NATIONAL SUMMIT ON HIGHER EDUCATION
“Discovering New Models of Increasing Private Participation”
22 - 23 December 2010: Silver Oak, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi
Programme
Day 1 : 22nd December; Venue: Silver Oak, India Habitat
Centre, New Delhi
0900 - 1000 hrs Registration
Session 1: 1000 - 1130 hrs : Which Areas of Higher Education
Need Investment & Which are the Models to Spur This
The current higher education system though vast, is not
equipped to match the demand of its growing population and
the aspirations of society / government to double the GER in 10
years. The demand-supply gap has been well documented by
the National Knowledge Commission, the Yashpal Committee
Report and the XI Plan document.
Shortage of good quality institutes often forces students to go
to exploitative and low-quality institutions or pushes parents to
spend large sums of money on education abroad--mostly tier 2
and tier 3 universities.
There is no disputing the fact that addressing the issue of
capacity constraint purely through budgetary outlays of the
Government is not feasible and the private sector has to chip in
with huge investments and supplement the Government’s
efforts. All this investment coming from CSR and philanthropy
is highly unlikely.
It is time we went beyond the centres of excellence model and
made education more inclusive and broad-based.
This session will look at quantifying the need for
investments in higher education, we will examine
existing models and avenues for investment—faculty
development, content creation, curriculum
development and infrastructure creation. There will be
a brief presentation by KPMG on the subject and then
each speaker will be asked to give a 20-minute
* Invited
presentation. Thereafter there will be a Q&A session
with the audience and a wrap-up comment by the
moderator.
Moderator:
KPMG
Keynote Speaker:
Sunil Kumar*
Additional Secretary, Higher Education
Ministry of Human Resource Development
Speakers:
Anand Sudarshan
CEO
Manipal Education
Pankaj Sinha
Investment Officer for PPP Transaction Advisory
International Finance Corporation
G Raghuram
Director
BITS Pilani
Pramath Sinha*
CEO
9.9 Media
Kabeer Shrivastava
Nishith Desai Associates
1130 – 1200 hrs Networking Tea
* Invited
1200 – 1300 hrs Inaugural Programme
1200 - 1215 Welcome Address Arun Bharat Ram
hrs & Chairman, CII Education
Moderated by Council &
Chairman, SRF Limited
1215 – 1230 Theme Address Anand Sudarshan
hrs CEO
Manipal Education
1230- 1250 Inaugural Address Vibha Puri Das*
hrs Secretary, Higher Education
Ministry for Human Resource
Development
Government of India
1250 – 1300 Concluding Remarks
hrs
1300 – 1400 hrs Networking Lunch
Session 2: 1400 – 1600 hrs: Investment in Faculty
Development
There are over 400 universities and 20,000 colleges in India
today. As per the National Knowledge Commission, we need
1000 universities and 10,000 colleges more to achieve a GER
of 20 per cent by 2022. While money to erect buildings can still
be managed, the real challenge is of getting qualified faculty.
There are huge faculty shortages everywhere. Average
student-faculty ratio in the country is 26:1, against a global
average of 15:1. Over 57 per cent faculty members do not
have PhD or M Phil degrees.
It is a known fact that the market value of a person with a
Masters degree falls if he/she opts to go for research. The
* Invited
government itself pays woefully low to a research scholar.
Though the slabs have been increased recently, they are still
much below the level of incentivising anybody to go for
research.
As per Technopak estimates, in 2000, there were 600 colleges
offering 70,000 MBA seats, but by the end of 2009 that number
had increased to 1,400 colleges offering 120,000 seats.
Considering that one institute needs about 35-50 full-time
teachers, and the good ones have many more, 1,400 institutes
would need roughly 70,000 teachers. Of these, an estimated 60
per cent seats are vacant or being managed by part-time
visiting faculty.
In this session we explore the opportunities for more
faculty development
programmes to keep adequate supply of good teaching
staff. Options of increasing industry participation in
supporting research programmes will be discussed and
how to get the global community involved in it.
Moderator:
KPMG
Keynote Speaker:
S S Mantha
Chairman (Acting)
AICTE
Speakers:
NR Madhava Menon
Former Member
Law Commission of India
A M Sherry
Dean - Centre for Distance Learning
Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad
Sanjay Kallapur
Senior Associate Dean - Faculty and Research
Indian School of Business
Venkatesh Sarvasiddhi
Lead-Student Skills & Employability
Microsoft India
Manek Daruvala
Director
T.I.M.E.
1600 - 1630 hrs Networking Tea
* Invited
Session 3: 1630 – 1830 Hrs: Investment in e-education—
Answer to Many Problems
The government is taking concrete steps to improve the quality
of public education system. The efforts are in right earnest as is
shown by the Centre’s increased allocation of spend towards
education in the 11th Plan period ($68bn; 6x higher than in the
10th Plan period). A part of this outlay ($18bn; 4x higher than
in the 10th Plan period) would go to SSA (Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan), a multipronged initiative to weed out inefficiencies in
the public education space and upgrade education by including
computer literacy (ICT). A major chunk of this would also come
in higher education.
