The world of higher education has changed dramatically, with accreditations and rankings over the last four decades, says LS Ganesh
Prof LS Ganesh, Vice Chancellor, The ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, in an interview with BW Education, provides rich insights into higher education, drawing from his vast academic experience. Here are the edited excerpts from the interview.
How are new-age universities positioning themselves to fulfil the needs of 21st industry, and how are they doing things differently from legacy institutes?
What is our mental model of a new-age university? It’s a basic question because when we refer to it as an entity it’s very important for us to differentiate it on specific characteristics when we compare it with legacy institutes. I will share my mental model. First criterion is time to define what constitutes a new-age institution. The second criterion is in terms of characteristics. And the characteristics I would identify are in terms of the variety of the programmes that are offered by the higher education institution.
Next, over and above the variety, is the connectedness of the programmes to the demands of the market. These two characteristics together combine to mark the next characteristic, that is the agility of the institution in the space in which they operate. You will find that these institutions are quickly able to identify novel programmes at various levels of credentials, and if I may add, thanks to the NEP we are also looking at new types of credentials.
Another characteristic is with respect to the resources that these institutions use. The average age of a human resource in a new-age institution, especially the faculty members, would be significantly lower than the age of counterparts in what we label as legacy institutions. The specialisations of these faculty members would also be connected to the agility of these institutions.
Also, very often, the new age institutions are marked by new type of architecture. The built space would be dramatically different from what you would find in a legacy institution, which would be marked by British era architecture with high ceilings and long corridors. The new age institutions have different architecture, have smart classrooms, and use technology intensively.
The single dominant differentiator is their agility – they are quickly able to respond to the market and perhaps even lead the market in certain spaces.
What’s the most important factor behind that agility? Is it because of the government norms to be followed or is it because the younger faculty is more in sync with reality?
It’s not an easy question. The moment we talk of regulatory norms, we are talking about the slowing down of the system. No offense to anybody, but very often the bureaucracy shows restraint towards change. It looks at stabilising the system. Not that they are against change but they are all for very gentle and robust change.
But when you are looking at agile systems, they are in a hurry compared to bureaucratic systems. But again, there are some challenges.
The world of higher education has changed dramatically, with accreditations and rankings over the last four decades. Businessworld is arguably the first group to start B-school rankings way back in 1989-90 and I still possess that issue. I am not a great fan of rankings. But I am a great fan of ratings. How do you rank Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle? You can rate them in the category of fantastic singers. Don’t do the ranking. Cluster them into visible clusters. And these are driving forces today in many institutions, driving managements and faculty to boldly go to levels which they would otherwise not have done.
What are the key priority areas for ICFAI today? what emphasis is being given to skilling, entrepreneurship, and research and development?
I joined ICFAI eight months ago so there are many things I am learning along the way. ICFAI got an A++ from NAAC, the highest that NAAC gives, which is all due to the good work of my predecessor J Mahendra Reddy and the committed faculty.
This is a very young institution in that space. We have a new incubator, led by a very competent person, Dr Sainath. We have some very good programmes for incubation, and there are a couple of companies that have graduated and are already in the market, or are on the threshold of graduation. There is some credible commercial success that we can showcase. We have a long way to go. Very recently, the Board has sanctioned bootstrap funds for young incubates.
I was with IIT Madras before coming to ICFAI. IIT Madras is a clear leader in entrepreneurship and startups, particularly deep-tech startups. I was closely connected with the entrepreneurship and startup ecosystem there, having coordinated the MS Entrepreneurship programme. I am trying to replicate that in ICFAI too.
We have a law faculty also, which is rated very highly among private law schools. And the maximum number of startups are by law students, not by science and technology or business students. It has to do with knowledge sharing, and connecting different stakeholders in the legal system, or in the space of advisories. And there are startups trying to add value to poorer people.
As regards R&D, we have a long way to go in terms of sponsored projects. It’s a matter of great importance to us, but the government funding is more for centrally-funded institutions. However, it would be wrong to say that private institutions do not get funding. We have been submitting proposals and hopefully some of these will come to fruition. Last year we got one international project and one national project, in agriculture space.
This brings us to industrial, and international tieups. What kind of partnerships are there at the university?
Before the Covid, ICFAI had very strong connections with several good institutions, especially in the US. These involved residency of our young scholars in those institutions for a semester, a year or even more. And that had helped even in research work. And we would have research scholars here. Covid intervened and now we must work hard to revive our relationships with those institutions.
As regards industry connects, we do have formal relations with industry here. And we have placements, summer internships with many firms. ICFAI has 50,000 alumni spread across the world and those connections are very fertile and we can leverage these to a good extent.
While we have a long way to go in terms of projects for industry, we do offer professional development programmes for middle and senior level management, including in government organisations. And we have a lot of repeat customers.
What is the proportion of faculty with industry experience?
I would say one-third. And the founder, NJ Yasaswi, whose legacy continues in this institution, emphasised recruiting people with industry experience.
How are learning outcomes being monitored and measured, from employability perspective? And also, as you would be interacting with students, what is their interest in jobs, vis-à-vis startups?
This institution has approximately 8,000 students spread primarily across business programmes – BBA and MBA, besides science and technology, law and architecture. We recently established a faculty of social sciences, carved out of ICFAI Business School. Given that kind of student representation, in terms of placement, there is a lot of emphasis on placement of business students. The interest in startups is in very early stage, since the incubation system itself is very nascent here. To be frank, it’s just catching up. But we are not short on energy, enthusiasm and expertise.
How is the sustainability agenda being mainstreamed on Indian campuses, including ICFAI, and being introduced in classrooms?
To begin with, the international ranking systems, though not in India yet, are a now into sustainability rankings. And I won’t be surprised if BW Businessworld becomes the first one to do that. But my plea again would be to move away from ranking to rating.
ICFAI is a clean and green campus. We try to minimise waste. We have a very good recycling plant and we do water harvesting. In the curriculum starting from this year, we are starting four year integrated undergraduate programme as per NEP. We have integrated all the faculty of the institution- Science and technology, law, architecture, business and social science stream into the four-year undergraduate programme. The four-year programme requires that we feature sustainability in the curriculum. Even before that, sustainability as a theme has figured in many courses. The law school has many centres focussed on sustainability. Architecture also gives emphasis to that, so does science and technology.
From this year, at the end of first year, of the four-year UG programme, we are going to offer sustainability internships, either in community or in corporate sector, or government departments.
Finally, what are your thoughts on the NEP, and how effectively can it be implemented on Indian campuses?
NEP is 50 years late in our country. I am an alumnus of BITS Pilani. There, educators like CR Mitra, V Krishnamurthy, TSKV Iyer worked intensely on enabling a culture of education. They were talking of credit system, relative grading, flexibility and dual degrees in late 1960s and early 1970s. They were talking of ideas far ahead of their time.
None of us knew which programmes we are going to join when we joined. It was called open admissions. BITS Pilani stopped it because they felt the heat of it in the market. But it was a bold experiment. It was only at the end of 3rd year that I knew that I am going to join mechanical engineering. Even now, some of my younger colleagues raise the issue, when are we going to have unassigned admissions. Let students discover what you want to do, and we will enable you to do that. That’s a distant dream for me even today. Our society is not prepared to risk that charm of uncertainty.
