Sunday Posts

Would Private Universities save the world?

2012-01-21T08:58:00.002Z

In a recent article enlisted in Harvard Business Review's Audacious Ideas, Karan Khemka and Parag Khanna passionately makes the case for private investment in Higher Education and argues that expansion of the For Profit universities will bring growth back by being the best way 'to build a skilled labour force, create more jobs, broaden the consumer base, and ultimately sustain economic growth'.

Everyday Subversiveness

2012-01-19T21:59:00.001Z

Grand narratives are dead is the great grand narrative of our age. It is the big idea that there is no big idea, just little moments. I subscribed to this even before I came across the post-modernists, when I started loving the moments, seeing everything as temporal, momentary. I know the post-modernists now: I almost believe in them. But one grand narrative I continued to believe in. Perhaps

McDonaldization of British Higher Education

2012-01-15T18:40:00.000Z

Dr Rahul Choudaha writes about the franchising trends of the British, Australian and American Higher Education on his blog. This presents two interesting pieces of statistics: First, the British HE classroom is far more global than the American (15% international students in the system compared to USA's 3%,), and the second, a fact which is becoming apparent now, that more international students

India 2020: A New Future for Kolkata

2012-01-14T10:19:00.000Z

I wrote a note on Kolkata, the city I come from and would always belong to, in July 2010. Since then, the post attracted visitors and comments, mostly criticisms as most people, including those from Kolkata, couldn't see any future for the city. My current effort, 18 months down the line, is also prompted by a recent article in The Economist, The City That Got Left Behind, which echo the

Ideas for A Borderless World: Parag Khanna on TED

2012-01-08T18:21:00.000Z

India 2020: How To Win Friends

2012-01-07T13:52:00.000Z

Try telling any Indian that nationalism is a dated ideology and they would think you are completely insane: True, nationalism is alive and well in India. Indeed, South Asian region is possibly the most nationally conscious in the whole world now. Follow its newspapers, television, various proclamations of political leaders or the usual dinner table chatter, and one gets to see a nationalism of

The Uses of Scepticism

2012-01-02T08:54:00.001Z

Finally, the partying over, and I am back to work. I have to get used to writing dates with '2012' at the end, but that always takes a bit of time. But there is a sense of a new start: 2011 was one year I could not wait to see the end of. This isn't new that I am seeking a fresh start, a break, both of the lucky sort and with the past. That, indeed, is the spirit of New Year, when the world is

2011: The Last Post

2011-12-31T08:34:00.000Z

It is that day of the year when, for one day, the past seems more important than the future. One day to remember and say goodbyes, to sum up and finish - so that one can make a fresh start next day. That's what I am set to do now. On balance, this year changed my life. It started disastrously, with the sudden death of my brother. From that very low point, today is a long way away. But if I have

Waiting for Godot in India

2011-12-30T15:29:00.000Z

It was a fitting end to a disastrous year in Indian politics, New Delhi based blogger and journalist, John Elliot contends. With the defeat of Lokpal Bill, floor crossings and chaos, India's biggest weakness, its political class, once more is on public display. However, these are dangerous times, whether or not you believe in Mayan prophecy: Party may indeed end for India in 2012. India had its

Quality AND Profits: Interrogating Student Recruitment through Agents

2011-12-28T15:01:00.000Z

These are exciting times in the international student recruitment market. This is a time for new winners and losers, new markets emerging and dominant ones stagnating, and new rules are being written. After explosive growth for a decade, Australia let its dominating position slip in 2008. Also, Britain, which became a very attractive destination in the new millennium, enjoying 64% growth in

India 2020: Beyond The Middle Classes

2011-12-27T10:00:00.000Z

If India has to grow to the next level, it must look beyond its Middle Class. In a classic case of narcissist obsession, India seems to think of itself in terms of what the outside world sees of it - the immense consumption potential of the middle classes - but its own reality is both richer and more diverse than that. So, the model of development that the country must pursue is one that must

