What I found interesting in the world of higher education last week, with some added thoughts and views. I work for the Times of India Group. All views are personal.
News
The Times of India looks at caste discrimination in premier Indian campuses after the recent suicide of a Dalit student at IIT Bombay.
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Mint covers Nalanda University’s launch (or relaunch). And even before Nalanda can come on steam (not a single brick has been laid for the campus building still), the Bihar government has plans to revive another of the universities of yore, Vikramshila University.
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A plan to knit all Indian Central Universities together through common admission, common curriculum, student and faculty mobility as well as a national system of credit transfers. As one Ministry of Human Resource Development (which oversees Higher Education In India) official said “Imagine one university with 39 campuses with seamless mobility of students and teachers. Common curriculum and admission…”. Well, likely not because “”Attempts to have a common admission during Kapil Sibal’s term also did not materialize. It remained confined to 14 central universities created in 2009. Old universities did not agree. It is unlikely that faculty from premier central universities like DU and JNU would move to new central universities in places like Motihari or even universities in northeast.”
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In India, a shortage of electricians and welders forces wages up, leading to some electricians earning higher wages than what some engineering grads earn.
Why has this happened despite the presence of 5,000 trade institutes (Industrial Training Institutes or Centres)? Dipankar Gupta of Shiv Nadar University has an interesting take – “only 18% of those who have passed out of these vocational schools have regular jobs. This minuscule number is bad enough, but there is more. About 60% of this 18% are employed as informal workers because their caps don’t fit the organised sector. Most of those who come out of our vocational programmes pack a single, terminal skill that resists upgradation. Obviously, there is no tie-in with industry. It is important then that industry should chip in to make vocational education both challenging and attractive. If Indian industrialists want skilled manpower, they should pull their weight instead of throwing it about. After years of trial and error, the growing consensus in Europe is that vocational education and training must provide high quality, generic and transferable skills. Low garage level know-how will not help a person adapt to a fast-changing world. From vocational training workers should be able to move on to tertiary education, should they so aspire. It is by keeping these options open that countries like Germany have managed to control unemployment and generate innovations at the same time.”
Meanwhile here is a textbook example of how industry and academia should partner, albeit from a Engineering viewpoint, but relevant nonetheless for us.
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Is USC’s Master of Arts in Teaching the most successful SPOC (Selective Private Online Course)? From 2010 to 2014, USC’s Rossier School of Education, which administers the MAT (MA in Teaching) with 2U, graduates over 2,000 students. In contrast during a similar period of 4 years before 2010, it graduates less than 200 students.
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Credential Creep in the US job market. A new study examines the phenomenon of “upcredentialing” — employers seeking workers with degrees or credentials for jobs that have not historically required them. Why is this happening? Well, “employers have come to rely on a bachelor’s degree primarily as a way of screening applicants, in a way that may not be related to job duties themselves.” However as more and more Americans go to college, leading to more degrees and “thus offering employers a larger pool of highly-qualified applicants, employers are demanding the higher credential (e.g., bachelor’s degree) to narrow the applicant pool to a manageable size”.
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The US College rankings market has traditionally been dominated by US News; its list rankings colleges primarily on academic reputation. In recent months, we have seen a deluge of new ranking methodologies pioneered by the likes of Money (focused on ROI), Washington Monthly (primarily affordability but other lenses too) and now The New York Times, which takes a crack at US College rankings through the lens of economic diversity of students admitted. NYT finds that through this lens its #1 college is Vassar, and #2 is Grinnell.
But if you go by money alone, then it is Harvey Mudd.
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Harvard is a hedge-fund that happens to have a college attached. A call to take away its tax-exempt status.
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JNU Nostalgia, focused on their nightlong presidential debate
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In 2010, Silicon Valley entrepreneur (paypal) and investor (facebook) launched the Thiel Fellowship, encouraging bright college students to drop out of college for $100K and pursue their dreams. I have referred to Thiel Fellowship in one of my earlier posts, where I had referenced an article that detailed how the Thiel Fellows viewed the Fellowship – more as a sabbatical than a permanent rupture from college. Recently reddit did an AMA w Peter Thiel. I am excerpting relevant bits on education, including a comment from Peter Thiel on the Fellowship from the AMA. The AMA itself is an interesting read for those with interests in venture capital, net neutrality, NSA snooping etc though there is scant little on education.
Q. In your view, has the Thiel Fellowship been a success? Do you think that, in retrospect, some of the fellows would have benefited from more time in school or the workforce?
A. Yes, on both a micro and a macro scale.
Micro: the 83 fellows have collectively raised $63 million, and a number of their companies are tracking towards solid Series B venture rounds. Almost all of them did and learned far more than they would have in college.
Macro: we started an important debate about the education bubble. Student debt is over $1 trillion in this country, and much of that money has gone to pay for lies that people tell about how great the education they received was.
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Many of the publications are low quality and they don’t accomplish anything” & “high levels of faculty stress as well as concerns about plagiarism”. A look at China’s research universities, warts and all.
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The Dual-degree MBA, essentially an MBA + a seperate degree studied simultaneously, is not an entirely new phenomenon. We had the JD + MBA at Harvard (and other elite schools), for “overachievers of the overachievers”, as this NYT article refers to the rarefied club of 12 graduates, who on average complete the JD+MBA dual-degree every year. Now the dual-degree is expanding beyond law to design, public policy and even medicine.