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Indian Ministry Blocks Foreign Faculty Hires at Institute of Technology

June 30, 2011, 2:57 pm

In a move that could discourage Indian academics living abroad from returning to India, the government’s home ministry has blocked the appointment of foreign faculty by the Indian Institute of Technology’s Delhi branch, despite the education ministry approving the hires, the Hindustan Times reports. “It is a setback … and although we expect to sort this out within the government, it has embarrassed IIT, Delhi,” an unnamed senior official at India’s elite public engineering school told the newspaper. “It could also end up hurting all the other IIT’s since foreign faculty—already wary of Indian bureaucracy—may now rethink whether they want to come to the IIT’s,” the official said.

Last September, Kapil Sibal, India’s education minister, agreed to allow the engineering schools to fill up to 10 percent of academic positions with foreign hires. The education ministry will now talk to the home ministry and the ministry of external affairs to get “in principle” approvals from them for hiring foreign faculty at the engineering schools.

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  • richardtaborgreene

    yuk

  • skmarie17

    Thank you, Professor Vedder, for your courage.

  • 12080243

    Where are the professors, deans, and presidents? 

    Most haven’t directly experienced injustice. And words are insufficient to effectively communicate injustice. In other words, individuals have limited sympathies, limited understanding, and little or no motivation to put an end to injustice, until their lives are directly affected by injustice. 

  • frankschmidt

    In Vedder’s Golden Age, deans could dismiss a student at their own discretion.   Perhaps he would prefer that system?

  • pkbrandon

    As chuckkle has already pointed out, Vedder is conflating a number of different situations.
    The Constitution protects citizens against actions by governmental bodies which can result in fines and incarceration; in other words, criminal penalties.  Civil actions are less directly covered.
    The situation that Vedder described involves neither the criminal nor the civil court system.
    Rather it’s an instance of a ‘what happens on campus stays on campus’ policy.
    As someone who started his college career in 1959 and retired three years ago, I suspect that I can match Vedder instance for instance.
    Typically, this sort of situation arises when some campus body (on our campus the Office of Student Affairs) tries to deal with situations without involving the court system.
    A rape accusation would be viewed as a violation of the student code of honor, and the Office would try to resolve the complaint while protecting the rights and interests of all students involved.  The Office can not impose either criminal or civil penalties; the most that it can do is to suspend or dismiss the student.  Thus this is not a constitutional issue.
    If the accuser had wanted civil or criminal penalties imposed, she (?) should have reported the incident to the local police.  If the case were prosecuted, the accused would then have a constitutional right to confront the accuser.
    If this failed and the accuser brought a civil suit (see O.J.) then the standard would be ‘preponderance of evidence’.

    Parenthetically, Vedder also conflates free speech and academic freedom (which he raises in the context of faculty tenure).
    Free speech involves the use of the campus as a public forum by all members of the campus community.  Any topic may be involved short of a direct incitement to violence.
    Academic freedom (as protected by faculty tenure), on the other hand, concerns the right of a faculty member to express opinions in her classes which fall within the subject of the class and her professional competence.
    Thus, as a Professor of Economics, Vedder can espouse any economic system that he wants to in his classes.  On the other hand, most of his opinions on the legal system would NOT be protected by academic freedom and (in theory at least) he could be accused of violating the terms of his contract.

    And as frankschmidt points out, in Vedder’s good old days (in my case, 1960), a Dean did, in fact, threaten to expel me because I did not properly wear a tie to dinner (I had a bow tie clipped to my jacket lapel).

  • skmarie17

    I’m afraid pkbrandon might be upset he was not mentioned by name in Vedder’s penultimate paragraph.

  • abednars

    “In the Golden Age of higher education, defined as when I attended school
    (around 1960), colleges were viewed as oases of free speech with full
    respect for First Amendment rights.”

    Oh, this should be good…

    “In 1964, for example, the school where I teach, Ohio University, allowed
    a hateful leader of the American Nazi Party to spill his venom on the
    campus, believing free and unfettered peaceful expression of ideas is
    the hallmark of a good university.”

    Sounds like it WAS a Golden Age of higher education, all right – for rich WASP cis men who could come to college unfettered by nonsense like lack of societal privilege, or fear of being assaulted and threatened on campus just for being the wrong race, sex, gender presentation, religion or class.

    I wonder why campus policies on sexual assault were basically nonexistent back then?  I mean, it certainly couldn’t be because college administrators basically didn’t care, just like most of society didn’t care.  Hmmm…

  • robjenkins

    I think, too, that there is a collective aspect to grading–collective in terms of the faculty, I mean. If I’m constantly assigning students A’s, and then they’re moving on to other teachers’ classes and getting C’s (or worse), then there’s something wrong systemically. It might be, I suppose, that I’m right and my colleagues are all wrong, but I think the safest thing would be to assume that I’m the one who’s a little off in my grading and adjust my expectations accordingly. No doubt that’s what you meant by “a common standard.”

