Online Education: A View From India

Mathai JosephAdvisor

Tata Consultancy Services

Traditional University

• Elitist in nature, purpose, intent– Not for mass education

• Limited reach– Relatively small student numbers

• Demand seems unlimited– Sebastian Thrun’s online AI course at Stanford had

160,000 enrolled (cf Udacity)But– Dropout rates ~ 90%

University Funding

• Traditional university funding – alumni, donors, government

• Students funded by – Social support– Parents– Loans, savings

Social Purpose

• Society goals for education, e.g.– 100% literacy– 90% high school

• National goals for higher education:– 50% university enrolment (e.g. UK 1997)– 30% professional education …

(UK is an example of an advanced economy with centrally managed higher education)

Figures exclude Open University and overseas students (From Funding Universities to Meet National and International Challenges, David Greenaway, Michelle Haynes),

Costs

• Lower bound of unit cost– Limits on class sizes, staff/student ratios– Effect of bell curve – ‘dumbing’ down?– High cost of ‘efficiency gains’

• Conflict: high quality or low cost?

Costs

• Lower bound of unit cost– Limits on class sizes, staff/student ratios– Effect of bell curve – ‘dumbing’ down?– High cost of ‘efficiency gains’

• Conflict: high quality or low cost?• Limits are politically convenient

– Taxpayers will not fund mass higher education• Today university education is self-limiting

AnalysisUK percentage of undergraduates decreasing:

UK expenditure per student decreased 50% from 1980--1997

1980-81

1996-97

2010-11

Undergrads FT 473 1019 1367

PT 247 392 545

% of total 87% 80% 76%

Postgrads FT 62 138 310

PT 45 215 279

% of total 13% 21% 24%

Total 827 1764 2501

Percentage 19-20yrs 30%

Indian Technical Higher Education• Few engineering colleges 20 years ago

– 6 IITs, ~10-15 Regional Engineering Colleges– ~100 engineering colleges

• Growth in the 1990’s– Government institutions unable to meet demand– Private colleges started

• Growth followed liberalisation of the economy

• Growing demand from the IT industry– 100,000’s of engineers needed each year

Current Position• ~630 degree granting institutions:

• 8 + 8 Indian Institutes of Technology• 11 + 20 Institutes of Information Technology• National Institutes of Technology• Engineering Colleges

~6500 with ~0.7M new entrants a year

Many privately run but with government concessions & grants

Note: 18-19 age group population is ~50M

Source: UGC India

Source: UGC India

Source: UGC India

Source: UGC India

Source: UGC India

New Challenge

• Several new online education ventures• Universities tentative

– Unwilling to lose educational market, but– Unwilling to dilute ‘brand’

• Distance education solutions won’t work– Remote campus for part of education– Central campus for ‘normalization’

India: Standards and Quality• Widely varying selection standards

– 455,571 took IIT entrance test, 1:50 selected (2010)*

– Good institutions take ~1:5 • (e.g. 1.1M applicants for 19,000 seats in 2012)

– Smaller engineering colleges take the rest

• Widely varying qualityIIT’s offer world class education

Typical small engineering collegeUnder-provisioned, under-resourced, poor teaching

Used as stepping-stone to job or higher degree

*Harvard takes 1:16, MIT 1:11

Online Education for India

• No other scalable solution possible• Must have

– Good online testing– Mentoring– Social interaction

• Supporting full degree education– Not supplementary learning

• Alternative to coaching classes

Content & Distribution

• Content will belong to course creator• Testing adapted to online model• Integrated platform for lecture text, notes,

problems, social network

Access

• Choice from multiple sources– e.g. Databases from Stanford, Circuits from MITx– Common platform for all courses

• Course notes and annotations preserved• Problems generated from templates

– Automated marking and comments• Social interaction

The question to ask ourselves is ‘What is engineering?’

Well, the definition I like to use is one put forward by Steve

Senturia, one of our professors who has now retired. He

defined engineering to be the purposeful use of science.

Then what is 6.002 about? 6.002 is the first course in

engineering and I like to define 6.002 as the gainful

employment of Maxwell’s equations.

MJ: Why ‘gainful’?

Voice to text

Annotations

Problems

• Generic template model needed• Unsupervised problem solving

– Social interaction encouraged• Record of all work• Crowd-sourced marking?• Supervised testing for grading/certificate

Social Problem Solving

Social space• Hari, have you done this

problem?• Yes, easy. Same as (3).• OK, I’ll try now

Dangers of crowd-sourced marking• ‘Standard’ solutions• True innovation discouraged

Problem space

Problem and Solution

Write a program to sum the elements of the integer array A with N elements n1, n2, ... nN.

Problem as Program

Write a program to sum the elements of the integer array A

int array A with

const int N [ran 1<N<=25] elements n1, n2, … nN

V1 is int set(gen(ran int N))Solution = sum(V1)

Technology

• Current technology enough to start• Hard to manage problem space

– Cannot automatically mark arbitrary problems– Need problem generation from generic problem– Problem generation linked to solution, marking

• Online mentoring– Good problem response techniques– Limited live tutoring

Prospects

• Discussions with Silicon Valley entity– Republic of Education (planning stage)

• Dual interests– Mass undergraduate education for developing countries– Specialized professional education courses

• Many similar problems, solutions– Define an education platform– Automated marking– Limited live tutoring

Big Changes in Education

• Undergraduate education is becoming commoditized; next step may be– Mix & match courses from different sources– Online testing and mentoring

• University ‘brand’ moving to graduate education– Already happening (cf UK, US experience)

• Major shifts in education market likely– Not all predictable today

Thank you!