IISER Pune

Two days ago my study abroad group went to a lecture and tour about the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune. In general, I am interested in education policy. I thought that the talk was worth preserving, at least for myself, so I've summarized it below.

Modern Indian education was initiated by the British in the early 19th century. This was largely practical education that was centered around having Indians be helpful to the British project in India. Accordingly, it focused mostly on English, law, and administration.

There were some attempts by Indians to revise this rather narrow system in the years that followed, but the second large change in educational infrastructure occured after Indian independence in 1947. Since many countries didn't believe that India would become a stable and independent country, there was no outside investment in Indian education. As a result, the educational system of the early 1950s was state-initiated.

Today, education in India is still largely run by the state. There are many colleges, each with a small student body of approximately 2000-3000 pupils. The curriculum taught by colleges is also nationally standardized. A common criticism of this system is that the adherence to a rigidly fixed curriculum causes teachers to "teach to the test," leading to a lack of quality in education.

Currently, India is also largely a service economy, without a significant contribution to knowledge production. In other words, Indian colleges focus more on teaching specific skills than on preparing students for research and/or academia. The colleges also require students to know what they generally want to study before matriculating. If they decide to change their minds about their field of interest after a year or two, it is often too late.

IISER is experimenting with an alternate plan in education. Its curriculum attempts to introduce modern science and research, expose the research process from day 1, and to provide interdisciplinary education options. It offers a five-year M.A. program (undergraduate college in India is typically three years). The first two years are spent taking classes from multiple disciplines. The third and fourth years are spent specializing in the student's major area of interest. The fifth year is reserved largely for research. Only the top 1% of students in Indian schools (as determined by standardized tests) are considered for this university.

There are five total institutions like this in India. So far there have been no graduates, and the program is admittedly experimental. It will be interesting to see how this project in education turns out in the coming years, and I found it neat to see firsthand how people here are attempting to revise the educational system.

In class, our professor also mentioned that this institution's policy is an interest contrast to U.S. educational policy. For eight of the last ten years, funding for scientific research (most popularly stem cell research, for example) has been cut by the government, which is unprecedented in U.S. political history. On a personal level, it also seemed unusual to me that the speaker we had was concerned with the production of knowledge versus services, as I can rarely recall this issue coming into discussions of U.S. educational policy.