Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Where are the leaders?
Mayank Maheshwari looks at and laments the lack of leaders in India's burgeoning education sector. Article link
Friday, July 29, 2011
What the UAE can teach India
The tiny United Arab Emirates have allowed foreign institutions and for-profit investors to revitalize their schools; India should follow suit. Article link
For-profit schools and colleges.
Children study in a school run by an NGO in New Delhi.
The very idea of making money in a sector that is innately construed to be charitable and altruistic in India sends shivers down the backs of regulators, parents and thought-leaders in the country.
At a time when India is widely regarded as passing through a revolution in its education sector, the stubborn mind-set against private entrepreneurs benefiting from a sector that is parched for their innovative ideas and their healthy investments sounds bizarre.
Yet, despite government prepared reports underscoring the benefits of private schools over shoddy government schools, and half-hearted attempts by the government to open schools to profit-making investors, India today remains closed to those wanting to make money, pay taxes and educate its millions.
As regulators in India mull over the future of their education system and how best to prepare it for the 21st century, it would do them good to cast an eye towards the UAE, a country that is witnessing an education reformation of its own, and the investor-friendly, forward thinking policies there that have allowed the seeds of positive education reform to be sown in the country.
Like India, the UAE has been plagued by how to repair its public education system, improve teacher training standards and build scale in its higher education sector. Over the past few years, the government has responded to these challenges by adopting a more investor friendly policy; essentially, allowing the operation of for-profit schools and colleges alongside government run institutions, and crafting special regulations to allow foreign institutes to setup base in the country.
The idea has been to create an environment where private schools compete among themselves to provide the best possible education at the lowest cost, much like how restaurants compete to serve the tastiest food at reasonable prices. The government acts more as an enabler, setting basic standards of operation for schools and creating the necessary infrastructure needed by schools to operate.
The decision by reputed universities such as New York University and Paris’s Sorbonne to locate to the UAE, the growth in the number of schools in the country and the setting up of much needed vocational education colleges in areas such as Dubai Knowledge Village can be attributed to such investor friendly policies.
The positive effect these schools and colleges will have in educating both the local and expat population as well as in arresting a brain-drain from the UAE is sizeable.
On the other hand, India has adopted what it claims is a more child friendly policy, with the government not only disallowing profit making but also dictating terms to privately run schools’ daily operations. The recently ratified Right to Education Act, which requires private schools to enroll low-income students at highly subsidized fees is an example of such interference.
Despite being advertised as benefiting the common man, such policies are to the detriment of India’s long term aspirations as an educational powerhouse for a few reasons.
Firstly, it is no secret in India today that despite being legally coined as not-for-profit, education entrepreneurs in the country use complex structures and underhanded methods to remove a few bucks for themselves. The use of hefty capitation fees in schools and colleges in India, something many Indian expats in UAE are forced to pay for their children’s education back home, is an example of such a structure created to remove money from a system that does not legally allow profit-making.
Would it not be better to allow people who are passionate about education reform to make money legally as is the case in the UAE instead of letting cronies exploit parents through capitation fees?
Moving on, the Indian government is known to be a terrible operator of schools, with teacher absenteeism and poor infrastructure the norm in low-income areas. UNESCO ranks places India’s public education system one of the lowest in the world today. An innovative idea in the UAE to tackle a similar underperformance of public schools was to lease out a few government schools in Abu Dhabi to private, for-profit operators to manage.
Would it not be better for India as well to empower entrepreneurs to repair the messy public education system and also set up low-cost private schools?
Finally, just as it was in the UAE, parents in India are worried about high tuition fees, poor teaching quality and inferior student performance. In India’s current pseudo-socialist education system, the government is responsible for overseeing education quality, even in private schools, and sets its own benchmarks for schools to adhere to. In the UAE, where schools compete for profits, there is an automatic pressure on them to provide excellent quality education or risk losing their students to another, better performing school. Wouldn’t such a system offer India a win-win situation for schools, parents and regulators?
Despite a societal mindset against profit-making in educational institutes, India must recognize, like the UAE, that its goal of a child friendly education system is heavily reliant on how private investors and entrepreneurs are treated in the country—as empowered teachers or as bullied students.
