaited Foreign Education Institutions (Regulation of Entry And Operations) Bill, 2010 in the Lok Sabha on May 3, 2010. The Bill is aimed at regulating the entry and operation of foreign educational institutions which are imparting, or intend to impart, higher education in India. It will also permits foreign education providers to set up campuses in he country and offer degree courses. The Bill will not only bring in the much needed investment in the education sector, but will also draw foreign students and help India arrest brain drain.

Harvard has had a long association with India. Harvard Business School, for instance, has been conducting executive education or management development programmes in India since 2008, but out of five-star hotels. It has also been planning to have a classroom of its own for its executive education programmes. Indian corporate honchos, including Ratan Tata and Anand Mahindra, were reported to be helping the top institute find one.

HBS, which is ranked higher than all Indian B-schools, is looking for a permanent classroom is and that is likely to put more pressure on executive education programmes offered by Indian B-schools. On an average, such programmes comprise around 35 per cent of the revenue stream for most leading B-schools in the country.

Source: Business Standard, September 29, 2011

>Harvard Is the World’s Most Reputable University

>Institutions of higher learning wondering what the world thinks of them can now point to a new Top 100 list for potential validation. The London–based Times Higher Education (THE) has ranked universities across the globe — according to their reputations for teaching and research. Harvard, which probably didn’t need a boost in self–esteem, takes the top spot, followed by MIT and Cambridge. Rounding out the top 10 are the University of California Berkeley, Stanford, Oxford, Princeton, Tokyo, Yale, and the California Institute of Technology. Nearly half of those on the entire list are in the United States. The UK trails the U.S. with 12, while Japan has five.

The new World Reputation Rankings are not to be confused with THE’s separate World University Rankings, which “included objective measures of research performance and funding.” The prestige rankings are based on a survey — conducted by Ipsos for THE’s rankings data provider, Thomson Reuters — of some 13,000 academics in 131 countries. The opinions were collected last year, and played a part in determining the University Rankings, which were published back in September. Schools that rank higher in reputation than they actually rank overall might have some soul–searching to do.

Source: Time, March 12, 2011

Homi Bhabha hopes Mahindra’s $10 mn to Harvard helps humanities

Indian industrialist Anand Mahindra’s US$ 10 million gift to the Humanities Center at Harvard will help the institute bring humanities into the arena of policy making and enhance collaborations between other fields of knowledge, renowned Indian scholar Homi Bhabha said. Coming from India, the gift also “emphasises the global reach of the humanities,” Bhabha, Director of the Humanities Centre and Harvard’s Anne Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, said.

Anand Mahindra’s gift will enable the Centre “to enhance collaborations between the humanities and other fields of knowledge at Harvard and widen the reach of the humanities nationally and abroad”. The gift would also help Harvard bring the humanities into the arena of policymaking, he said, “where at this point the humanities have only a feeble voice”.

The Centre, said Bhabha, already has reached out to the social and natural sciences. “The humanities never sit still,” said the India-born scholar who has a doctorate in literature from Oxford University. The humanities always busy themselves with the business of the world, and refuse to be contained. Through the 10 million dollar gift, the Humanities Center aims to sponsor more events, support more doctoral and postdoctoral students, help younger colleagues turn dissertations into books, and open up ‘larger circles of collegiality’,” Bhabha added.

The gift itself provides a reminder that India and South Asia have long traditions of accomplishment within the “cosmopolitan realm of the humanities”. “It was never just a region defined by religion — Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity — but even today is a lively home to writers, performers, painters and poets,” Bhabha said. In this age of innovation, “the themes, values, and images” of culture are “continually being translated by different media,” he said. “This is just the kind of issue that the humanities always deal with. The humanities are most perceptive in thinking about complex moments of transition,” he said.

Mahindra’s 10 million dollar gift is “the largest of its kind in the University’s history”. The Harvard alumnus and Mahindra & Mahindra’s Vice-Chairman and Managing Director has given the gift in honour of his mother Indira Mahindra. The Centre is now renamed the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard. After studying film at the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies in 1973, Mahindra earned an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1981.

