Foreign universities in India - A pipe dream ?

Read a statement in Times of India by some Indian-entrepreneur, very excited about US universities opening campuses in India.

"They will probably end up doing some of their research in India also for the same reasons that major corporations are doing R&D in India - it is much cheaper and brings them closer to growth markets."

Statement appears absolutely laughable. This Indian-entrepreneur obviously has no idea about academic research. 

First of all, I cant see why universities will be interested in being close to growth markets. Universities aren't building products. They are working on science & technology which "may" be used as the nuts & bolts which  products sometime in future.  Most of the research is driven by government funding agencies everywhere in the work. To best of my knowledge it is not driven by Industry. 

"Cheap research" he says is the reason why universities will flock to India. Obviously, this guy doesn't know anything about the challenges and ways of academic research. 

Academic research is collaborative. All researchers collaborate by publishing their research work. Each researcher has access to the entire work of all other researchers. A researcher's work simply wont get published if they choose toyb hide some of their results or techniques. One, it is considered unethical. Second, the research work should be reproducible which it can't be unless all details about it are reported in the research paper. Academic research is not about a researcher wanting to get his research done for "cheap" at some other research lab. 

Additionally, that research lab with "cheap human resources" quite likely wont even have the "expensive equipment" required to carry out the research work.

There is ofcourse an additional point best stated by the new VC of cambridge. On being asked whether cambridge will be interested in setting up a campus in India, he remarked - "Universities are much more complex than hamburgers". Can one simply transplant a Harvard or a cambridge in India like one can transplant a factory or a call center? I dont think so. But, I can not put forward any convincing reasons for it. Have not thought much about it as yet.

In short, I really think all this talk of the top universities setting up full-fledged campuses in India is pure pipe dream. A handful of them may at best set up some strategic research centers & academic programmes. 

In days to come I will continue to write more on this with an intention to understand what makes for a "vibrant university"?

Learning by "Questioning"

I have learnt one thing as I have learnt "Physics" and "Other things". If you want to learn you must pose questions.

If you want to learn something and you dont know it then you jolly well realize that "you dont understand it". It helps to pose questions to zoom in to the specific issue (within a larger set of concepts) that is the cause of "lack of understanding" . However, if you are unaware of your lack of understanding (or hide this fact from yourself), then you are in soup. Learning requires a bit of humbleness and acceptance that "I do not understand this". 

The act of trying to posing a question is a useful learning device. However, it is one that we rarely use as teachers. Raghu insists that a student ask a clear question if they want an answer. Not a bad device. If a student can pose a clear question, she is already on her way towards an answer. I have not been using such a device. However, one must use it frequently.

The quality of questions are also an indication of a student's intellectual ability. Likewise, helping students to probe deeper and ask hidden (less obvious questions) can help improve their intellectual ability.

These are methods, which I think, we should use in our classrooms and in our interaction with students. I also believe that it will instill greater excitement in the students.

Learning by doing - some thoughts

Read an article on "How we teach undergraduate computer science is wrong". Article was forwarded to me by the ever-enthu teacher - Ashish. The crux of the article is this - "learning by doing & discovering" doesn't always work. The ideas appealed to me because it was demolishing a dogma without creating a new one. Often "dogmas" are fairly useless things. However, I dont mind so long as they are used as a checklist and perhaps even as some sort of a guide.


I have nothing against "Learning by doing & discovering". I only think it is not like a cure-all. It will have its place and its limits. I learnt cooking by doing. My mother stood next to me and gave me instruction while I faithfully put in all the ingredients to make a dish that was as good as my mothers. That was learning by doing. I couldn't have learnt to cook half as easily had I only read about all the recipes and never physically cut the vegetables and done all the other stuff. But to be a good cook it is important to know the concepts -  the effect of ingredients on the taste of a dish ; the effect of a cocktail of ingredients on the taste, etc. Concepts are important. In cooking these concepts are gained from one's own experience and also that of others (all passionate cooks share notes about their dishes!). Learning by doing is a great way to learn cooking .


How about learning physics the same way. Lets teach a person how to measure & calculate speed. A child understands the "idea of speed" just like he understands "good taste". But he must now measure & calculate speed.


Measuring is simple. Hand over a ruler and a clock and the child can measure the distance and the time taken to move that distance. Simple. Is it? The child has yet to calculate "speed". That is simple too. Just divide distance by time and you get the speed. It looks simple but it really isn't. If you ask the child to divide distance by time she can carry out the division flawlessly. The child can get the answer but how does she know that the answer gives the speed?  To my mind the child will not learn the meaning of "distance by time" during this "doing" exercise. This meaning has to be taught earlier (in a "non-doing" setting). It has to be taught through the "idea" of division. 


Division is a practical exercise. Divide a piece of cake into 4 parts each person gets 1/4th of the cake. Divide distance of 100 m into 10 parts, each part is 10 m long. Divide 60 minutes into 10 parts you get 6 parts. Thus to teach division is it  good idea to bring a cake or a clock to the class and show how it works? I think that would be a disaster. A clock is not just an object that tells us the time. It is an object with a design, and so many parts - dull or attractive, etc. It has too many elements that will distract from the concept of "division using a clock". It just makes more sense to draw a clock on the board and go ahead from there. There is another stumbling block to trying to get too close to reality. It takes one away from the "concept". A "concept" pervades examples and is not localized within that example alone. So, why make a song and dance about "learning by doing". The important thing is the "thinking". You cant learn the concept without thinking. Certainly, examples must be given and concepts will get planted in the brain only after studying variety of examples. That is just the traditional way. But the concept will take much longer to get implanted by insisting on "Learning by doing" (as i said there will be too many distracting elements competing for attention and the concept of division is likely to find it hard to survive this competition).


This is all for today. I think I have more things to say on the matter but that's for later. But, i dont want to be misunderstood so let me add here. I am not a critic of "learning by doing". However, I wont hold it as a dogma. It has to be used and has to be used at the right opportunity. That may be a subject matter of one of the later posts.