mba education

Today, students from India constitute the largest segment of foreign business school graduates in the US.Between 10 and 15% of US B-school grads are of Indian origin.It is also easier to get into many business schools in the US than it is to break into IIM-Ahmedabad or the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad.

UPSC REFORMS

A parliamentary standing committee has recommended that UPSC should consider conducting its examinations on the format adopted for GMAT, IIT and IIM entrance tests.The Union Public Service Commission conducts various tests for recruitment to government services like civil services, forest service, engineering service and defence services and most of these are annual, conducted in various phases.The panel also favoured increasing the number of UPSC members.

Ask IITians survey

Ask IITians, a voluntary organisation, has released the list of top 20 colleges after conducting a survey about educational standards, teaching, placements and infrastructure in these institutes by talking to students and alumini of IITs, NITs and engineering colleges across the country.According to the survey IIT, Delhi ranked first in the country followed by IIT, Kanpur (second), IIT, Mumbai (third), IIT Chennai(fourth), IIT Kharagpur(fifth), Technology Institute, Varanasi affiliated to the Benaras Hindu University(sixth) and IIT Guwahati(seventh).: National Institute of Technology (NIT), Warangal ranks eighth among the top 20 institutes in the country.

IIT set to double fee to Rs 2 lakh

After the approval of Council of IITs, IIT, Kanpur planning to raise the fee.At present a BTech student has to pay Rs 13,500 as semester fee, which is being raised to Rs 25,000 per semester. The total will work out to Rs 2 lakh, in place of the current Rs 1.08 lakh, an increase of almost 100 per cent.The MTech two-year course fee is being raised to Rs 25,000 per semester. An MTech student has to appear for four semesters over two years. Similarly, the fee for MBA, and Master of Design too has been raised to Rs 25,000 per semester. For the MSc and PhD programmes too, plans are afoot to double the fee.

All India Engineering Entrance Examination

Around nine lakh candidates appeared for the All India Engineering/Architecture Entrance Examination-2008 at 1,299 centres on Sunday.This year saw an increase of around 220,000 candidates for AIEEE.The examinations were at two centres outside India — in Riyadh and Dubai. AIEEE is held for admission to 20 National Institutes of Technology and some deemed universities.As many as 863,000 students were registered for examination — 858,000 for B. E./ B. Tech. and 48,000 for B. Architecture/ B. Planning.Selected candidates as per ranking get an opportunity to take admission in the national institutes of technology (NITs), 13 deemed universities and four Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Allahabad, Gwalior, Guwahati and Hyderabad. The applicative questions, including paragraph questions, are comprehension type, while the assertion reasoning type questions test students on logic.

AIEEE-08

today lakhs of students appeared for the All India Engineering entrance examinations. The meritorious students would take admission into the prestigious national institutes of technology.AIEEE is conducted the Central Board of Secondary Examination where candidates are ranked on all India basis and also according to their state. So they have an all India rank and a state rank. questions in physics and chemistry are based on practical applications.in mathematics there were "some tricky" questions.Questions asked were less as compared to last year, but it was of no avail as the standard of the paper was high. total of 105 questions, fifteen less than last year's 120 questions, were there in the paper containing 315 marks. There was also negative marking for each incorrect answer. Total marks last year was 360.

IIM-A LIST.

iim-A is expected to declare the general quota list by May 1 and the OBC quota list can be expected not before second week of May.The institute will be introducing the 27 per cent OBC quota in a phased manner over a period of three years. The first year of implementation of the quota, that is 2008-09 will introduce 6 per cent of the 27 per cent, 2009-10 will introduce 15 per cent and finally 2010-11 will introduce the full 27 per cent of the OBC quota.