The Great Powershift

2011-12-24T12:40:00.002Z

These days, most intelligent conversations tend to focus on two alternative possibilities. First, the more pessimistic ones, see the current recession going the same way as the Great Depression did, slowly altering political opinions and driving the world into protectionism and national chauvinism, finally leading to some kind of great war, which may lead to an end of civilisation. The proponents

My Social Media Thinking

2011-12-23T08:46:00.001Z

I consciously worked on my 'work ethic', shedding some practices which I may have picked up early in my working life in the quest of becoming a better professional. Indeed, I did find it a never-ending process, I continuously discover things that I can do better, and have now come to accept that I may never be perfect, but have to keep on trying. An important part of my work ethic, I consider,

TED Video: The Quest to Understand Consciousness

2011-12-19T17:14:00.002Z

Summing Up The Year: 1

2011-12-17T12:28:00.000Z

It is that sort of time of the year when I am tempted to look back, as well as look ahead, at the same time. The festive season is already here, with the police closing traffic at the West End for shoppers' convenience and the weekend parking charges at our local shopping centre shooting up from £3.50 a day to £16.30 a day: The work at office is coming to an inevitable halt as people start to

Why was Cameron wrong?

2011-12-16T10:20:00.002Z

David Cameron is now enjoying a bit of a popularity wave at home because of his veto on an EU-wide agreement on deeper fiscal union between the Euro countries. English press is trying to project this as a Cameron versus Sarkozy game, and quite explicitly equating Sarkozy, who isn't a very tall man, with Napoleon, the other French who had a poor opinion about the Brits. The British public feels

On Technology in Higher Education

2011-12-11T07:42:00.001Z

We have no choice but to turn to technology if we have to solve the problems of mass Higher Education. In Higher Education, we have so far taken a model that was designed to serve a few, and tried to expand this to service the needs of an exponentially larger population. By doing so, we have worked ourselves into the twin problems of soaring cost and declining quality, alongside other attendant

How To Return To Recession

2011-12-09T06:06:00.001Z

We have been here before, we are at it again. Edmund Burke should stand corrected: However much one reads history, one is doomed to repeat it. The Great Depression was caused by financial excesses followed by protectionism and government inaction: The next one, which is looming around the corner, will be exactly the same. David Cameron saved his job, for the moment. He, who wanted to be the

Getting Ready for 2012

2011-12-04T16:20:00.001Z

I have an one point agenda for 2012: To do things that I love. I used to say I shall retire at 42. That was when I was young and naive. I realised two things as years passed. First, one can actually retire anytime. Second, doing what I love is actually retiring, because that never feels like work. In any case, that's what people mean by retiring: They want to escape the drudgery of daily work

Getting It Right With Pakistan

2011-12-03T16:45:00.001Z

The BBC Documentary on Pakistan - The Secret Pakistan - is a classic statement of Western disillusion with Pakistan. But, is it also time to acknowledge that the Western world view, about how to manage the world after the Cold War, has failed? In fact, one can look beyond Cold War and explore how Pakistan was created. The recent research suggests that Pakistan's creation emanated from direct

Jimmy Wales in Learning Without Frontiers 2011

2011-12-01T10:17:00.001Z

Morality AND Profits: A Study By Corporate Executive Board

2011-11-30T12:12:00.001Z

I was out at the RSA again this morning to listen to a panel discussion on Corporate Ethics. The panel represented an interesting combination - Wendy Harrison, Programme Director Ethics and Compliance, Shell International, Dan Currell, Executive Director of Corporate Executive Board, Matthew Gwyther, editor, Management Today, and Patrick Donovan, Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer of Airbus and

Quality And Profits: The Case Study of Introducing Moodle in a For-Profit Business School