Discussions in this session would focus on the kind of
investments made in this field in the recent past and
the potential for future. Is the ground perfect or are
there changes required on the regulatory front. Is ICT
being made full use of everywhere to spread the reach
of education or do students still prefer the brick and
mortar set-up? Where-ever installed, are students
utilising technology to the extent desired? Examples of
free services like NPTEL are there for all to emulate. But
is it reaching the desired audience? How effective has
been NPTEL?
Moderator:
KPMG
Speakers:
Sivaramakrishnan V
President-Education Services
Manipal Education
Suresh Elangovan
CEO
Mindlogicx Infratec Ltd
Satish Jha
Chairman
OLPC India Foundation
Kumar S Rajeev
V-P, Strategic Mktg & Alliances
Everonn
1930 Hrs Cocktails & DInner
* Invited
Day 2 : 23rd December; Venue: Silver Oak, India Habitat
Centre, New Delhi
Session 4: 0930 – 1100 Hrs: Investments in Infrastructure:
Preparing the Eco-system for Higher Education
The biggest hurdle in setting up of educational institutes today is the
availability of land. Whether it is school or an institute of
higher learning, all investors bemoan the fact that land costs are too
high and not all states agree to giving it at concessional rates. It is
only those that do so which attract big players but even then there are political
hurdles in acquisition of land. This happened in the case of Vedanta in
Orissa.
Successful examples of such clusters can still be found in Bangalore,
Greater Noida, and Chennai. But a new concept of real estate-
driven knowledge cities is emerging these days which
provides ready-made solutions to those planning to set up institutes.
For any institute to succeed in an area there is an entire eco-system
which needs to be created otherwise in today’s age it is neither
possible nor desirable to have islands of excellence. Their benefits must
percolate down to society.
Panelists will discuss the pros and cons of the new
trend of real estate players becoming the big stake-
holders in higher education. Is this something
inevitable and desirable? What are the options for
providing managed services in such a scenario.
Moderator:
KPMG
Speakers:
J K Mitra
Former Head & Dean
Faculty of Management Studies
Delhi University
K R Srivathsan
Pro Vice-Chancellor
IGNOU
Shashank Vira
MD, Copper Beech
Deepak Bhatnagar
Head, Centre for International Trade in Technology(CITT)
Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT)
* Invited
1100 - 1130 hrs Networking Tea
Session 5: 1130 – 1300 Hrs: Investments to improve Quality
of Institutes and Their Output
There are a number of accreditating agencies which do the job of rating
institutes on various parameters. Quality of faculty, public perception of the
institute, quality of output etc all go into giving an institute an A, A+, A+++
or B etc rating. Media houses have perfected ratings into a fine art of
generating revenues and all scruples are known to be kept aside for
favourable scores in return for money. On the other hand, bodies like NAAC
rate institutes mostly on the basis of physical infrastructure and inputs rather
than the output. In such a scenario, how does one arrive at an objective
assessment of an institute? How does one judge its industry-friendliness? Is it
time that an independent body like CII came up with a rating based on
industry’s perception of institutes?
The session will discuss the issue of quality of
education and the need for a mechanism to help people
and industry make informed choices about where they
want to go for studies or recruitments. Who will benefit
from this kind of
rating? How objective is it likely to be? Who all can be
involved in its creation.
Moderator:
KPMG
Speakers:
Abhijit Mukherjee
Director
Thapar University
Mukesh Chaturvedi
Professor
IMT, Ghaziabad
K R Srivathsan
Pro Vice-Chancellor
IGNOU
Kabeer Srivastava*
Nishith Desai Associates Legal & Tax Consultants
1300 - 1400 hrs Networking Lunch
* Invited
Session 6: 1400 – 1600 Hrs: Need for Focus on Vocational
Education as Part of Higher Education
Every company, at any given point of time, has a requirement
of staff which it cannot fulfill simply because there are not
enough people around with required skill sets.
Figures of management and engineering graduates being
produced and the ratio of employable among them are repeated ad nauseum
at various fora. To address these issues a number of companies
offering bridge courses or courses in soft skills and career
enhancement capabilities have come up.
A lot of investment in education is coming in the field of
vocational education, whether in hard or soft skills. How
effective are these courses and what kind of progress have
players made who had promised pan-India presence two years
back. Why has the quality of education become so poor that every institute
requires bridge courses for its students? Are these courses just a fad
or do they really serve a purpose? Do they teach anything
worthwhile or are they only a source of revenue for
companies? What are the advantages of going for such courses
vis a vis sticking to vanilla degree courses?
This session will have speakers from some of the
relevant companies as well as experts from the field.
They will put forth their case on the progress made so
far and what more needs to be done. What makes this
field so promising for investors?
Moderator:
KPMG
Keynote Speaker:
Pandia Rajan
CEO
Ma Foi Randstad
Speakers:
Anil Sachdev
CEO
School of Inspired Leadership
Hari Menon
CEO, IndiaSkills
Nishant Saxena
CEO
Elements Akademia
Krishan Khanna
Founder & Chairman
i2K Solutions
* Invited
Khozem Merchant*
President, India
Pearson Group
1600 hrs Networking Tea
Education Fair on the sidelines
* Invited
