Creating a New Technological Institute

Foreword

India is at a tipping point in its development trajectory, faced with some of the greatest economic and social challenges of the 21st Century. The nation’s prosperity will increasingly depend on our ability to generate new ideas, processes and solutions, and convert knowledge into social good and economic wealth. The Indian model of development will have to rely on technology and young talent in equal measure, in order to leverage ideas and innovations. Institutions of higher learning will therefore play a crucial role as drivers of innovation and competitiveness

Given this scenario, it becomes imperative to recognize the need and importance of reforming our technological institutes and the way we deliver education. ‘Creating a New Technological Institute’ by Prof. Arvind Kudchadker is a timely book, and it is with great pleasure that I write its Foreword. Prof. Kudchadker has addressed three broad problems that our higher education system continues to grapple with: access, equity and excellence. Given his vast leadership experience, he has been able to provide innovative solutions to address these issues, while also defining what a technological institute needs in order to leverage and strengthen the potential of young India.

Prof. Kudchadker has described the importance of a ‘Constructivist’ Classroom in this book, as compared to a conventional classroom. I believe this difference is critical in so far as knowledge has personal meaning to each student, and is created and interpreted by the student herself, with the teacher occupying the critical role of a mentor. Our education system should allow students to identify themselves and their source of motivation, their lens to the world and their individual responsibility to society.

Today, our educational institutes focus a great deal on grades and getting jobs. Jobs are undoubtedly important, but the focus must be on creating minds that will add substantive value in addressing global challenges. According to me, education must give us the power to redefine ourselves. It must impart discipline, critical thinking and creativity; help students inculcate multi-disciplinary perspectives, ethics and respect for others; and shape students to become worthy global citizens.

This book proposes institutional changes that will not only reform our current system of imparting education, but will also give greater power to the student. I believe this book must be widely read by administrators, educators, development thinkers, practitioners and students alike, for every one of them has a stake in the future of higher education in India.

I have personally worked with Prof. Kudchadker and his students, and his ideas of a complete education are well reflected in what his students have turned out to be. A man of great simplicity, dynamism and vision, he is what each educational institute must have as a teacher. I congratulate him on such an insightful book for technological institutes and wish him the very best in all his endeavors.

Sam Pitroda

Chairman, National Innovation Council

Introduction

In recent times, there has been considerable discussion, debate, and criticism of higher education in engineering in terms of its overall quality, sustainability, scalability, flexibility as well as input of students and employability of its graduates. India has a group of high quality academic institutions along with a large number of mediocre ones. After setting-up the IITs, NITs, IIITs, BITS Pilani (IIT: Indian Institute of Technology; NIT: National Institute of Technology; IIIT: Indian Institute of Information Technology; BITS: Birla Institute of Technology & Science) in the public and private domain, the substantial expansion of higher education in engineering took place over the past 30yrs, through the establishment of a large number of private engineering institutions, some of which were primarily business ventures with scant appreciation for quality - faculty, curriculum, facilities, infrastructure, etc. However, it did provide enrolment opportunities to a large number of motivated, aspiring youngsters to get much sought after engineering education. Over the years, several of these institutions have improved in their education quality and are offering much better education programs to its students. Quality faculty remains the most important issue everybody is grappling with. Also, India is a country with about 50% of its population below 25yrs of age and this poses considerable challenges and opportunities, in providing quality education to very large number of aspirants. Hence, in addition to the expansion of the IITs, NITs, and IIITs, private engineering colleges (currently in progress), several new privately funded technological institutions, would be needed to meet this increasing demand in the next decade or two. This becomes the main objective of this book. With these considerations, it was felt desirable to look at a novel approach for creating a new technological institute of high quality and a large pool of faculty, in order to meet the requirements of the new generation.

India is a rapidly developing, democratic, multicultural, multilingual and broadly diverse country that provides the right environment for lateral thinking and creative mindset for most of its young population. This mindset has to be encouraged and nurtured right from one’s childhood through schools, colleges, universities so that we produce a generation of innovators and entrepreneurs in the coming decades. Therefore, a superior model for education in general, and engineering education in particular, needs to be evolved that sustains quality with quantity, under all adversity.