2011-11-28T21:25:00.001Z

In The British Library

2011-10-17T06:03:00.003Z

This is a part of the work I am doing on Learning environments. We looked at the British Library as a team, and I am tasked with writing about its service areas. I, as with other things I learn or think about, thought it appropriate to post the report here. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

India: Is The Growth Story Intact? A Seminar

2011-09-21T05:25:00.000Z

Today I attended a seminar at Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment on India. The panel, which included Lord Meghnad Desai, the famous Economist from LSE, alongside Ian Gomes, Chairman of High Growth Markets division of KPMG, Ian McEvatt, Chairman of the Himalayan Fund and Eoin Treacy, Global Strategist from Fullermoney.com, was discussing whether the Indian growth story, faced with

Hypocrisy United: The Palestinian Nationhood

2011-09-19T08:33:00.000Z

Palestinians want to be recognized as a State, what's wrong with that? Israel was curved out of Palestine in one of the first acts of the rubber-stamp imperialism era. That was a different age. That was a time when the retreating British empire wanted to leave small pockets of direct influence and weaken the incumbent states. So, we had Pakistan, which was meant to be a client state of the

Broken Republic: Narendra Modi and India's Future

2011-09-15T21:34:00.000Z

Will he, won't he? Narendra Modi is suddenly back in the reckoning as a future Indian Prime Minister. Incredibly, the aspirations of his admirers in Hindu Nationalist camps are inflamed because an US report, a rather routine one done by the Congressional Research Office, praised him, in one paragraph of a 95 page report for effective governance of Gujrat. Indeed, it is a bit ironic to me, having

IIPM and New India: Interrogating Aspirations

2011-09-13T20:45:00.000Z

I have just read the Siddhartha Deb's Sweet Smell of Success: How Arindam Chaudhuri made a fortune off the aspirations - and insecurities - of Indian Middle Classes. I had to read it from a blog, as the original article had to be taken down by the Caravan magazine which published it first after Arindam Chaudhuri sued them, and other miscellaneous companies, for publishing it. It is somewhat

Meritocracy and Its Limits

2011-09-11T08:04:00.001Z

Tests, of various kinds, assure us that we have a way of sorting wheat from chaff, only the fittest are permitted into our best schools and universities, and the ablest run our institutions. These tests are designed by honest psychologists and educational experts, and takes years and millions of pounds of investment to build and refine. If we only look at the credentials of people who develop

On Not Going to University

2011-09-10T10:33:00.000Z

Universities in the UK face a number of different challenges, but none more serious than from a growing coalition of professional and vocational training providers, which are questioning the value of going to the university. Somewhat paradoxically, at the surface at least, these efforts are driven by the two-plank strategy of the government - of cutting university funding which will hit the

Are The Banks Bankrupting UK?

2011-09-07T21:12:00.001Z

The report on Banking is due, and the bankers are trying to do what they do best: Use the back-channel to flout the rules. In a sense, the only timely thing Alistair Darling has done in his entire career seemed to be the publication of his memoir, where he reminded people how fascinatingly arrogant the banking bosses are, and how they effectively demanded a bail-out and held the British

Reputation in Education

2011-09-05T06:24:00.000Z

Shall we call it the brand? But reputation is slightly different from a brand. Brand is like personality, what one's known for. It can include the likeable and not so likeable traits, sometimes intentionally. Reputation is somewhat of a subset, what's good of the institution in question, word of which spreads far and wide. Reputation is also more than word of mouth, because it is not just what

How Does For-Profit Higher Ed Turn A Profit?

