Affordable Subject-Wise Certification from Govt. Recognized Academia

Last updated on June 8th 2013

US President Obama meets US university presidents to address/discuss their challenges: http://www.economist.com/node/21541398.

The article talks of the problems of rising costs in an age of austerity, more courses & more research students than there is money for and interestingly, Ivy league envy. "Ivy League envy leads to an obsession with research.", it states. This results in professors who are focused on research and don't do their job of teaching students well enough, and even causes teaching dysfunction at lower-level universities!

I think the last problem is the case with lots of Indian universities too.

The article then goes on to giving examples where technology is helping to ease the burden.

A fascinating news item is about MIT planning to offer online subject-wise certifications leveraging its OCW but starting only in 2012 spring: http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/mit-launching-certificate-program-based-on-opencourseware-open-source-platform.ars.
MIT launches online learning initiative: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-education-initiative-1219.html
What is MITx?: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/mitx-faq-1219

I think affordable individual subject-wise certifications from recognized universities (academia as against non-govt-recognized private "training" institutes) done online or at physical university could be a game-changer in CS/IT education. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

A concern raised about subject-wise certifications is that it could water down universities into training schools.

Well, what I feel is that ultimately universities should cater to what its students choose & need. And students' choice will typically be dictated by job market demand (industry jobs as well as academic jobs; programming/design jobs & research & teaching jobs) and students' interests.

If a university wants to focus on higher quality work/higher complexity work then it can clearly define itself as that kind of university. Only elite students will join it and they will typically have the capability to do higher quality work. Perhaps MIT is the example of an elite tech. university. Their courses as seen in OCW seem to reflect that.

In India, the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) are clearly defined as the elite tech. schools e.g. http://www.iitb.ac.in/, http://www.iitm.ac.in/. Their entrance exam (joint entrance exam for all IITs) is the toughest tech. university entrance exam in India (http://www.iitg.ac.in/jee/).

IITs don't have to worry about funding as the government provides them excellent support. Their campus is usually fabulous. The salary structure for their teachers is the best in Indian academia. The facilities are excellent. So they get the elite students.

The IIT courses reflect the elitist nature of the institution. E.g. They don't seem to teach programming languages in particular. They expect the students to pick up particular programming languages. They seem to teach only algorithms, data structures, general programming constructs - a language independent way of teaching programming. And, of course, they have courses on Artificial Intelligence, Compiler Design, Design & Analysis of Algorithms, High Performance Computer architecture etc. which their elite students can perhaps not only handle but excel at.

I feel universities should clearly identify the student population category they are aiming at. If all universities look up to elite universities like an MIT and try to emulate them with students who are not elite quality you get into a messy situation.

In my considered opinion there is nothing shameful about a university focusing on non-elite/commoner students and delivering them courses that gives them the skill set they desire so that they get the job they want. If they should not be called universities and should be called "training schools" - that is fine. But the "training school" should be government recognized and be able to offer a degree in IT or even CSE.

To my mind it is like there being nothing shameful about being an average competence General Practitioner doctor handling common diseases in comparison to a very skilled Cardiac surgeon who focuses only on open heart surgery. Both serve very important needs of society.

In India there is a thriving "private" but expensive IT training school industry which seems to be doing a far better job of teaching programming skills than government recognised CS/IT academia. But the "private" IT training schools cannot award a graduate degree; they can award only diploma certificates. So many well-to-do students in urban areas of India do a non-tech. graduate degree from govt. recognized academia like B.Sc. (Chemistry) [Pure science as against tech.; cheaper to do and easier to pass as exam standards are "watered down" in most Indian "science" universities] and simultaneously attend the "private" IT training school to learn programming and get a well paid IT job placement.

Here is the most famous IT training school of India, NIIT: http://www.niit.com/Pages/DefaultINDIA.aspx. The home page runs an Ad. which says, "College made me a graduate; NIIT's diploma programmes made me job-ready"! That says something about the Indian government agency(ies) regulated education system.

