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 …
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 & …
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 …
In a previous post A Listing of EdTech Investment Themes I laid out EdTech investment themes into three buckets
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 …
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 …
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 …
There has been a lot written about Ashoka University and its unique multi-lateral funding model. The most comprehensive and latest is this. However very little has been written about a similar fundraising initiative at Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS), a prospective national university coming up in Bangalore focussed on urban studies.
I dug around a bit on the internet on IIHS but came up with less half-a-dozen relevant …
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 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 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 …