Edu-leaders

It looks more like a horticulture experiment in progress than a computer science class. What are BTech students doing digging away at terra-cotta pots with young marigold plants? They have been told to remove the plant from the soil without damaging its fibrous root, and then transplant it into a bigger pot making sure that every last bit of the old soil is removed. Even as the students efficiently complete the task, one boy flatly refuses to comply. He says the plant will die without the old soil.

Arun Kapur, the dynamic director of Vasant Valley School, who has set the students this strange task, appears pleased at this contrary response. He promptly instructs all the others to put in a bit of the old soil in their new pots.

Kapur is taking a session called “Unlearning 101 – Unlocking the World” at the newly opened NIIT University (NU) in Neemrana, Rajasthan. Once the marigold experiment is over, he points out the symbolism of the exercise. The root of the marigold represents the brain of the students, filled with past experiences and learnings.

To chart a new path, they need to shake off the old ways. “But, in the new way, it helps if you take a bit of the old values,” he says. “The ability to unlearn is the most critical skill in the 21st century,” he adds. The session, aimed at re-kindling curiosity, is just one of the unconventional experiments happening at NU.

Nestled on the foothills of the Aravalis, in a picturesque but challenging landscape, the university, promoted by NIIT Limited, breaks many stereotypes. Its path breaking cooling system using a network of earth tunnels brings down indoor temperatures in this hot, scorching land to a comfortable 27 degrees, without using air-conditioning. For its first vice chancellor, it has consciously chosen a youthful 45-year-old researcher from IBM, eschewing conventional academic graybeards.

Be it the campus design and architecture or course curriculum and delivery, its faculty profile or the students admission process, NU has innovated all the way. As NU Founder Rajendra Pawar says, “We were clear that we would not  get constrained by existing concepts.”

A walk around the campus, where every brick and blade of grass appears to have a story behind it, shows the enormous detailing and planning that has gone into this student-centred and sustainable university.

Casting a proud paternal eye on the campus and its surroundings, where the brown hillocks are gradually being transformed into verdant greens, Pawar is already visualising how the place will look a few years from now. “Imagine a cultural programme on a moonlit evening in this place,” he says pointing to the area where using a natural dip in the earth, an open air amphitheatre is taking shape. A water body is also being created close to it by constructing a drain that will capture, and store rain water.

Pointing to another stretch of land, Pawar says that it has been left for Incubators. Out of the total 100 acres on which the campus is located, 25 acres are reserved for an incubation centre, where the research by students and faculty will find a business outlet.

If Pawar reminds you of a proud father, then 75-year-old Founding Vice Chancellor and Project Director Professor M.P. Kapoor (ex IIT Kanpur) behaves equally like an anxious parent. Unmindful of the fact that he is due for a knee operation, he bustles around the sprawling campus, fussing over little things, making sure that the first batch of students are settling in comfortably.

Pawar and Kapoor’s pride and anxiety is understandable— from concept to creation, the campus experiment has been a very long journey. It has been a journey filled with learnings, reflecting the trials and tribulations that a private sector player faces when venturing into this turf in India.

Given the challenging cusp at which higher education in India is at today, where there is raging discontent over the one-size-fits-all model of curricula and syllabi, and demands for radical changes, the NU story of innovating within the regulatory constraints of the system, is a fascinating one.

The Mind at the Centre
As Pawar points out, most universities in the country today are products of the industrial era. In the Industrial society, machines were the focal point, and the accent was on systems and processes, on defined boundaries and limits. With educational institutions running in this automated mode, only a small proportion of the millions of students graduating out of the system are employable.

The NU scheme of education is radically different. Based in the post-industrial knowledge era, the focus here is entirely on the human mind. “The leaders of tomorrow will be the ones who can harness the potential of the mind, and deal in ideas and emotions with equal ease,” says Pawar.

Thus, at NU, the intent from the beginning has been to create a campus that would spawn ideas and original thinking. To make learning research-driven is one of the four principles (see Box ‘The Four Core Principles’) of the university, but as Pawar points out, “You don’t need billion dollar labs to do research, since thought experiments can once again happen under a tree in this century of the mind.”

Of course, there are state-of-the-art classrooms and cutting-edge technology connecting the students to the world. At the Wi-Fi enabled campus, the students are equipped with all the gadgets and gizmos essential to 21st century living and learning. But these are external accessories, and the faculty’s full focus is on seeding new ideas, thoughts and feelings into the students. Clearly, the excitement and passion flowing from the teachers to students is infectious. As Nishant Saini, an undergraduate at the institute, excitedly says, “Just the second day into our course, we got a chance to participate in an international research project!”