Mayank Maheshwari is an entrepreneur and freelance writer based in Dubai, UAE. He serves as a senior committee member for the Hope Hall Foundation School in New Delhi.
For-profit schools and colleges.
Children study in a school run by an NGO in New Delhi.
The very idea of making money in a sector that is innately construed to be charitable and altruistic in India sends shivers down the backs of regulators, parents and thought-leaders in the country.
At a time when India is widely regarded as passing through a revolution in its education sector, the stubborn mind-set against private entrepreneurs benefiting from a sector that is parched for their innovative ideas and their healthy investments sounds bizarre.
Yet, despite government prepared reports underscoring the benefits of private schools over shoddy government schools, and half-hearted attempts by the government to open schools to profit-making investors, India today remains closed to those wanting to make money, pay taxes and educate its millions.
As regulators in India mull over the future of their education system and how best to prepare it for the 21st century, it would do them good to cast an eye towards the UAE, a country that is witnessing an education reformation of its own, and the investor-friendly, forward thinking policies there that have allowed the seeds of positive education reform to be sown in the country.
Like India, the UAE has been plagued by how to repair its public education system, improve teacher training standards and build scale in its higher education sector. Over the past few years, the government has responded to these challenges by adopting a more investor friendly policy; essentially, allowing the operation of for-profit schools and colleges alongside government run institutions, and crafting special regulations to allow foreign institutes to setup base in the country.
The idea has been to create an environment where private schools compete among themselves to provide the best possible education at the lowest cost, much like how restaurants compete to serve the tastiest food at reasonable prices. The government acts more as an enabler, setting basic standards of operation for schools and creating the necessary infrastructure needed by schools to operate.
The decision by reputed universities such as New York University and Paris’s Sorbonne to locate to the UAE, the growth in the number of schools in the country and the setting up of much needed vocational education colleges in areas such as Dubai Knowledge Village can be attributed to such investor friendly policies.
The positive effect these schools and colleges will have in educating both the local and expat population as well as in arresting a brain-drain from the UAE is sizeable.
On the other hand, India has adopted what it claims is a more child friendly policy, with the government not only disallowing profit making but also dictating terms to privately run schools’ daily operations. The recently ratified Right to Education Act, which requires private schools to enroll low-income students at highly subsidized fees is an example of such interference.
Despite being advertised as benefiting the common man, such policies are to the detriment of India’s long term aspirations as an educational powerhouse for a few reasons.
Firstly, it is no secret in India today that despite being legally coined as not-for-profit, education entrepreneurs in the country use complex structures and underhanded methods to remove a few bucks for themselves. The use of hefty capitation fees in schools and colleges in India, something many Indian expats in UAE are forced to pay for their children’s education back home, is an example of such a structure created to remove money from a system that does not legally allow profit-making.
Would it not be better to allow people who are passionate about education reform to make money legally as is the case in the UAE instead of letting cronies exploit parents through capitation fees?
Moving on, the Indian government is known to be a terrible operator of schools, with teacher absenteeism and poor infrastructure the norm in low-income areas. UNESCO ranks places India’s public education system one of the lowest in the world today. An innovative idea in the UAE to tackle a similar underperformance of public schools was to lease out a few government schools in Abu Dhabi to private, for-profit operators to manage.
Would it not be better for India as well to empower entrepreneurs to repair the messy public education system and also set up low-cost private schools?
Finally, just as it was in the UAE, parents in India are worried about high tuition fees, poor teaching quality and inferior student performance. In India’s current pseudo-socialist education system, the government is responsible for overseeing education quality, even in private schools, and sets its own benchmarks for schools to adhere to. In the UAE, where schools compete for profits, there is an automatic pressure on them to provide excellent quality education or risk losing their students to another, better performing school. Wouldn’t such a system offer India a win-win situation for schools, parents and regulators?
Despite a societal mindset against profit-making in educational institutes, India must recognize, like the UAE, that its goal of a child friendly education system is heavily reliant on how private investors and entrepreneurs are treated in the country—as empowered teachers or as bullied students.