2011-09-04T19:30:00.001Z

The more I look at the For-Profit Education industry's business model, it seems that the industry is only profitable within a narrow band of course offerings, notably in Accountancy, Law, Business Administration, Hospitality, Computing and Fashion, but not in much else. I would have loved to add design or Engineering, but numbers don't seem to add up there. Besides, in most cases, For-Profit

Searching for A Business Model

2011-09-03T20:06:00.000Z

If I have spent last 18 months working in designing, developing and delivering business degree courses in Britain, I wish to spend the next 18, or 36, or longer, to build the capability to deliver such British Education programmes worldwide. I think this is only the logical next step for me, and in line with what I have done before, during my time in International Franchising and e-Learning

Come September

2011-09-02T20:01:00.003Z

So this is September and at one point of my life, back in India, this used to be the month when we prepared for change. One ritual in NIIT life used to be a complete reorganization of all functions on the 1st of October, and everyone almost surely knew that they would have a role change on that day. So, as September came, which also happened to be the busiest time of the company's yearly calendar

Searching For A Domain

2011-09-01T20:45:00.005Z

Domain as in an area of deep expertise - not the web variety - as I am trying to discover my T-skill. This has become an article of faith for me that to be successful, everyone, me included, will need T-shaped skills - a lot of different interest areas, but one deep skill, as in the letter T. I have lots of different interest areas - history, photography, writing, literature, education, marketing

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2011-08-31T20:34:00.005Z

Today started with a false start, much like yesterday. I started early and landed up, prepared to queue up, at the Indian High Commission at Aldwych. There were no one around, except for a few odd souls like me standing around in search of a queue, and we all realized, only after a few minutes of private wondering, that the High Commission is closed for Eid. The guy who so helpfully enlightened

A Day's Work

2011-08-30T21:44:00.002Z

Nothing happened today. Well, almost. The usual happened: I returned to work after a few days break - full of aspirations to get things done - but, unsurprisingly, end of the day, had most of my to-do list sitting pretty untouched. The small things I expected to finish were just too small to attend to, and the big things, too big. My time was eaten away by whatever I don't remember now. I came

How I Got Here: 1

2011-08-26T14:03:00.006Z

My parents came from two very different families, and my childhood was defined by the differences. My father's side of the family was rich and entrepreneurial, mostly self-taught, fiercely independent, disciplined and hardworking. My father, the first to go to university and with his teaching job at a college, was as much a misfit in the family as one could be. The family, led by the family

Back to Idealism

2011-08-24T19:44:00.006Z

I am at an interesting phase in my life. In the last 18 months or so, my life has completely changed. Old responsibilities and attachments have died, and new configurations have emerged. My plans for return, which I felt about so intensely at the time, have receded to the background; but I rediscovered my attachment to India. And, overall, after spending many a year in waiting, almost in

Corruption and India: Is Lokpal The Solution?

2011-08-24T05:36:00.003Z

Indian media, and the global media has caught up lately, is completely obsessed with Anna Hazare and his Lokpal bill now. Indeed, Anna Hazare has caught the public mood by picking up the issue of corruption, which is all pervasive in India, and he is the man of the moment. His struggle at this moment symbolizes the rift between the new India, the India of the young people, and the old India, of

Does For-Profit Higher Education Serve A Social Purpose?

2011-08-21T10:33:00.005Z

I am interested in Higher Education: I believe that expanding Higher Education opportunities, through private sector participation if necessary, is key to create opportunities of social progression. I am not alone in this - this is possibly the most commonly held view in the UK and the United States - and this allows me to think favourably about what I do. Even if the Private Higher Ed is run for

Capitalism's Final Triumph

2011-08-20T16:17:00.004Z

If the stock markets are to be believed, the US and the European economies are on the verge of a double-dip, a second recession in three years, which will possibly, inescapably perhaps, lead into a long great depression, the second time in modern history. Whether or not that really happens, one thing is clear: If we thought the recession of 2008 would be a short-lived affair, it turned out to be

New Opportunities in British For-Profit Education

2011-08-18T06:46:00.002Z

The Never-ending Question Of Return

2011-07-31T07:43:00.004Z

Once you left home, my friend told me, you can never go back.I said I must, as I only wanted to travel to see the world. To learn, as I believed in Gu Yanwu's dictum - walk 10,000 miles, read 10,000 books. I went only as a student, as an adventurer who wanted to live in different places, speak different languages, learn different customs and make different friends. It was very different from

