I remember a passage from a book, or perhaps a magazine I read long ago, about a U.S. college student talking about his fellow French interns. The gist of his account was that all of the French interns he encountered seemed to know each other from before, or knew someone in common in the colleges they studied back in France. The U.S. student found this unusual for he felt U.S. …
Higher Education
MERIT colleges, national track India, & privilege blindness
In this rather extended essay (~4,500 words), I suggest the term MERIT (Metro-based / Residential, English-speaking, All-India intake, Tough to get into) Colleges as a moniker to replace the IIT / IIM tag we use for elite Indian colleges.
I then use MERIT as a framework to explore facets of privilege in India – national consciousness, rise of subjective merit, and finally blindness to our own privilege.
I tried to …
Recent Writings
I have been writing regularly as those of you who follow me on twitter / linkedin are aware, but I have been a tad lazy in not updating this website with the links. So here goes.
For Arre, for their special on India’s 71st Independence Day, I predicted what India would look like in 2089, another 71 years hence. I made three predictions: one each about society, tech & …
How Many Engineers Does India Produce?
I recently came across a post on the migration patterns of engineering students from India to the U.S. It is authored by Dr Rahul Choudaha & Megha Roy from WES Research, well-regarded for their research around international education. The post said that 5.4m engineers are enrolled in undergraduate education, citing Planning Commission data. This implies that about a fourth of this, barring drop-outs and failures, graduate annually.
Assuming a drop-out …
A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes – Part II
In a previous post A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes I laid out EdTech investment themes into three buckets
- Lifelong education
- Unbundling of the university
- Rethinking existing education business models in light of tech and mobile
In the post, I had shared that I would go into greater detail on bucket #3 in a future post, as to which of the various business models and processes could be rethought, and …
The 1% Economy, or Thoughts from Silicon Valley #1
I am presently in the Bay Area on a longish work assignment. Lots of interesting conversations, and many opportunities to gather insights abound. I do hope to share some of learnings and observations from my meetings in my next few posts.
During a recent dinner meeting with a leading Valley / Tech luminary, an interesting comment arose. This was during the end of the evening, while we were sampling some …
The Greatest Hits of Digital Learning
It is been nearly four years since that infamous Stanford MOOC, Introducing AI, that saw over 160,000 students signing up, was offered. Since then we have seen a tremendous amount of buzz around MOOCs and digital courses. Initially the buzz was all positive – NYT even called 2012 the year of the MOOC – and then it seemed MOOCs could do nothing right, as the world discovered their low …
What I found interesting in Higher Education last week #12
This is a list of what I found interesting in Higher Education news and happenings.
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Interview with Pramath Sinha, promoter of Ashoka University. Relevant for data points; 1,000 applications, to which they made 250 offers and finally 133 accepted to join the inaugural class. 60% of students are on some kind of scholarship, about 10% have a free ride. Median SATs at 2050, median CBSE 12th scores …
What I found interesting in higher education last week #11
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 …
What I found interesting in higher education last week #10
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.
A Rebuttal to Prof Steven Pinker
Prof Steven Pinker writes a fascinating rebuttal of William Deresiewicz’s searing Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League, apparently the most read article in the history of The New Republic. This …
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