AIEEE 2008

AIEEE Entrance examination would consist of two papers i.e. 1st paper consisting of three parts of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics of equal weightage with objective type questions for BE/B.Tech courses and 2nd paper consistingof Mathematics,Aptitude Test and Drawing for B. Architecture and B. Planning. The Aptitude Test is designed to evaluate candidate’s perception, imagination, observation, creativity and architectural awareness.There will be objective type questions with four options having single correct answer. For each incorrect response one third of the total marks allotted to the question would be deducted. No deduction from the total score will, however, be made if no response is indicated for an item in the answer sheet. The candidates are advised not to attempt such item in the answer sheet if they are not sure of the correct response. More than one answer indicated against a question will be deemed as incorrect response and will be negatively marked. All objective type questions are required to be answered on specially designed machine gradable answer sheets. Answers are to be marked using ball point pen (black/blue) only. For the purpose of evaluation, Test Booklet Code as printed in the Answer Sheet on Side-2 will be accepted as final.On the basis of performance in AIEEE, separate rank lists will be prepared for B.E./B.Tech. and B.Arch/B.Planning. Score Card indicating All India Rank with total marks and marks in each subject shall be sent to all candidates appearing in AIEEE.The score card will be dispatched to the candidates from 12.06.2008 to 28.06.2008 under Certificate of Posting (UPC).

collapsible container

two Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) professors have designed a collapsible container that could change the dynamics of the trade forever.The new container, designed by Anoop Chawla and Sudipto Mukherjee from the mechanical engineering department of IIT, Delhi, can be collapsed or erected in less than four minutes. A special platform, or base station, folds the containers hydraulically to one quarter its size.The process needs just one or two unskilled or semi-skilled persons.World container traffic scaled 141 million twenty-foot equivalent units, o.r TEUs, in 2007

STUDENTS IN AIPMT

There the drop in the number of students who took the all India pre-medical test this year, from over 2 lakh students last year. The entrance for the All India Institute of Medical Sciences is a similar story. The number of students has dropped from 80,000 in 2006 to 65,000 in 2007.This at a time when students writing the IIT joint entrance exam has jumped by one lakh this year. That’s not all, those taking the AIEEE, the All Indian Engineering Entrance, has also increased from 6.5 lakh in 2007 to just over 8 lakh this year.In a country like ours, with a doctor to population ratio of 60 per lakh, a drop in the number of students opting for medicine is definitely not good news.

State Entrance Examination (SEE) 2008

SEE is a joint entrance examination conducted by UPTU for admissions in management, technical, pharmacology, architecture, hotel management and engineering courses being run in over 150 government and private engineering and technical institutes all over the state. All these colleges are affiliated to UPTU. Over three lakh candidates appeared in the entrance test held on Saturday and Sunday in around 300 centres across the state.On Sunday, the entrance test was for admissions in BTech course in which over 1.92 lakh students appeared in 268 centres in the state.

Edward Lorenz

THE father of chaos theory has died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, aged 90.Edward Norton Lorenz was born on May 23 1917 at West Hartford, Connecticut, and from his earliest years was devoted to science. "As a boy I was always interested in doing things with numbers and was also fascinated by changes in the weather," he later wrote.He went to Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in Mathematics in 1938, before taking a postgraduate degree from Harvard in 1940. During the Second World War, Lorenz worked as a weather forecaster in the US Army Air Corps and, after the cessation of hostilities, took up graduate studies in Meteorology; he earned master's and doctoral degrees in the subject from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1943 and 1948.He joined the staff of the department in 1948 and became an assistant professor in 1955. He was promoted to professor in 1962 and served as head of the department from 1977 to 1981.He became emeritus professoin 1987 .Edward Lorenz came up with the concept that small effects lead to big changesthe "butterfly effect".He explained how a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil changes the moving atmosphere in ways that could later trigger tornadoes in Texas. His discovery brought about "one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton", said the committee that awarded Dr Lorenz the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences.Dr Lorenz, a meteorologist, came up with his chaos theory when he noticed the vastly different answers triggered by less than 0.0001 per cent error from a computer. That error and observation led to his seminal butterfly effect paper in 1972.An exceptionally fit man, who enjoyed cross-country skiing, hiking in the Appalachians and was hillwalking until a week before his death, Lorenz was a kind and unassuming figure. He was always interested in other interpretations of his theories and enjoyed meeting academic colleagues.As a boy I was always interested in doing things with numbers, and was also fascinated by changes in the weather," Lorenz wrote in an autobiography.Meteorologists today base their forecasts on his techniques. Lorenz's 1967 book "The Nature and Theory of the General Circulation of the Atmosphere" is considered a classic textbook in meteorology.The concept of small changes turning into big effects also influenced many basic sciences

