Tuesday, August 12, 2014

FYUP at IISc: Links


Two former directors of IISc have been quoted in the press about this issue. The first, of course, is Bharat Ratna C.N.R. Rao, in a CNN-IBN news report: After DU, IISc Bangalore at loggerheads with UGC over scrapping of four-year undergraduate programme

Rao said that premier institutes should not be dealt with military commands. "IISc is the oldest also the best institute of this kind in India. It is the only institute which can be compared properly to many better institutes of the world and they should not be dealt by issuing circulars," Rao said.

The other is Prof. P. Balaram, under whose watch the FYUP at IISc came into being, quoted in The Hindu: IISc. is not Delhi varsity, say students, faculty.

The former director of the IISc. P. Balaram, during whose tenure the programme was introduced, described the Ministry’s current approach as “retrograde”, and added that the move “will dampen any kind of innovation in education.”

The government must consider that the IISc. is the only Indian institute with a global ranking, he said. “It has a 100-year history and an even longer future, and must keep evolving with the times.” [...]

As the title of the second story makes it clear, an IISc student has articulated the one key difference between the FYUP in DU and that at IISc:

A third-year student in the UG programme, Suhas Mahesh, described the move as “a terrible decision” by the Centre. “Unlike Delhi University’s case, here both IISc. faculty and students actually want the FYUP,” he said. Students take three competitive exams to make it to the course, and are each supported by scholarship.

The last point -- "each [student is] supported by scholarshi" -- is important; these are students who receive a scholarship -- primarily through KVPY and INSPIRE programs -- for studying science in any institution, and the fact that they have chosen to come to IISc should count for something.

2 Comments:

  1. संपदा कोल्हटकर said...

    Sir, some news has come http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/ugc-allows-iisc-to-continue-with-fyup-114081201122_1.html
    Hope its true :)

  2. Dheeraj Sanghi said...

    To argue that BSc of IISc is different from normal BSc, and hence allowed with something in parenthesis to signify that difference is essentially saying that we can't do anything to IISc. Come on. Any FYUP will be different from a 3-year BSc. If this was all that UGC was looking for, they could have allowed DU's FYUP as BSc (broadbase) or something like that. As I have written in my recent blogs, it is not in the interest of UGC to take the matter to courts, since they might lose their effective control over all the universities. And hence, they will listen to places like IITs and IISc. Anyway, I am glad that IIT Kanpur does not have to fight with UGC on FYUP.