Today, a very large number of excellent resources are available for self and life-long learning – vast information at your fingertips through the Internet, on a variety of devices – smart phones, tablets, laptops, learning platforms, ....; high quality on-line learning material and courses from the best of faculty – Khan academy, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, NPTEL, Class Central (edX, Coursera, Udacity, ....); and, a host of Universities bringing education and learning to people wherever they are, whenever they want, whomsoever wishes it, on whatever platforms they have access to, making education truly universal for the first time in history.

These are the challenges of today for the traditional university model, the way they impart education, bringing people to learning, to think differently, while judiciously combining the ‘old’ with the ‘new’, creating a harmonious mix for the benefit of individuals and masses, at substantially lower costs. This is particularly welcome when the costs of running universities is increasing at a rapid rate, making it difficult for those who are seeking high quality education at affordable costs.

Personalized education is still desirable, whether it is face-to-face or in smaller groups, or virtually using the most adequate high quality, interactive internet facilities, social media, and ubiquitous technologies. Social media appears to be a powerful tool, used extensively in recent times by youngsters and not so young, for a variety of purposes including learning through groups and teams. High quality professors and knowledge imparters from anywhere and everywhere are only a click away. So, how do we approach this challenge in India of providing quality education and learning through new type of institutions, for the benefit of about 550 million young people (below 25 years of age) of this generation.

The present generation (of learners) is tech savvy with different attitudes and aptitudes (compared to the previous generation). Thay have the ability to multitask and love to work on what they find interest, excitement, and passion in. This generation is confident with hand-held devices, such as mobile phones (SMS/ texting extensively to friends, contact with teachers and peers, ....), video games and gaming systems, etc. Also they enjoy playing ‘computer’ games with high concentration, focusing on a particular task for an extended period of time (a skill that is key to learning successfully). However, this generation has substantially reduced attention span, say 15-20min in classes. Being familiar with a fast-paced world, it has very little tolerance to experiences that take time. They lack in concentration when viewing fixed, non-moving things (the psychologists call it lack of mental stimulation), and are disinterested in traditional methods of teaching. Yet, our educational system remains fixed on the traditional model.

In this knowledge era, nations that lead in invention, innovation, and knowledge propagation for the benefit of the society, will become dominant. Recently India has announced setting up of several new IITs, NITs, IIITs, Innovation universities, Central Universities, etc. Western nations have a long tradition in research and education, and continue to be world leaders in education, research, innovation, and entrepreneurship. In recent years Singapore, China, and Japan are moving way ahead of India in creating world-class institutions. India has to compete globally for the most talented faculty and students, who will become leaders in all sectors of society.

Our experience shows that Indian institutes and universities are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit high quality faculty. Our requirement is increasing substantially with the planned growth of higher education to meet the demands of a Young India. India produces only about 1,000 PhDs in engineering; USA produces about 5,000, while China produces more than 6,000 per year. The quality of faculty except in the IITs, IISc and a few other Institutions is below acceptable standards. This is especially true with respect to several of the engineering institutions in the private sector where faculty with PhD is rather rare. There seems to be a crisis in quality faculty in India as well as leadership crisis. It is estimated that about 100,000 faculty members (PhD and MTech levels) are required at present by various institutions in India.

This is a huge number, and hence we need to design and implement innovative programs to create a pool of quality faculty within the next decade. With this overall perspective in focus, a new and progressive model of a technological institute of the 21st century is proposed here.

Chapter 1 discusses India of today, the present situation and problems in higher engineering education, the YOUNG India that is knocking at higher education and looking for modern institutions that would provide new skill sets, problem solving ability, critical thinking to prepare them for the knowledge society requirements. It raises some relevant questions about present situation and higher education and identifies broad issues for deliberations and answers.

Chapter 2 takes up the broad issues identified in Chapter 1, deals with them, defines what is a high quality institution, its attributes and requirements, to make an institution a center of excellence that includes the most important component - high quality faculty, students, and governance.

Chapter 3 discusses the paradigm shift in engineering education with the establishment of IIT Kanpur (IITK) as a good model of engineering education worth emulating.

What should be the new Institution model, the teaching pedagogy, newer paradigms in education, active learning and constructivist classroom approach, are all covered in Chapter 4.

This is followed in Chapter 5 by the author’s experience in starting two new institutions, their planning and implementation, and in what ways they are different, and implementing newer models of engineering education for the 21st century.