In other words the market has stepped in to fill the job-oriented skill set teaching void left by government recognized academia. But the poor students have to do both (and parents have to pay for both) - govt. recognized academia for the govt. recognized graduate degree and the private training school for the job-oriented skill set. This seems to me to be a terrible failure of the Indian education system for commoner students. And this has been the situation for decades!

And since the private IT training school industry gets ZERO government funding it is too expensive for the urban poor and the rural poor & middle class students. All the taxpayer money for education goes to government recognized academia which fails to deliver on job-oriented skill set for commoner students.

A Tough View of UK CS Academia

Last minor update on 22nd Feb. 2020

A friend passed on "Hackers and Fighters" by Dr Mark Tarver: http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/hackers.htm.

Dr. Tarver compares the "street programmer"/"street fighter" with the "CS grad."/"school-trained martial artist". I think it is an interesting comparison.

He also talks about how difficult it is to do something innovative in CS academia. He said it took eight years for a CS dept. where he was working to decide to move from Pascal to C++!

He also states that for a fast moving area like computing the university model is too slow to adapt. I entirely agree with his view.

He mentions that the only way of handling the heavy teaching load of five to six courses a year at junior positions in academia is to go for canned courses. I think he is spot on here. At junior positions the teacher himself/herself is struggling to master his/her courses and when he/she is burdened with five to six courses, and fair bit of research work too sometimes, what can the teacher do but go the easy route of canned courses for most if not all the courses he/she has to teach.

He wryly notes that the professor will comprehensively beat the street programmer in the "black arts of churning out papers". I think he is spot on here too :).

Then an acquaintance sent another article by the same author, "Why I am Not a Professor OR The Decline and Fall of the British University". This is a vitriolic article about British universities in general and CS departments of those universities in particular just before 2000. It is brutal in its criticism but offers no thoughts of solutions. Read it only if you can stomach very harsh criticism: http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm.

I studied the article carefully. My God! What a terrible indictment of the British CS educational system (prior to year 2000)! [I don't mean to imply that India is better off - it may be worse off in the "commoner" universities.] The language used is stinging and sarcastic to the hilt.

The analysis of the need for universities in Europe from the eleventh or twelfth centuries onwards and how free online "information" & general literacy is challenging the position of universities is interesting. So too is the analysis of the impact of British government policies on education post World War II.

I get the feeling that a lot of what the author has penned must be true. But I wonder whether somebody from the British educational system rebutted his article. Maybe this author was with a not-so-great university ["but the procession of students who walked into my office and said 'Dr Tarver, I need to do a final year project but I can't do any programming'... well, they are more than I can remember or even want to remember."]. I find it hard to believe that most British university CS departments would have many students saying, "I need to do a final year project but I can't do any programming". The students, of course, may not be great programmers - but student himself/herself confessing to "can't do any programming" & looking for an easy way out with the project work - that seems hard to believe. Maybe that happens with lots of "commoner" Indian university CS/IT departments too - I just don't know.

The author solved his problem by getting out of the system. I think many of the problems he points out, namely, egalitarianism requirements of politicians who are voicing the needs of the people at large, I guess, not being able to fail many students even if they deserved to be failed as otherwise the course may become unpopular and so be shut down, watering down of courses, farcical (maybe even fixed) teaching audits, the black arts of churning out papers (counterfeit academic Mozarts), academic profession becoming unattractive, foreign immigrant academics with poor language skills ... may be true even today, at least, to some extent of CS education worldwide. But I feel that today the academic system is being challenged by commoner students (the 99 %) (Occupy movement tried to make a point at Harvard), politicians and people at large, and so I am quite hopeful of some meaningful reform happening. The Internet can be a great force which may allow for elite, commoner ... various types of courses to co-exist & flourish based on student choice and industry demand.

On deeper thought, I felt that Dr. Tarver's article is perhaps too negative, paints a depressing picture & offers no thoughts of solutions. A reader may feel that the system is beyond any possibility of redemption. Which I don't think is accurate. What we need to do is to raise awareness of the problems and work amicably and peacefully with politicians, bureaucrats, academics, industry, students & parents to improve the situation.