Source: The Economic Times, October 6, 2010

Homi Bhabha hopes Mahindra’s $10 mn to Harvard helps humanities

Indian industrialist Anand Mahindra’s US$ 10 million gift to the Humanities Center at Harvard will help the institute bring humanities into the arena of policy making and enhance collaborations between other fields of knowledge, renowned Indian scholar Homi Bhabha said. Coming from India, the gift also “emphasises the global reach of the humanities,” Bhabha, Director of the Humanities Centre and Harvard’s Anne Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, said.

Anand Mahindra’s gift will enable the Centre “to enhance collaborations between the humanities and other fields of knowledge at Harvard and widen the reach of the humanities nationally and abroad”. The gift would also help Harvard bring the humanities into the arena of policymaking, he said, “where at this point the humanities have only a feeble voice”.

The Centre, said Bhabha, already has reached out to the social and natural sciences. “The humanities never sit still,” said the India-born scholar who has a doctorate in literature from Oxford University. The humanities always busy themselves with the business of the world, and refuse to be contained. Through the 10 million dollar gift, the Humanities Center aims to sponsor more events, support more doctoral and postdoctoral students, help younger colleagues turn dissertations into books, and open up ‘larger circles of collegiality’,” Bhabha added.

The gift itself provides a reminder that India and South Asia have long traditions of accomplishment within the “cosmopolitan realm of the humanities”. “It was never just a region defined by religion — Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity — but even today is a lively home to writers, performers, painters and poets,” Bhabha said. In this age of innovation, “the themes, values, and images” of culture are “continually being translated by different media,” he said. “This is just the kind of issue that the humanities always deal with. The humanities are most perceptive in thinking about complex moments of transition,” he said.

Mahindra’s 10 million dollar gift is “the largest of its kind in the University’s history”. The Harvard alumnus and Mahindra & Mahindra’s Vice-Chairman and Managing Director has given the gift in honour of his mother Indira Mahindra. The Centre is now renamed the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard. After studying film at the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies in 1973, Mahindra earned an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1981.

Source: The Economic Times, October 6, 2010

Anand Mahindra gifts US$ 10 million to alma mater Harvard

In what is being billed as the largest grant to the Humanities Center at Harvard University, Anand Mahindra, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, is offering his alma mater US$ 10 million for the study of humanities. The grant, in honour of his mother Indira Mahindra, would see the centre being renamed the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard.

According to sources close to the development, the grant has been catalyzed by the 50-year-old bond that the Mahindra family has with Harvard. Anand’s father, the late Harish Mahindra, earned a Bachelor’s degree at Harvard College in 1946. Anand followed in his footsteps and graduated from Harvard in 1977 with a major in visual and environmental studies. During the’70s, Indian regulations did not permit the provision of foreign exchange for undergraduate studies overseas, and Anand was therefore awarded a full scholarship by Harvard. This is something he has not forgotten.

He then went on to earn an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. Mahindra is reticent in talking about the grant, but is of the view that to address complex problems in an inter-dependent world, it is vital to encourage the cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary exchange of ideas in an international setting. “I am proud to be part of the intellectual legacy of India’s contribution to global thinking across the arts, culture, science and philosophy. I am convinced of the need for incorporating social and humanistic concerns into the core value proposition of business and have sought to do so with tremendous support from my peers and colleagues at work and outside,” he said.

As Mahindra frequently says, the liberal arts experience was a transformational one for him, and he firmly believes that it provided him with a strong foundation for personal and career growth. He has also never forgotten the university’s generosity, and this gift is one way of expressing his gratitude.

The Humanities Center, located at Harvard University, is a site for inter-disciplinary exchanges and is open to the entire academic community and the public, and is a place where discourses on various topics that make up the study of humanities are held.