iit -jee 08

There are a total of 6,600 seats. Out of proposed 8 new IITs, at least three are expected to be operational this year, which will add 2,000 more seats.The entrance exam was the first to be conducted after the Supreme Court gave its green signal to 27 per cent quota for Other Backward Castes(OBC) in institutions of higher education including the Indian Institutes of Technology(IITs) and the Indian Institute of Managements (IIMs).The test was conducted at 600 centres with around 80 students vying for a single seat. Last year, about 2.5 lakh students had taken the entrance exam.IIT Roorkee has already invited applications with the OBC status details of the candidates.The first paper had 69 questions and 82 marks per subject, totalling 246 marks. Paper II, held between 2 pm and 5 pm, had 66 questions, amounting to 243 marks. Maximum marks in both the papers were 489. Overall, Maths was voted the most difficult section, more so in the second section than in the first. Though the first too, was found to be quite difficult because of its emphasis on co-ordinate geometry and calculus. Chemistry was felt to be the easiest among the three subjects.Dubai has become the first venue outside India where the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) held their joint entrance examination this year.The Gulf is home to around 5.5 million expatriate Indians and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)affiliated schools are spread across the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries. The result is expected to be out by May end.

OBC quota IITs and IIMs

Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh said the 27 per cent quota for OBCs would be implemented in IITs and IIMs.The apex court upheld the 27 per cent quota for OBCs in higher education institutions.The government also announced the 27 per cent OBC reservation would be implemented in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences from the coming academic session. Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) had already made provisions for the OBC students in the application forms for their Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for the next academic year.However, IITs are yet to upgrade their physical infrastructure and increase faculty members to cope with the 27 per cent reservation for OBCs as per the Supreme Court's directives. it was easier for IIMs to expand their infrastructure but the IITs have to get more equipped laboratories, classrooms as well as student accommodation.

iit-jee 2008

Around 3 lakh students are expected to take the IIT-JEE this year.The format having become objective type,so the entire effort should be to maximise the number of correct answers.This year also there will be two, 3 Hour (PCM Combined) objective type papers. Cut-off marks will be decided by summing the marks of the subject in both the papers. Each subject will thus have its own cut-off.individual subject cut-off will be about 35% , while overall cut-off is 45%.the entire effort should be to maximise the number of correct answers,if you attempt 60% of the questions and do them correctly, you will end up with good marks.

25% decrese in AIPMT

1.6 lakh students appeared for the All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) conducted by the CBSE. It's a significant - 40,000 - drop in numbers, a substantial 25% decrease from last year. For Delhi Only 26,366 students appeared for the paper, as against the almost 40,000 students who sat for the entrance in 2007.more than 8 lakh applicants have already signed on for the 2008 AIEEE - an engineering entrance conducted by CBSE. educationists feel reason of this drop are the low salaries, long period of study and the arduous road to success.There has been a drastic drop in the number of students opting for Biology in the senior secondary level.

IIT -JEE 2008

Nearly 3.2 lakh students would appear in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) on April 13 for admission into IITs across the country, registering an increase of about 70,000 candidates over last year.There will be no change in the question pattern this time.The IIT JEE last year decided to change the pattern, making provision for two papers in place of three earlier. Each paper consist of questions from Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics.The questions are of objective type.Earlier, the students had to appear for three papers, one each dealing with physics,chemistry and mathematics.The IITs were supposed to increase the seats for implementing OBC reservation which has been put on hold by the HRD Ministry as the matter is pending before the Supreme Court.

shortage of doctors

India is setting up 60 new medical colleges and 225 nursing colleges in public-private partnership to tide over its current acute shortage of doctors, nurses, dentists and paramedics, a Planning Commission report has said. It also said that the only way to meet the crunch is to open the medical education sector completely for private sector participation and companies being allowed to establish medical and dental colleges just as they have been allowed to open nursing colleges.The report, released by Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said that India faces a shortage of about 600,000 doctors, one million nurses, 200,000 dental surgeons and large numbers of paramedical staff.The report said in the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-12), the government plans to set up six institutions like the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and upgrade 13 existing medical institutions.Besides, the nursing schools will be upgraded into colleges and the existing nursing colleges strengthened and upgraded as well as the existing government medical colleges.Currently, medical colleges churn out about 30,000 doctors a year, apart from 20,000 dentists and 45,000 nurses.The report said about 3,181 postgraduate degrees are awarded annually, while 1,316 postgraduate diplomas are given in the country each year.Also, the country faces an acute shortage of dental surgeons. In 2007, there were 73,271 dental surgeons against the requirement of 282,130.In the same year, there was a need for around 2.19 million nurses, but the figure available was 1.16 million nurses.There is an acute shortage of paramedical staff such as radiographers, X-ray technicians, physiotherapists, laboratory technicians, dental hygienist, orthopaedists and opticians. However, the number of pharmacists is adequate.