    One of the best things we do in our department (and I’m sure a lot of departments do something similar) is to ask all the full-time faculty to participate in evaluating exit essays for our developmental classes. These grading marathons are always preceded by a “normalizing” session, in which we look at essays from previous terms and discuss what we would have given them and why. I think that goes a long way toward helping us maintain that “common standard.”

  • robjenkins

    First, Jephthah, while I appreciate the spirit of your post, few who know me would ever feel the need to tell me to “lighten up.” In my department, I’m known as kind of a soft touch, which is fine by me.

    I’ve been waiting, though, for someone to bring up rubrics. While I’m not a big fan of rubrics, per se, I understand and appreciate the way that they clarify and delineate expectations. But I also think that rubrics can be artificially limiting and make grading unnecessarily mechanical, substituting hard numbers for professional judgment. Here’s a passage that was cut from my original version of this post (which, admittedly, ran way too long):

    “What I look for in an A essay. . . is one that truly
    stands out from other essays I have read, not just in that course or during that
    semester, but throughout my 26-year career. There are some semi-objective
    criteria that distinguish an A, I think: the grammar and punctuation are nearly
    flawless, the vocabulary and syntax are much more advanced than one would
    expect from a first-year college student, the organization is logical and compelling,
    the ideas are fresh and original, the writer’s distinctive voice is clearly
    evident. But there’s also a sense in which an A paper is kind of hard to
    define. Like beauty or athletic ability, you simply know it when you see it.”

    Rob

  • robjenkins

    No. I’d expect you, as a science grad, to be smarter.

  • missoularedhead

    I actually put something in my syllabus this semester…I tell the students the full point value of assignments, and then state “these points values are the maximum, and are rarely given for work. Just because you turn something in on time does not mean you will get full points. Please see the rubric for each assignment”. We’ll see if that changes things.

  • chattahoochee

    I don’t believe that students are pitted one against another, fighting to get to the top of a pyramid. However, just surpassing their often abysmally low expectations and assumptions of college level writing isn’t an option. Like Rob, I teach composition at a local community college (across town from his, actually) and my students always assume if they just “do” the work, they have earned an A. No one has ever actually spoken to them about QUALITY. The result is students who are woefully un-prepared for the demands of college or a workplace.

    My standard for an A essay tends to be decided with the following questions in mind: “Is it really excellent, college-level work?” and “If I award this student an A, am I going to be embarrassed when I run into his English 1102 teacher in the hall?”

    -Willena

  • bristol64

    well, about science anyway.

  • kilbysl

    On the “I worked hard issue” I try to remind students that hard work is only one component of the equation and will only get them so far.  I try to point out real life examples where no matter how hard you work the decision is made based on something else.  The example I’m using this year is we are currently trying to decide on a Republican nominee for US President, not all of them will be the winner no matter how hard they all work, which can also be extended into the fall semester as only one candidate will be allowed to live in the White House no matter how hard the other candidates work to get there.

    I also try to point out to students that C is what is considered average, that B is abiove average, and that A is excellent, well above average.  I also try to remind them that a C or B is not a bad grade that if they worked hard and did the best they could that they should be proud of that grade, not all classes, subject areas are easy for everyone and that while they may struggle in my math class, there is a subject area out there that they will do better in than I will be able to do.  You can’t be an A student in everything (regardless of how you define A) and that your hard work counts in that you know that the grade you earned was the best that you could do at that time, given the circumstances that were happening at that time.

  • old nassau’67

    I have a suggestion: Why not ask the BigTen Athletic Departments to contribute a few million so that the Network can highlight “scholarly work” with “higher quality” (whatever that means) . As the chart below shows, the conferences’ athletic departments combined for about $100 million in profits.

    School                   Total Athletic Department      
                                Revenue           Expenses                Income
    Illinois              57,539,367.00     55,723,771.00          1,815,596.00
    Indiana             70,172,641.00     64,878,825.00          5,293,816.00
    Iowa                 92,903,555.00     87,607,487.00          5,296,068.00
    Michigan           122,486,490.00     95,836,991.00      26,649,499.00
    Michigan State     80,963,182.00     67,450,913.00     13,512,269.00
    Minnesota         78,924,683.00     78,924,683.00              0.00
    Nebraska          83,679,756.00     78,509,148.00           5,170,608.00
    Northwestern     56,214,293.00     56,214,293.00              0.00
    Ohio State     131,815,819.00     113,184,855.00         18,630,964.00
    Penn State     116,118,026.00     84,498,339.00           31,619,687.00
    Purdue             66,066,303.00     59,293,193.00           6,773,110.00
    Wisconsin     93,594,766.00        92,939,345.00            655,421.00
    (http://businessofcollegesports.com/2012/03/19/most-profitable-athletic-departments-big-ten/)

  • awegweiser

    Of course they backed off. It is football, isn’t – the most important aspect of the life of many Americans. At lest they don’t riot (as often) as Euro football fanatics.