Reflecting On Practice

2011-07-29T05:13:00.004Z

I have been asked to keep a journal for one of the modules in my MA course. I am now trying to force myself into the habit, though I am never good at doing anything when I am forced. However, this is only required for a short while, with the final coursework due in early September, and I thought I can keep trying it for a month.I am expected to write about my Professional Practice and immediately

Education is the Killer App

2011-07-26T06:16:00.002Z

I don't remember who said this to me first, but it is something I deeply believed in and reorientated my career therefore. The premises are simple: In an uncertain world, in the context of post-industrial civilization, knowledge rules. Whoever thinks middle classes are gone, should think again: Despite the decline of middle class jobs in the Western countries, there is a huge increase in the

After the Social: Roger McNamee Talking About The Next Big Thing

2011-07-24T16:28:00.001Z

Being A Student

2011-07-23T11:53:00.005Z

I live with curious justifications. For example, I believe that since the leaps in medical technology in the last forty years added a good 20 years in average life expectancy of a person living a regular life, I am twenty years younger. Well, it works this way: I was expected to live 60 years when I was born, and can now safely expect to be around for 80, hence I am 22 years old. This makes some

The Battle Against Plagiarism

2011-07-23T06:02:00.003Z

The furore over the blog post of Panagiotis Ipeirotis, a NYU Stern Professor, who vowed not to pursue cheating again (read the report here), is understandable. Cheating is seen as possibly the worst offence possible in a class environment, which undermines the trust between the teacher and the student, and makes all academic effort irrelevant. In my own experience, when I was given the

Humanities under Threat?

2011-07-21T05:40:00.003Z

Last evening, I attended a seminar at the British Academy under the title 'Humanities Under Threat?' which was immensely interesting. This was organized by the University of Cambridge and Arizona State University, and was attended by a great panel. Among the speakers was Jonathan Cole, whose Great American University I have read earlier. There was Stephan Collini too, whose history of

Elegies to Lost Love

2011-07-20T05:36:00.004Z

I see time as a brush to paint my life's canvass with. So, nothing is ever lost: All the moments become a brush stroke as they seem destined to be. There will be no regrets either: There will be no claims to finality of a final masterstroke. Seen that way, life, my life or anyone's, becomes a beautiful rainbow of colours and possibilities, its each corner filled with a story of what could have

What India can learn from, er.., Finland

2011-07-19T08:44:00.006Z

India has an education problem. A massive one. Its education system is broken, so bad that an official in Prime Minister's Office recently said that India has an examination system, not an education system. Most children in India go to schools that don't teach, and most adults will go to colleges which are desperately out of sync with modern world. Its education infrastructure is at the breaking

After the rains

2011-07-17T19:15:00.003Z

I am feeling free now. As free as the blue sky that showed up after the day of rain, unburdened.I was weighed down by various things, the deadlines to turn in coursework for my Masters studies, the intense pressure on the private sector education in Britain due to the absurd immigration regulations, and the battles I had to fight with vested interests at work. On top of this, I had a very bad

Return to Radicalism

2011-07-11T05:09:00.002Z

The economic crisis, that we lived with for the last few years, is finally changing the intellectual landscape: After years of conformity, radicalism is again back in fashion. It is no longer daft not to be at the centre, no longer funny to believe in some sort of world's end theorem - grand narratives are back in fashion.Is this a neo-modern turn then, in our history? The post-modern thinking,

Strong and Weak David Cameron

2011-07-10T06:14:00.002Z

The Economist explores the two sides of David Cameron's leadership: He is self-assured and confident in the matters of High Politics (read, making speeches), but radar-less and weak when faced with the raw politics of mass fury and indignation. Examples abound: His approach to the crisis in Libya and war in Afghanistan is markedly dissimilar to his handling of NHS reform and now, the News of The