Chapter 6 deals with the attributes of an Institution of the 21st century and what needs to make it a center of excellence, highlighting the most important issue of the faculty and deliberates on the new model of education to reach vast masses of the population across the country. It includes on-line learning as envisaged and practiced by leading global institutions. It emphasizes establishment of various Centers including a Center for Academic Excellence and Leadership, and other Centers that address societal issues.

Chapter 7 deals with the concluding remarks and presents a summary of what this book is all about.

Chapter 1: India Today

We need to keep this pledge as a running theme in whatever we do for India and the World, with a clear focus on sustainable development and self-renewal with every world citizen as the ultimate beneficiary.

Preamble

We live in a converging world of circulating talent, capital, and ideas, enabled by information and communication technologies, and driven by knowledge, creativity and innovation, impacting education, learning, and the society as never before. We have been moving from a world of political domination to a world of economic domination, then to a world of information domination, and more recently to a world of knowledge domination. Technology is ubiquitous, from healthcare to agriculture to education to energy to defense to space, and offers challenges and opportunities to make it available across India and the world for societal needs. As knowledge and technology have become the new power in the 21st century, a knowledge creating and self-renewing organization supported by technology, needs to be created that fuels ideas, innovation, personal and organizational self-renewal. In such an organization, everyone is a knowledge worker. In this knowledge dominated world, education in general and science and engineering education in particular, sensitized by humanities, arts, and social sciences have increasingly become the foundation for individual and societal prosperity.

In a knowledge society, constant renewal of skills is needed to succeed. As a consequence of the liberalization and globalization processes, India’s economy is being driven by knowledge-based industries, such as software and computers, telecom, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, multimedia, and manufacturing. This is enabled by our past investments in education and skill development in the knowledge area. We need to maintain this key leadership position in these as well as in several newer and upcoming areas in the 21st century.

In today’s world, a strong relationship exists between knowledge and wealth and India has to continue developing the skill sets to seriously act and exploit this situation for its benefit. Indian industry including major software industries, on their part have to invest substantially and sustainably in R&D and innovation (incremental as well as breakthrough) today, to fuel economic growth in the future through new technologies, new products, new industries, new management paradigms. The educational system, K-12 - UG - PG and its effective implementation has to play a major role in this endeavor.

The university should be very active in high quality research, addressing both societal problems as well as cutting-edge technologies that will benefit India and the world, and continuously should innovate. We need to reemphasize the core functions of a university, which are: knowledge creation through research, knowledge transmission/ dissemination through teaching, instruction and publications, and knowledge application through public service. As India competes in the knowledge-based economy, these issues are extremely vital and require serious thinking. This requires new relationships and partnerships between various elements of the society, K-12, Higher Education, working professionals, business and industry and government, in order to respond to mutual needs in the teaching, research, and service areas. A quality institution values research as the critical component of a knowledge-based society and emphasizes intellectual creativity and innovation as its central activities. India’s multicultural, multiethnic society with a vibrant democracy and a free press encourages lateral thinking and creativity, and provides a holistic educational experience for a young individual and prepares her/ him for a real world situation.

One observes that there is a serious leadership crisis in India in all fields, whether it is governance, policy, academics, or scientific research. This is reflected in today’s scientific and technological policies, low scientific & technological publications of accepted quality, and decreasing interest of the present generation in a scientific career. Many of us remember our young days and the excitement we all had of our superb National leadership – Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Vallabbhai Patel, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad,….. C. V. Raman, Homi Bhabha, Vikram Sarabhai, Jagdish Chandra Bose, Meghnad Saha, Visvesvaraya, Satyendra Nath Bose, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, S.Chandrasekhar, …..

The major forces reshaping our society in the 21st century are: new technologies, global markets, increasing local aspirations, price of energy and other natural resources, environment and global climate change, as well as illiteracy and poverty. There is only one way to address these issues and that is to innovate in everything we do.

With the implementation of new industrial, commerce, and economic policies, the phenomenon of globalization and competition, we need to produce a unique engineering work force to propel India to an economically, industrially, socially, and militarily powerful nation. This requires a novel, bold, and imaginative approach to technical education.

