education Archives - Page 4 of 6

From Poverty to Power: Rise of Somaliland challenges conventional wisdom

Oxfam Blogs has an extremely interesting article that compares the rise of Somaliland vs. the fall of its neighbor Somalia, and points out how this completely upends conventional wisdom regarding foreign aid and other aspects of building a country.

Here are some excerpts:

The peace process was almost entirely locally funded, due to Somaliland’s unrecognized status (so no bilateral aid or loans were available). That produced a strong sense of local ownership (literally). In the words of one minister, when asked by Phillips about aid ‘Aid is not what we desire because [then] they decide for us what we need’.

And, in some aspects of country-building, there was no pretense at “democracy” or fairness, ideas that would have been imposed by outside in case of foreign aid. For example, consider this:

The second president used private loans to demobilise about 5,000 militia fighters. He offered stability (and tax breaks) to the business elite in exchange for funding demobilisation and the nascent state institutions. This was effective but certainly not inclusive – the elite came mainly from the President’s own clan. But according to Phillips, Somalilanders generally still see it as a legitimate process – that’s what leaders do.

And the most revealing aspect, for me, was the approach to education. Elite education available to only a few was found to be more important than universal elementary education:

The paper highlights the critical political importance of elite secondary schools in forging leadership. Available to a relatively small group of often privileged Somalilanders, this is in stark contrast to the donor emphasis on universal primary education. In particular, many of Phillips’ interviews led to the Sheekh Secondary School, set up by Richard Darlington, who fought in WWII as the commander of the Somaliland Protectorate contingent. Sheekh took only 50 kids a year and trained them in leadership, critical thought and standard (Darlington borrowed from the curriculum of his old school, Harrow). Sheekh provided 3 out of 4 presidents, plus any number of vice presidents, cabinet members etc. And no it isn’t a weird Somaliland version of Eton and Harrow (I asked) – it stressed student intake from all clans, especially from the more marginalized ones.

Read the full article – it’s quite short, and must read if this is an area of interest for you.

Source: @makarand_s

Are our undergraduate engineering (BE) students being forced to publish papers?

Since the fake paper I managed to publish this weekend, I’ve been hearing disturbing reports that even undergraduate students are being forced to publish papers by college authorities.

It is my understanding that there are no University requirements that make it mandatory for undergraduate engineering students to publish papers either as a part of their BE Project, or anything else.

Update: Looks like I was partially mistaken. Here is the University of Pune’s BE Computer Engineering Syllabus. With reference to BE Projects, on page 56, bullet #5 says this:

Students must submit and preferably publish atleast one technical paper in the conferences held by IITs, Central Universities or UoP Conference or International Conferences in Europe or US.

My reading of the line indicates that submission is compulsory, but publication is not. Also, at least they’re clear in specifying what is an acceptable conference. But still, in my opinion, this can’t end well…

I have first hand experience with this. A student group who did their BE Project with me a couple of years ago were desperate to get their BE Project published (in fact, as I pointed out in my previous article, this incident is what started off the thought process that culminated in my fake paper this weekend). I protested that this requirement makes no sense, and forced them to go to their college and get the issue clarified. They came back to me and reported that they were told by college authorities that it was a mandatory requirement. What if the students were unable to get your paper published? The students were told to attach rejection letters from the conference – but submission was compulsory, they were told. At that time, my worry was that all these BE students would submit substandard BE Project reports as research papers to conferences and spoil the reputation of Indian researchers. Little did I know that the papers would actually get accepted by the conference they submitted the paper to.

Now comes something even more ridiculous.

Check out this notice from a prominent Engineering College in Pune:

Notice making it mandatory for students to publish papers — I was sent this image of a notice put up in a prominent local Engineering college, and was told that this requirement was made mandatory by the college for 3rd year BE students (October 2013). I was told that most of the students did publish papers. I have not yet verified whether this is indeed all true, but based on my past experiences, I am sure there are colleges where the students are indeed to forced to try to publish papers during their undergraduate studies.

(Note: I am neither disclosing where I got this information from, nor the name of the college – because I don’t want the students to get into trouble, and also because I’m not particularly interested in targeting any specific person or institutions. I’m more interested in seeing how we can change the system.)

I was told that this notice was a requirement for 3rd year engineering students last semester (Fall 2013)!! The only good news here is that the students were being reimbursed for (part of(?)) their expenses. But other than that, there are so many things wrong with this picture.

The worst thing was pointed out to me by a friend on Facebook:

Also, do point out that student themselves are so indoctrinated, they actually, sincerely believe that publication is a requirement. This is why the market is ripe for [conferences like these].

I know firsthand that students believe that such publications are actually good for them and their resume. I guess I am an idiot for arguing with them that this is not true.

Is this a common occurrence? Are other BE colleges making such arbitrary publication requirements? What can/should be done about this?

Fake Paper Impact: UoP VC to issue circular clarifying that publications are not mandatory

Since the fake paper I managed to publish this weekend, and the resulting Mid-Day story, the reporter from Mid-Day has been busy following up with next steps.

One day later, there are two new stories in Mid-Day.

The first one is good news. The Vice Chancellor of the University of Pune has confirmed that publications are not mandatory for getting an ME/MTech degree, just recommended. Considering that students are being given an incorrect impression, a circular is being issued to the colleges in the University of Pune clarifying this.

Read the full story here

Another, less savory aspect of this affair is the impact on the people involved in the organization of that conference. The story related to that is here, and manages to uncover some more interesting details of what was going on behind the scenes at that conference.