He is referring to behavioural scientist Dr Ritu Dangwal’s Hole-in-the-Wall experiment in the neighbouring village, in which the BTech students have been asked to help out. Even computer science students are exposed to botany, history, culture, arts, anthropology, music— the accent is on holistic learning. There are no compartments, the learning is free flowing and seamless, living up to the university’s motto of Anadi Anant (without beginning or end), a motto that was chosen by Chancellor Karan Singh.

Ultimately, as Pawar points out, “this model of learning is not just about creating engineers or scientists but about helping students uncover their true potential, and equiping them to maximise their contribution to society.”

Laying the Foundations
While the university started taking shape only in 2005, the dream began as far back as the early 1990s. As Pawar recalls, the germ of the idea can be traced to the time Professor C.R. Mitra got associated with NIIT. The former BITS Pilani director, known for his educational innovations helped create the Higher Education wing in NIIT. Through the late 90s, Pawar along with NIIT co-founder Vijay Thadani held many intense brainstorming sessions in Delhi with a vast range of intellectuals, academics and government officials including the likes of Professor
Amrik Singh and Professor Arun Nigavekar of UGC.

But it was only in 2002, that NIIT gave a serious turn to these talks, by creating the first advisory board that comprised well known academicians, professionals and scientists. The board had luminaries like Professor P. V. Indiresan, former director of IIT Madras, the late Professor C. S. Jha, former director of IIT Kharagpur, Dr Kiran Karnik, then president, NASSCOM, Professor R.C. Malhotra, former director of IIT Kanpur, Dr R.A. Mashelkar, then director general of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Professor Ashok Misra, who later became director of IIT Mumbai, Professor J. R. Isaac of IIT Mumbai and Professor M.P. Kapoor, former vice chancellor of Thapar University.

Recalling those intense talks, Karnik says, “At that time, we were talking of creating something truly world class, but in a broader sphere of work. The IITs spell quality in engineering education, but we wanted to emulate that range of quality in a broader range of disciplines.”

Adds Mashelkar, “The emphasis right from the beginning was to promote innovation and take a concept and idea to commercialisation so that wealth can be created.” He points out, “In India, unfortunately, there is disconnect between Saraswati and Laxmi… in the advanced world they have found the link, that it is knowledge that creates wealth, unfortunately we have failed to do so. At NIIT University we emphasised on bridging the gap.”

Soon Kapoor, who had managed to propel Thapar University into one of the top 25 institutions in the country after a long stint at IIT Kanpur, got the onerous task of getting the NU project moving. In November 2005, he joined full time, taking up responsibility as project director to get the university on the road. In his task, he was assisted by Dr Parimal Mandke, leader of the higher education wing of NIIT, and earlier Dean at BITS Pilani, and eminent biotech researcher Professor Sunil Khanna.

The Learning Curve
Despite a marquee advisory board, it was a tough going for a corporate group— even one with a 25-year history of education delivery—to venture into the formal higher education domain. Privatisation was a taboo word for most people in government education circles. While a few states had passed bills to allow private universities, the Centre’s stand on the issue remained clouded.

As Kapoor recounts, there were two paths open to NIIT— either go the central university route, by applying for a deemed university status, or opt for state university route.

Initially, everyone was keen on going the central university route, especially since in 2001, the “de novo” clause had been introduced by UGC to benefit exceptional new institutes (in those days deemed universities could be granted only to institutions older than 25 years). But even as the “de novo” path was being explored, a fortuitous chance offer came from Rajasthan, where Pawar was an advisor. At a meeting with state government officials, he had suggested that they should make the Delhi-Jaipur highway India’s Route 128 (the Massachusetts beltway that is the first home to hi-tech with schools like Harvard and MIT, and big industries on it), and create a similar knowledge corridor on it. The state government promptly invited him to do his bit, and the idea of setting up a university in Neemrana, about half way between Delhi and Jaipur was born.

However, those were agonising days— of waiting for files to move, of delays, of bureaucratic regulations and inordinate amounts of paperwork, particularly during the phase of planning a university through the central government route. This path was later set aside in favour of setting up a university via the Rajasthan state government route.