Technology and business are getting more complex due to strict environmental restrictions and controls, global warming and climate change, in addition to materials and water management under diminishing natural resources, and demands from the increasingly aware customers and society at large. It is strongly felt that innovation and a mindset change are needed, primarily catalyzed by the universities that provide holistic and multidisciplinary education, systems thinking and approach, which play a much larger and more decisive role in finding solutions than they did in the past. Providing high quality education and research opportunities at all levels, especially at higher levels, access across the population and inclusion, are necessary to drive innovation, and to empower people to unleash their creative potential.

Indian Scenario

Young India

India is a country of very large numbers with current population of about 1.2billion (350million in 1947) and expected to grow to the most populous status with 1.5-1.6billion by 2030. This poses unique challenges and opportunities requiring creative and innovative solutions, especially for education in general and technical education in particular. It is well recognized that currently 50% of India’s population is below 25yrs of age and 30-35% is below 18yrs. Also in 2010, India had 3% population above 70 as compared to 5% in China, 12% in Europe, and 9% in the USA. By 2050, the figures are expected to be: India 9%, China 17%, Europe 21%, and USA 16%, as shown in Figure 1 [1] [2] [3].

Figure 1: Young India

With the ageing population being small relative to other countries, the resource drain on them at present is affordable. Very few countries have this asset. This is the Young India with a tremendous potential waiting to be unleashed through innovative policies and novel implementation strategies. Hence the requirement is of a large number of quality institutions/ universities in India to satisfy the educational needs of this large young population.

Post 1947

After independence in 1947, India endeavored towards development and established:

a strong foundation of basic industries such as steel, coal, oil, defense, atomic energy, and space;

a university system with a few excellent institutions, such as IITs, IISc, TIFR, IIMs (IISc: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; TIFR: Tata Institute of Fundamental Research; IIM: Indian Institute of Management) (25+ universities, 5 IITs, 17 RECs - the Regional Engineering Colleges, and about 575 affiliated colleges);

a network of National and Regional Laboratories under Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR); and,

Atomic Energy, Space, and Defense establishments, to generate a large pool of scientific and technological person power, taking the nation towards stated objectives, as defined in the two important resolutions.

Science Policy Resolution (1958): To secure for the people of the country all the benefits that can accrue from the acquisition and application of scientific method.

Technology Policy Resolution (1983): Indian science & technology must unlock the creative potential of our people and help build the India of our dreams.

The main objective of technical education in India is succinctly and elegantly stated by late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the First Prime Minister of Independent India:

To provide scientists and technologists of the highest caliber, who would engage in research, design, and development to help build the nation towards self-reliance in its technological needs.

Economy, R&D

Indian economy in 2011 was the 3rd largest in purchasing power terms. India is the second fastest growing economy in the world. India’s GDP has touched US $1.3 trillion. However, this rapid growth has not been accompanied by a just and equitable distribution of wealth among all sections of the population. Only in recent times the government is pushing inclusive growth. However, there is much to be desired in the process of implementation and effectiveness. Distribution challenges need to be tackled through better deployment of public resources for public good. Table 1 provides some details regarding India’s R&D expenditure. For comparison, data for a few other countries are also provided. It is worth noting data for Israel. India’s R&D expenditure is only 0.8% of GDP, most of the funding is from the government, and the number of researchers per million population is alarmingly low [4] [5].

Table 1: India’s R&D Scene

Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, said in the 99th Indian Science Congress (Jan 3, 2012) that Over the past few decades, India's relative position in the world of science had been declining and we have been overtaken by countries like China.....As far as resources are concerned, the fraction of GDP spent on research and development in India has been too low and stagnant. We must aim to increase the total R&D spending as a percentage of GDP to 2% by the end of the 12th Plan Period (2012-2017) from the current level of about 0.9% [6].

India has to substantially increase R&D funding and the number of scientific researchers for true global competitiveness and leadership [7]. The Government is moving in the right direction and has increased allocation of R&D during 11th Plan period (2007-2012) to 75,304 Crore ($15billion) as compared to 25,300 Crore ($5billion) during the 10th Plan period [8]. The effect of low R&D expenditure by industry and government, especially the former, on national research related output from Indian scientists and engineers, is a small number of publications in reputed international journals, innovations, patents, start-ups, etc. in a billion-strong nation. It is alarming to see that the quality of science research and innovation is also decreasing. There is however, a silver lining and glimpse of hope in that in recent years, India’s several new grassroots innovators focusing on rural problems are making India