At 50, IIM-A makes a financial turnaround

For the first time, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has a surplus of operating funds - Rs 6.83 crore. This is in spite of spending over a crore on its year-long golden jubilee celebrations and despite a 60% increase in pension liability.

IIM-A has seen a change in its resources in the 50th year of its existence. The institute's balance sheet shows that against an operating loss of Rs 50.49 lakh in 2009-10, and Rs 6.33 crore in 2008-09, IIM-A has generated greater income than expenditure, Rs 11 crore in 2010-11. Out of this, the institute transferred Rs 4.38 crore to its corpus, thus creating a surplus of Rs 6.83 crore.

"For the first time, the institute achieved an operating surplus in 2011, after fully funding the pension liability of the institute. This was achieved despite increase in the actuarial value of the pension liability by about 60% to Rs 860 million (due to sixth pay commission's recommendations) by the end of 2011," Samir Barua, director, IIM-A, said in the annual report of the institute.

The surplus is a major achievement for IIM-A, which decided not to solicit grants from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in 2003. According to Barua, the institute achieved this through prudent management of costs and generation of opportunities.

The institute collected Rs 61.59 crore as fees and other income from long duration programmes and Rs 51.22 crore from management development programmes and projects.

At present, IIM-A's corpus stands at around Rs 55 crore. IIM-A's corpus in 2008-09 was about Rs 44 crore, down from over Rs 51 crore in the previous two years. The corpus had gone down due to the Sixth Pay Commission.

The golden jubilee celebrations included four international conferences, alumni reunions with participation across batches, publication of a series of management books among other activities.

The institute has been tapping its alumni and also plans to enter corporate alliances to raise funds. IIM-A raised a sum of Rs 38 crore from former students by hosting numerous alumni meets on the occasion of its silver jubilee celebrations.

Manual admissions in Odisha colleges to continue

The Orissa high court on Thursday quashed a notification issued by the higher education department to go for compulsory e-admissions in junior and degree colleges in this May.

HC also directed state to continue with both e-admission and manual admissions in colleges as was the past practice.

"The state (government) should find ways and means to work both the systems together," the division bench of chief justice V Gopala Gowda and justice S K Mishra said.

The high court did not find fault with the idea of e-admission but was against the compulsory implementation of the system as the facilities of computer and internet accessibility have not made adequate penetration in state.

"E-admission will not cause any real hardship to the students residing in cities having proper computer and internet facilities, it will pose difficulties to those students who are living in interior parts of the state where computer and internet facilities are not available," said the judgment that was reserved earlier.

The state higher education department had earlier ordered that all the 600-odd degree and autonomous colleges of the state shall go for e-admission as is now being done in junior colleges of the state. The government had also taken the decision that apart from e-admission, the students shall also fill up their forms for the examinations through online.

This decision of the government had however been challenged in the HC when a member of 'Save Education Committee' Biswabasu Dash filed the PIL seeking judiciary intervention. The HC in an interim order had earlier directed the state to go for both e-admission and manual admission as was the practice earlier.

SRCC, Hindu reopen Eco seats in 4th list

DU aspirants who had given up on getting admission in Economics (honours) in top colleges were in for a pleasant surprise on Thursday. Shri Ram College of Commerce reopened admission for BA (H) economics in the fourth cutoff list announced by Delhi University on Thursday night.

Two other campus colleges — Hindu College and Miranda House — too reopened admissions in this sought-after course. While SRCC and Miranda House reduced the economics cutoff by 0.25 percentage points each, Hindu decreased it by 0.5 percentage point. Other colleges which are going to admit students in the fourth list in this course include Hans Raj, Ramjas, Sri Venkateswara, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce and College of Vocational Studies.

While admissions for Economics (H) are on in 10 colleges , including six campus colleges , BCom (H) is open in 12, including Hans Raj, IP College, Ramjas and Sri Venkateswara.

The icing on the cake of the fourth cutoff list is the BA programme which is open for admissions in general category across 24 colleges with dips in cutoffs of up to 5 percentage points.

SRCC principal P C Jain said the college has 62 seats in Economics (H). "By the end of the third list, admissions and withdrawal the college has been left with 65 students of which around a dozen are from science background. By past experience these students leave for professional courses like engineering and medicine, which is why we had to reopen in the fourth list."

Withdrawals have been one of the major reasons for BCom (H) remaining open in colleges like Hans Raj and reopening in Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College. The highest decrease of 2 percentage points has been recorded at Zakir Husain (evening) with its cutoff ranging from 83% to 88%. The highest cutoff now for BCom (honours) in the fourth list is at Hans Raj with 96% to 98%, a decrease of 0.25 percentage point.