Mayank Maheshwari is an entrepreneur and freelance writer based in Dubai, UAE. He serves as a senior committee member for the Hope Hall Foundation School in New Delhi.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Learning, the Indian Way
The unflinching focus on education found in many Indian students and their families in something other countries can learn from. Read my article in the Wall St. Journal
Article link: http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/09/01/india-journal-learning-the-indian-way/
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The sometimes uncanny ability of many Indian students, both at home and overseas, to excel in mathematics, science, literature and geography has won the admiration of many in the western world.
Robert Compton, an American entrepreneur and filmmaker had always assumed that India’s education standards were poor. He was so impressed by students’ superior learning habits on visiting here though that he decided to do the documentary, “2 million minutes” to demonstrate the urgent need for U.S. schools to mimic the teaching techniques of countries like India and China.
Across the pond, British education officers have also remarked on how their students need to learn from India. Back from a recent trip to India, British Universities Minister David Willets announced his interest in sending British students to India for studies, especially in subjects like math, science and IT.
For many, this adulation for a widely-criticized education system seems bizarre. After all, doesn’t India boast of astronomical primary school drop-out rates? Doesn’t much of rural India struggle with high illiteracy rates? Isn’t the country infamous for using a system of rote-learning? Who can ignore the country’s crumbling education infrastructure or lack of teaching standards?
So, what is everyone really harping about?
Perhaps the success of some of India’s students lies not as much within the formal underfunded education system but in an inherent culture of learning; not in schools and colleges as much as in everyday interactions and perceptions.
It has long been advocated that in classrooms in the West, Indian students tend to be more hard-working than their non-Indian classmates when it comes to academics. A key reason for this is the inculcation of study habits in students from a very early age and a societal perception that children need to put their studies before all other aspects of their daily lives. Indeed, no other reason will get you excused from a family wedding in India than to say that you have an important class or a test coming up.
Students in India are taught to deal with the pressure of examinations and to compete with their classmates for better grades well before those in the West. There is also a great emphasis to use any available free time to revise class-notes, practice math problems or attend private tuitions rather than watching Friends or playing cricket. Compton states in his film how an average U.S. student spends 900 hours in the classroom and 1,500 hours in front of the television in their four-years of high school.
From my own experience studying in India and later in the U.S., I found a marked difference in how Indian students use their school holidays to learn a new language, attend coaching classes or practice handwriting instead of attending football games, visiting relatives or working in the local supermarket. This means they put in more hours for their math, science or geography studies. Is it really a wonder that they tend to score better in these subject areas?
Another cog in the wheel is India’s culture of constant supervision and guidance of students by their parents and teachers, even to the point of micromanagement of daily schedules and long-term goals. Parents are involved in a student’s academic work, tuition classes, university planning and career counselling, not just in primary school but well into college. In the West, where students are given a greater deal of independence to map their own interests or choose a college, such a system would be considered too stifling. In India, however, it is as commonplace as bargaining in the local bazaar or drinking tea with milk.
The result of this is Indian students are led by their mentors to follow a predetermined path from a very early age, almost like horses with blinkers on. While students in the West are discovering where their “true interests” lie and are experimenting with different subjects; Indian students are steaming ahead in calculus and biology on a course chartered out long ago by their parents or teachers.
Finally, it is imperative to appreciate the role India’s poverty and population play in stoking a culture of learning in the country. The U.S. National Center on Education and Economy reported in 2006 that only 10% of India’s potential college students actually attend college for reasons such as poverty and high opportunity costs. It’s better to earn money farming than attend college for four years, some would say. This figure may have increased slightly since then but the point remains: There is too little to go around for everyone.
The Economist Intelligence Unit in 2002 placed IIM Ahmadabad, a premier business school, as the toughest school to get into with 70,000 students fighting for 200 seats.
In a system where India’s limited colleges have the luxury of selecting only the cream of the crop from thousands of applicants by setting up incredibly stringent selection procedures—especially in math and science—students have to train hard to succeed.
To the likes of President Barack Obama, who insists that America’s economic and political longevity are inextricably linked to the performance of America’s schools, India’s culture of learning offers some valuable lessons.
