edublog

So, the NIRF 2020 was released in June and the usual chest-beating and we-are-better-than-you took place. But we are all aware that the history is littered with university ranking schemes, some notorious for providing rank-for-money. The then Director of IIT Kanpur famously made the statement in 2013: “An amount of one lakh and fifty thousand dollars needs to be paid to get a good ranking in such lists”, when his institute was ranked 295 by the ‘QS World University Rankings’. It was argued by QS that the Director was confused with their ‘Star program’ (where a “5 Star Rating” is put next to the University rank after receiving a payment), but the damage was done in India. Their latest rankings put IIT Bombay as the highest rank at 162 for an Indian institute while IIT Kanpur is at 283. ( Side note: the “Institute ranking” page on IIT Kanpur’s official website still carries QS World University Rankings as it is the highest when you look at all the different international rankings.) A ...

In my 2-parter on “Science Education in Modern India”, I basically concluded that nothing could improve with regards to education in India unless more focus is on the teacher and the schools (instead of creating new systems). The ‘focus’ will need to be financial, the first step, as well as in the form of a clear political will of all the political parties of the country, and not just the ruling one. The purpose of this blog is to review the current situation, the current framework and provide a small suggestion on the way forward. In 2019, the Nominal GDP of India was $2.94 trillion. The budget for the Department of School Education & Literacy, or DOSEL, (which is, as the name suggests, also looking after literacy campaigns amongst the non-schoolgoers) was $7.8 billion, or 0.3% of the GDP. [ NOTE : The current Indian government has been pushing to report GDP numbers calculated using PPP or Purchasing Power Parity, in which case India’s GDP number will stand at $10.51 trillion ...