clinical research and india

India has overtake China to become Asia's most popular destination for conducting clinical trials. According to the Planning Commission, around 139 new trials were outsourced to India recently compared to 98 in China.While the market value for clinical trials outsourced to India is estimated at around $300 million, having increased by 65% in 2006, it is expected to touch $1.5-2 billion by 2010. the increased trial flow to India is based on several fundamental strengths like good hospitals, competent medical professionals, diverse genetic pool and large patient pools with diseases ranging from heart diseases, diabetes and psychiatric disorders, which are also prevalent in industrialised countries.The cost of conducting research in India ranges between 20 and 60 per cent of the cost in industrialised countries.

Central Advisory Board on Education report

According to a report of the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) released recently, 15 states and union territories (out of 35) have reported an enrolment rate lower than the national average.Among the states with low enrolment ratios are Orissa (8.71 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (7.03 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (7.77 per cent) and West Bengal (8.21 per cent).In order to remove disparities in higher education, the central government earlier identified 370 districts - as educationally backward - having enrolment ratios lower than the national average of 9 percent

iit fee hike issue

IIT Directors are likely to hold a meeting with the HRD Ministry soon on the fee hike issue.After the recent increase in fees by IIMs, the IITs have sought to double their fees. The proposed fee structure, once accepted, will be implemented in the seven IITs. Over 4,000 students are admitted to the IITs at Kharagpur, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kanpur, Guwahati and Roorkee every year.The Standing Committee of the IIT Council headed by C N R Rao, Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister, has in its recommendations submitted recently suggested urgent revision of fees.

math algorithms

IBM announced that its scientists have created specialised math algorithms to help model and manage natural disasters like wildlife, floods, diseases.The models can be explored to manage floods or famines in India or natural disasters anywhere in the world. A fully developed customised and implemented model can significantly help the approach for disaster risk reduction and management.In case of flooding the stochastic model would use various flood scenarios, resource suply capabiites at different dispatch locations and fixed and variable costs assocaited various risk measures

Tata Institute of Mathematics

After Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, it is now the turn of a national-level mathematics institute from the house of Tatas.The steel major has decided to come up with an advanced institute in mathematical studies in Bhubaneswar. To be called Tata Institute of Mathematics, the project is being launched in association with Utkal University in Orissa.Scheduled to be opened in two months, the centre is based on the lines of institutes of mathematics located in Pune and Chennai. Once functional, it would work in areas like fundamental research in frontier disciplines of the mathematical and physical sciences: mathematics, theoretical physics among others.The centre will also conduct special courses for schoolchildren to help them develop interest in mathematical studies.

Hopeful of matriculation on 39th attempt!

Its been about four decades of struggle but Shiv Charan of Rajasthans Alwar district is still in no mood to give up in life, as he is taking up standard X exams for the 39th time!And, one can meet this 74-year-old struggler at his residence in Khori village under Bahror Tehsil of Rajasthans Alwar District. These days he is engrossed in studies ahead of his exams being conducted under Rajasthan Board.His determination to succeed reflects from his vow not to marry till he clears his matriculation exams.

CAT ONLINE

The common admission test (CAT) will finally go online from 2009.The decision will benefit thousands of students who take CAT each year. Last year 2,30,000 students appeared for CAT and the numbers are expected to increase to more than 3,00,000 in 2008. According to sources, the IIMs are contemplating conducting CAT online for almost 15 days, during which students can choose when to take the exam. Initially the IIMs were contemplating a time period of 30 days.The idea of going online is to stem fraud. In 2003, the test was declared null and void after the exam paper was leaked, the first time in IIMs’ history.