Two courses which are open in a significant number of colleges are BCom and BA programme . BCom is open in 21 colleges , including Kamla Nehru, Dayal Singh, Sri Venkateswara, Ramjas and Maitreyi. In fact Maitreyi along with Zakir Husain (evening) recorded the highest dip in cutoff for this course with a decrease of 3.5%.

Nearly half the colleges offering BA programme continued admission in the fourth list, including colleges like Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, Sri Venkateswara, Zakir Husain (evening), Deen Dayal Upadhyaya and SGTB Khalsa. The highest cutoff for BA programme has been recorded at SGTB Khalsa with 82% to 87% followed by Sri Venkateswara with 80% to 91%. Zakir Husain (evening) has the lowest as well as the largest range with a cutoff of 45% to 65%.

96% marks, but yet to get a college seat

Even as students complained of just a marginal dip in cut-offs on the second merit list, a 16-year-old was yet to get a college seat despite scoring an impressive 96.5% in his board exams.

"When the first list was announced, we got a message saying my son hasn't been allotted a seat in the first round and we should wait for the next round. Again, on Wednesday, we got the same message," the boy's father said. "I met education (department) officials, who said my son's form might be incomplete. However, when I checked with the guidance centre, they said the form was complete and had been accepted online," he added.

Interestingly, all the colleges where the boy had applied, including Ruia, Ruparel and Khalsa, had cut-offs lower than his percentage on the first list itself. Education department officials said they would look into this matter.

Meanwhile, close to 51,000 students were allotted seats in the second round of admission on Wednesday, of whom 32,758 got the betterment option. "In the fresh allotment, 8,425 students got the college of their first preference," said a senior education official from the office of the deputy director of education (schools).

Several top colleges in the city had very few seats to offer in the second round of admission. They were also not sure if they would have any seats left for the third round.

Manju Nichani, principal of K C College, said: "The possibility of a third list will obviously depend on students claiming their seats tomorrow. But I believe there is a bleak chance of a third list."

There are approximately 30 seats available for students applying for the commerce stream in the college. Moreover, there has been only a marginal dip in the cut-offs. The science and commerce cut-offs in the college fell by less than a per cent. At N M College, the cut-off dipped by less than 2%.

The principal said there might not be a third merit list in the college.

Unfettered growth of private tuitions cannot be ignored

Recent report released by the Asian Development Bank and the Comparative Education Research Centre of the University of Hong Kong turns the spotlight on an important aspect of education that is rarely addressed in public policy. The report " Shadow Education" delves into the domain of private tutoring in Asia and its implications for policy makers.

It aptly points out that shadow education is rampant across Asian cities including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and even more 'developed' Japan and South Korea and "can no longer be ignored". " Policy makers have long recognized the importance of education for economic and social development in Asia. However, they have focused mostly on mainstream institutions, i.e. kindergartens, schools, and universities and neglected the role of private supplementary tutoring," it states.

India 's coaching class culture might come with its pluses and pitfalls. Private tutoring is often seen as an essential backbone for illiterate families which can't guide their children, as an aid for slow learners and a boon for students who receive below par education in schools. On the flip side, private tutoring as the report point out, could however, also come to "dominate the lives of young people and their families reducing the time for sports and other activities," a trend that is growing more evident in India.

But the biggest concern as highlighted in the report is that such shadow education aggravates social inequalities. It creates a hierarchy of sorts even within the parallel education system. Leading economist Amartya Sen fears tutoring "makes teachers less responsible and diminishes their central role in education; it makes improvements in schooling arrangements more difficult since the more influential and better placed families have less at stake in the quality of what is done in the schools".

There are many important take home messages for policy makers. For starters there is need for more data and reporting from this sector. Sporadic surveys offer only a limited insight. A survey by Amartya Sen's trust, Pratichi trust showed that private tutoring among primary kids in West Bengal went up from 57% in 2001-02 to 64%, seven years later. Another research in four states of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh in 2011 showed that more than half (58.8%) of tenth graders were receiving tuitions.

Estimates in other Asian countries stand higher with 90% of elementary students in the Republic of Korea receiving some form of shadow education and 85% of secondary students in China receiving such. "Shadow education should be brought much more actively into the policy-making arena, with stronger elements of research-based evidence," points out the report.

Regulation of the sector is another pertinent point raised as it remains a largely unsupervised area. It might perhaps be a good idea to ensure minimum qualifications or training for tuition teachers. A clampdown on random advertising is also wanting given the unsubstantiated claims being shamelessly propagated. There have been sporadic attempts at addressing regulation of private tutoring, but are poorly implemented. The RTE bans teachers in schools from giving private tuitions, but awaits implementation.

The report concludes on a rather pertinent note saying policy makers should ask why shadow education exists in the first place and look into measures to better mainstream education such that the dependence on private tutoring is reduced.