Source: The Times of India, October 4, 2010

Anand Mahindra gifts US$ 10 million to alma mater Harvard

In what is being billed as the largest grant to the Humanities Center at Harvard University, Anand Mahindra, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra, is offering his alma mater US$ 10 million for the study of humanities. The grant, in honour of his mother Indira Mahindra, would see the centre being renamed the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard.

According to sources close to the development, the grant has been catalyzed by the 50-year-old bond that the Mahindra family has with Harvard. Anand’s father, the late Harish Mahindra, earned a Bachelor’s degree at Harvard College in 1946. Anand followed in his footsteps and graduated from Harvard in 1977 with a major in visual and environmental studies. During the’70s, Indian regulations did not permit the provision of foreign exchange for undergraduate studies overseas, and Anand was therefore awarded a full scholarship by Harvard. This is something he has not forgotten.

He then went on to earn an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. Mahindra is reticent in talking about the grant, but is of the view that to address complex problems in an inter-dependent world, it is vital to encourage the cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary exchange of ideas in an international setting. “I am proud to be part of the intellectual legacy of India’s contribution to global thinking across the arts, culture, science and philosophy. I am convinced of the need for incorporating social and humanistic concerns into the core value proposition of business and have sought to do so with tremendous support from my peers and colleagues at work and outside,” he said.

As Mahindra frequently says, the liberal arts experience was a transformational one for him, and he firmly believes that it provided him with a strong foundation for personal and career growth. He has also never forgotten the university’s generosity, and this gift is one way of expressing his gratitude.

The Humanities Center, located at Harvard University, is a site for inter-disciplinary exchanges and is open to the entire academic community and the public, and is a place where discourses on various topics that make up the study of humanities are held.

Source: The Times of India, October 4, 2010

Indian-origin woman named professor of Economics at Harvard

Noted academician Gita Gopinath has been named Professor of Economics at the prestigious Harvard University, becoming the first Indian-origin woman professor in the institution’s history. Gopinath, 38, has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 2005 and was named associate professor in 2009. Her focus area is business cycles in emerging markets and price fluctuations across international borders. “Professor Gopinath’s research on emerging markets has proven extremely important to our understanding of their business cycles and her studies of price stickiness have been highly influential among macroeconomists”, Dean of Social Science in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Stephen Kosslyn said here. Gopinath’s research has examined price stickiness at the U.S. border, addressing questions on whether prices are set in the producer’s or the consumer’s currency and how this transnational pricing responds to exchange rate shocks.

University President Drew G. Faust had confirmed tenure for Gopinath in May, making her only the second internally promoted woman full professor and the third woman to be tenured full professor in the department. “On campus, she has played a central role in the vitality of our programme in international economics and especially in teaching and advising students in this field”, Kosslyn added.

A University of Delhi alumnus, Kolkata-born Gopinath has a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. She was an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. She is also an associate of the National Bureau for Economic Research, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the International Growth Centre at the London School of Economics and Oxford University.

Earlier this month, IIT alumnus Nitin Nohria took over as the 10th Dean of Harvard Business School (HBS). At HBS itself, Nohria is among some 25 teachers of Indian-origin in a faculty of just over 200. Nobel laureate Amratya Sen is currently the Thomas W Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard.

The Economic Times had earlier reported on Prof. Gopinath’s achievements on May 23, 2010. The report is reproduced below.

Harvard’s newest India connection : Prof. Gita Gopinath
Gita Gopinath’s ground-breaking research is helping economists get a better understanding of the financial crisis in Greece and Iceland. No surprise really, considering that Prof. Gopinath has recently been named tenured professor at Harvard University’s high-brow Department of Economics and she thus becomes the third woman ever and the first Indian after Nobel laureate Amartya Sen to receive such as outstanding honour.