Four new IITs and six IIMs

Government has decided to establish four new IITs and six IIMs in various states besides upgrading some of the state universities to the status of Central Universities.While the new IITs would be located in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh (Indore), Gujarat and Punjab, the IIMs would come up in Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh (Raipur), Uttarakhand and Haryana.These new institutions would be part of the eight IITs and seven IIMs proposed to be set up during the 11th Five Year Plan. Government has already announced establishment of four IITs in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh and one IIM at Shillong.In addition, he said the government proposed to convert the Institute of Technology of the Banaras Hindu University into an IIT. Admission to this Institute was already based on the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination.The 14 Central Universities aiming at world class standards would be located in Pune, Kolkata, Coimbatore, Mysore, Visakhapatnam, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Patna, Bhopal, Kochi, Amritsar, Bhubaneswar, Greater NOIDA and Guwahati.Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in his annual budget last month announced an allocation of Rs.344 billion for the education sector - an increase by 20 percent over the previous budget.In three states, existing state universities would be taken over by the Central government and converted into Central Universities. They are Dr Hari Singh Gaur University at Sagar in Madhya Pradesh, Guru Ghasidas University at Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh and Goa University.

iit fee hike

After the IIMA raised their fees last week to about Rs 12 lakh a year, the IITs may also raise their fees too.The IITs plan to double their fees from Rs 25 thousand a year to Rs 50 thousand a year.The 7 IITs are heavily subsided by the government. Around 600 crores are spent by the government but as compared to international standards it is still a bargain.For example, tuition, room and board for a four year course at IIT costs 70,000 rupees. For an undergraduate in MIT that would be a little over 14 lakh rupees.The move comes just ahead of the Joint Entrance Examination scheduled for April 13. About 200,000 students will take the test.The last time IITs revised their fees was in 1998. in 1953, the cost of education at MIT was Rs 1,560 and it was Rs 1,420 at the Imperial College, London. The IIT fees was set at Rs 1,500 and a third was paid by students.Increasing fees in IIMs only required the nod of the each management institute's governing council. However, their engineering counterparts, governed by the IIT Act, need a green signal from the ministry.

David Gale

David Gale, a wide-ranging mathematician who helped develop an algorithm for pairing individuals into couples died on March 7 in Berkeley, Calif.Dr. Gale’s interests included mathematical games and puzzles and the creation of economic models, but he was widely recognized for work on the so-called stable marriage algorithm, a concept he developed in the 1960s with the economist and mathematician Lloyd S. Shapley.The problem begins with the assumption that equal numbers of men and women are in search of potential partners.Born in New York, David Gale graduated from Swarthmore College in 1943 and earned his doctorate from Princeton in 1949. He taught at Princeton for a year and then on the Brown University faculty until he moved to UC Berkeley with a yearlong Miller Professorship in 1965. He joined the Cal faculty permanently as a full professor the following year.Professor Gale was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of many awards and fellowships in his field, and the author of "The Theory of Linear Economic Models," a widely used reference work in what is known as linear optimization - a field that earned him a share in the coveted 1980 John von Neumann Theory Prize.Is it possible to pair the individuals in such a way that all achieve a satisfactory match? The solution developed by Dr. Shapley and Dr. Gale was to have each participant rank the members of the other sex in terms of desirability. The researchers then developed an algorithm that directed each participant to his or her next choice of partner, if rejected by the first or second choices. The stable marriage algorithm, due to D. Gale and H. S. Shapely, originally appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly in 1962 under the title ``College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage.He also developed an award-winning website (mathsite.math.berkeley.edu) to demonstrate mathematical concepts and allow hands-on participation by laymen.More recently, a form of the algorithm has been used to assign students to public high schools in New York City. As applied to medical students and their residencies, it has been criticized for not taking hospital salaries into consideration, potentially stifling competition and affecting the way the free market might raise pay for residents, an issue that is controversial among economists who study the matching process.

PBS

From today, highly skilled applicants from India seeking UK Visa will have to follow the new Points Based System (PBS) route, replacing the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.India is the first country where UK has introduced the PBS, a five-tier system, to manage migration for those wishing to enter UK for work and study.In addition, as of April 1, applicants who use false documents or deception to try to get access to the UK would face bans on coming to that country for 10 years. Tierone is the first of five tiers of the PBS to be rolled out over the next 12 months. Tier two, targeting skilled workers with a job offer and Tier five, for temporary workers would both come online in the third quarter of 2008. Tier four, for students, would follow in early 2009. Tier three, which covers low-skilled migration routes, would only be used if shortages are identified that cannot be filled from the UK or European labour force.