But, in hindsight, it was also a great learning experience. Call it also a test of patience and contingency planning— tests that the NIIT team scaled successfully. “Even when I would be getting disheartened, not once did I see Rajendra Pawar’s or Vijay Thadani’s (NIIT CEO) motivation flag,” says Kapoor.

Building for the Future
The years spent waiting for approvals were not idly spent— ever since the acquisition of the Neemrana land, the NU team was busy creating the concept, getting the architectural team in place, working on the masterplan (see “A taste of the future in a medieval setting”) and launching a search for faculty.

In April 2008, the formal Bhoomi Pujan was done at Neemrana. As if to make up for all the delays before, the actual construction happened in record time to meet the target of September 2009 opening.

The university’s construction is planned over several phases, and the size and extent of these will depend on the speed of growth of student numbers and resource availability. The first phase that is currently being created at a cost of Rs 1 billion is also divided into three sub-phases. At the end of this, a capacity of 1000 students will be created.

Over the next decade, the total capacity envisaged is around 7,500 students mainly keeping the water availability in mind. A total investment of Rs 10 billion is estimated for the university.

Innovating at Every Step
On paper, NU may offer what appear conventional subjects like BTech in Computer Science and Bioinformatics, MTech in Computer Science, but the course content and curriculum is out of the ordinary. As Pawar sees it, the campus and its surroundings are a living experiment zone— the students could be set projects on the cooling system, the hydrology of the area, the illegal mining activity taking place.

For the first batch of students who have enrolled for the BTech and MTech courses at the University, each new day on campus brings new surprises. For instance, on a Saturday, a sudden breakout session on the Aravalis is planned, with the students trekking up a hill and camping overnight.

For the NU faculty, the curriculum is not just a rule book for a particular course. It is the sum total of measures undertaken to develop responsible and caring individuals for a future of lifelong learning.

Apart from the conventional computer science course, NU is also offering a pioneering new programme— an MTech and PhD in Educational Technology, among the first such degree courses in the country. Much of the course content for this originated in the 1990’s in NIIT’s incubation lab— the Centre for Research in Cognitive Systems (CRCS)— which was then located at the IIT Delhi campus.

Currently all students who have enrolled for MTech in Educational Technology have been sponsored by their companies— these include employees of Wipro, NIIT, Liqvid and Knowledge Platform. Professor Vijay Mandke, who is leading the area, feels that Educational Technology has immense application in every sphere of business. As he says, it can teach people how to retail better, how to make better movies. It is about learning how to learn, analysing the impediments to growth, and communicating effectively and adapting fast to change. Says Vijay Mandke, “Look at the wireless business, where technology is changing every six months— educational technology prepares you for the mobility of content,” he says.

If Vijay Mandke’s passion for his subject comes through in a single session, then it’s similar for the Bio-informatics or Computer Science professors, each one handpicked due to their “demonstrated love of their subject” more than anything else. To ensure quality teaching, innovations like mentoring, area leaders (See Interview with Pawar) are being tried.

Unlike most institutions that offer more undergraduate courses, NU has chosen to focus more on the higher end of the spectrum.

In fact, Karnik points out that during initial deliberations, the concept was of a research-oriented university, partly to address the need gap and partly to differentiate from NIIT Limited which imparts skills-oriented learning. “However, many people, including me, thought that although the idea of a research university is good, you still need an undergrad course as well.” So now, NU offers PhDs in Computer Science & Engineering, Educational Technology, and Bioinformatics & Biotechnology. MTech courses are open in Computer Science & Engineering and Educational Technology, while at the undergraduate level, currently there is only Computer Science & Engineering — though there will be more subjects available in the coming years.

Going forward, for Pawar, there is no limit as far as the university’s growth is concerned. Right now it might have a technology bias, but this will change. “We will be offering courses in liberal arts, in anthropology, in psychology…,” he says. Perhaps that’s why the Board of Advisors of the University is an eclectic one, with people like Bharatnatyam dancer Leela Samson and cardiac surgeon Dr Naresh Trehan figuring on it. At the induction programme, even the computer science students were being encouraged to give expression to cultural talent. One of the professors here, Dr Snigdha Biswas, who is a trained classical singer, has been asked to hone the students’ vocal skills.

“The course may be on a specialised area like computer science, but the learning is 360 degrees, encompassing all the aspects of life. It is about finding your relevance in society. It is about learning all kinds of things 24/7 , even as you maintain the focus on studies,” sums up Pawar. Seamless, sustainable and student-centred, NU’s larger vision is to become the leading centre of innovation and learning in the emerging areas of the knowledge society.