By pushing students to utilize free time more productively, by fostering a culture of mentorship and collective decision-making and by setting up stringent guidelines for college admissions, the West can emulate India’s success.
Article link: http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/09/01/india-journal-learning-the-indian-way/
--
The sometimes uncanny ability of many Indian students, both at home and overseas, to excel in mathematics, science, literature and geography has won the admiration of many in the western world.
Robert Compton, an American entrepreneur and filmmaker had always assumed that India’s education standards were poor. He was so impressed by students’ superior learning habits on visiting here though that he decided to do the documentary, “2 million minutes” to demonstrate the urgent need for U.S. schools to mimic the teaching techniques of countries like India and China.
Across the pond, British education officers have also remarked on how their students need to learn from India. Back from a recent trip to India, British Universities Minister David Willets announced his interest in sending British students to India for studies, especially in subjects like math, science and IT.
For many, this adulation for a widely-criticized education system seems bizarre. After all, doesn’t India boast of astronomical primary school drop-out rates? Doesn’t much of rural India struggle with high illiteracy rates? Isn’t the country infamous for using a system of rote-learning? Who can ignore the country’s crumbling education infrastructure or lack of teaching standards?
So, what is everyone really harping about?
Perhaps the success of some of India’s students lies not as much within the formal underfunded education system but in an inherent culture of learning; not in schools and colleges as much as in everyday interactions and perceptions.
It has long been advocated that in classrooms in the West, Indian students tend to be more hard-working than their non-Indian classmates when it comes to academics. A key reason for this is the inculcation of study habits in students from a very early age and a societal perception that children need to put their studies before all other aspects of their daily lives. Indeed, no other reason will get you excused from a family wedding in India than to say that you have an important class or a test coming up.
Students in India are taught to deal with the pressure of examinations and to compete with their classmates for better grades well before those in the West. There is also a great emphasis to use any available free time to revise class-notes, practice math problems or attend private tuitions rather than watching Friends or playing cricket. Compton states in his film how an average U.S. student spends 900 hours in the classroom and 1,500 hours in front of the television in their four-years of high school.
From my own experience studying in India and later in the U.S., I found a marked difference in how Indian students use their school holidays to learn a new language, attend coaching classes or practice handwriting instead of attending football games, visiting relatives or working in the local supermarket. This means they put in more hours for their math, science or geography studies. Is it really a wonder that they tend to score better in these subject areas?
Another cog in the wheel is India’s culture of constant supervision and guidance of students by their parents and teachers, even to the point of micromanagement of daily schedules and long-term goals. Parents are involved in a student’s academic work, tuition classes, university planning and career counselling, not just in primary school but well into college. In the West, where students are given a greater deal of independence to map their own interests or choose a college, such a system would be considered too stifling. In India, however, it is as commonplace as bargaining in the local bazaar or drinking tea with milk.
The result of this is Indian students are led by their mentors to follow a predetermined path from a very early age, almost like horses with blinkers on. While students in the West are discovering where their “true interests” lie and are experimenting with different subjects; Indian students are steaming ahead in calculus and biology on a course chartered out long ago by their parents or teachers.
Finally, it is imperative to appreciate the role India’s poverty and population play in stoking a culture of learning in the country. The U.S. National Center on Education and Economy reported in 2006 that only 10% of India’s potential college students actually attend college for reasons such as poverty and high opportunity costs. It’s better to earn money farming than attend college for four years, some would say. This figure may have increased slightly since then but the point remains: There is too little to go around for everyone.
The Economist Intelligence Unit in 2002 placed IIM Ahmadabad, a premier business school, as the toughest school to get into with 70,000 students fighting for 200 seats.
In a system where India’s limited colleges have the luxury of selecting only the cream of the crop from thousands of applicants by setting up incredibly stringent selection procedures—especially in math and science—students have to train hard to succeed.
To the likes of President Barack Obama, who insists that America’s economic and political longevity are inextricably linked to the performance of America’s schools, India’s culture of learning offers some valuable lessons.
By pushing students to utilize free time more productively, by fostering a culture of mentorship and collective decision-making and by setting up stringent guidelines for college admissions, the West can emulate India’s success.
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