Prof. Gopinath, who is only 38, works in the area of international macroeconomics and finance—areas that have become significant in light of the current financial crisis and the critical macroeconomic situation. “She has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of sovereign debt defaults, which is the current leg of the crisis in Europe. Her work also shows, at a very deep level, why many emerging markets tend to experience greater macroeconomic volatility than advanced economies and has significantly advanced understanding of the interaction between prices and interest rates”, says Kenneth Rogoff, Prof. of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard and former chief economist at the IMF.

Prof. Gopinath has some advice for Indian policy makers too and sees a major lesson from the Greece debt crisis for countries that have to work extra hard in preventing runaway budget deficits. “This should be a top concern for India. Its close to 7% projected budget deficit is on the high side. Even though this size of deficit is smaller than the U.S., the risk to the economy is larger for India. This is because from the international investors’ perspective, India still is an emerging market, there is more uncertainty about how India will correct its deficits and what is even politically feasible, so the tolerance for Indian deficits is much lower”, she says.

Prof. Gopinath, who completed her bachelors in Economics from Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College and masters from Delhi School of Economics before moving to the U.S. for a Ph.D., considers herself a product of the Indian education system. “When I was doing my bachelors from Delhi University, India experienced its first major external financing and currency crisis in 1990-91. This inspired me to pursue graduate work in economics and was the foundation for my interest in international finance”, she says.

Her father, TV Gopinath, a farmer and entrepreneur in Mysore, too, believes that increasingly, young Indians from small towns and villages will do well in academics and have the confidence to compete for top honours with their wealthier and savvier counterparts in cities. “My daughter went to school in Mysore, but was unfazed by the intense competition that she faced in Delhi. Later, Harvard University offered her an admission for Ph.D. but didn’t give her any financial aid. Because we couldn’t afford to fund her, she decided to go to the University of Washington, Seattle, where she was offered funding. She left the university after two years, but was given an MS in Economics in recognition of her extraordinary capabilities”, says Mr Gopinath, a proud father.

Today, Prof. Gopinath herself sees mentorship from seniors as an important tool in breaking the gender glass ceiling at Ivy League universities in the U.S. There are very few women faculty at the top. At Harvard’s economics department, for instance, there are only three tenured women out of around 40 tenured faculty. While this is very low, it is still a lot better than it was in the past. Prof. Gopinath thinks that junior women could benefit from having senior women as mentors, so when that pool is very small this is just harder to accomplish. In academia, the whole tenure clock makes having a family difficult, so this is a bigger challenge for women. “I am very fortunate to have a hugely supportive husband in this matter”.

Overall she believes universities are now increasingly cognizant of the special challenges for women and explicit provisions are being made through family leave policy and stopping the tenure clock for a year when you have a child, policies that unfortunately were not in place in the not too distant past. “These are positive signs”, she adds.
Her husband and former classmate, Iqbal Dhaliwal, Director of Policy at the Jameel Poverty Action Lab at MIT’s Department of Economics, acknowledges that her job has been far more stressful than his because she was on the tenure clock at Harvard.

“The research they do is very intense with the added pressure of peer-review and the need to publish in top journals. I am not a professor, but work on the policy side of research at MIT. Both of us appreciate the importance of dual careers and accept the challenges that come with it. Since we really cherish and value the time that we get with each other and our little son after work, we try to be as efficient in the office as possible, and try to make sure that the time we have together is quality time”, he says.

In a recent interview published in the Harvard Crimson, the university’s newspaper, Prof. John Campbell, the Chairman of Harvard’s Economics Department praised Prof. Gopinath’s ability to move between theory and data analysis, and her strong skills as a teacher. “She has worked with some of our best Ph.D. students”, Prof. Campbell said. “She is really becoming a professional leader in terms of training economists. She is the complete package”.

Her former students too endorse this view. “Promotions in top research universities are exclusively based on research and publication record and do not condition on the quality of teaching. Teaching, however, still takes a significant amount of time. Prof. Gopinath was an important figure in graduate teaching in the economics department”, says Oleg Itskhoki, who is now on the faculty at Princeton University’s economics department.

Source: The Economic Times, July 18, 2010 & May 23, 2010