  • tdr75

    EM … last I checked, professional basketball wasn’t a major anywhere.  And if it were, the gainful employment statistics would be hideous!  Maybe the five from Kentucky aren’t worrying about a job this year, but the vast majority of college basketball players aren’t going pro.

    Jim Parcels did a study on hockey players in Ontario (http://www.omha.net/flash.asp?page_id=242) Of the roughly 30,000 kids in the 1975 cohort who played hockey on some level, SIX played in the NHL long enough to qualify for a pension (roughly 5 years).  And 1975 was considered a strong year in Ontario hockey.  You are talking astronomical odds.  Given fewer roster slots in the NBA than the NHL (and the higher popularity in the recent past), the odds are even worse.

    All Kentucky’s program has done is taken full advantage of the NBA’s age/school rule for their own benefit with little thought to the players (but “we are a players-first program” he says…).

    The question to me related to this note is why on earth a school would agree to play Kentucky only at Kentucky or on a neutral court.  Kudos to Indiana for calling them out and refusing such an arrangement.  Calipari’s rationale is ridiculous and shallow.  He doesn’t want his young kids playing in a hostile environment… poor John.

    What is “not fair to the players” is that their entire attendance at college is a completely undisguised sham.  These kids are not and never will be at Kentucky to get an education.  They are there to “go pro.”

  • dlws8607

     It sounds like electronicmuse is an athletic supporter with no grasp of what faculty at universities do or the supposed role of athletics at universities.  If EM’s assertion is true, we should discontinue almost all athletic departments based on the number of students who fail to gain employment in professional athletics.

    Howl away, all of you whiny socialist (at least when it comes to athletic entertainment) athletic supporters, who don’t have a clue about what universities are for and proudly demonstrate this.

  • kessingerw1

    Isn’t the reason for people to go to college to “go pro” in something?  If you wanted to go to college to be a lawyer, you would go to Harvard because it is a top law school.  If you wanted to be a doctor, you would go somewhere with a top medical school. So, these athletes that are forced to go to college for a year by the NBA are going to a college that can help them to succeed in “going pro”, just like every other student. 

    The best suggestion I have heard to help this issue is to create some type of major that is geared toward student athletes that have great potential to go pro. Make it an associate degree that focuses on the business side of professional athletics so that when they do leave school to become pro, they are more prepared for that world.

  • 11179102

    tdr75, I appreciate your comments but believe they would support Calipari’s position – he is not recruiting every kid, only the top 3 or 4 high school players each year that are already committed to a “1-and-done” collegiate experience and are already screened as NBA-material.  The majority of Kentucky’s players that appear to get playing time are indeed looking to play professionally.  Given this, the Kentucky model is player-focused in this strange way.
     
    As you say “All Kentucky’s program has done is taken full advantage of the NBA’s age/school rule for their own benefit…” You are correct.  Give Calipari this – he has created his model by following the rules provided by the NCAA and NBA and built in broad daylight.  We don’t have to like it, but reality is what it is.   In this light, Calipari is not the problem, just a symptom of the problem. 

    In the end, the Kentucky situation is a symptom of the professionalization of D1 athletics and could also include the issues of conference realignment and positioning of high-profile programs to maximize TV exposure and media contracts.  Someday there needs to be a meeting of the minds among the NFL, NBA and NCAA on whatever farm system deemed needed for our sports-crazed society.  Then colleges and universities can return to their primary mission of education for its students who choose to participate in athletics.

  • rcsloan

    Last I heard, to become a lawyer by way of Harvard, you actually have to graduate with a degree.  Same situation for medical school.  Are you suggesting that students headed for the NBA will also have to graduate with a degree?

  • kaesser08

    11179102, you are correct.  A lot has been said about Calipari but for the most part he is working within the rules of the system (NCAA and NBA) and is doing what he is hired to do, recruit high tier talent to be competitive at the highest level.  Other top programs, including Duke, are losing players after one year to try their skills at the professional ranks.  Thus, I find the selection of Calipari as the target of this groups anger to be misguided.  

  • kessingerw1

    In a way, yes I am saying that. Why not be able to graduate with some sort of Associate degree in professional athletics? If this is the direction that university sports are headed in, train the student athletes to succeed at that level on both the athletic side and the business side.  Many professional athletes go broke because they are unable to handle the business side. If you want these athletes to also be students, give them an option to get a degree that will help in their chosen career path.

  • fiscalwiz

    Kentucky players with NBA intentions — the one and done guys — attend one semester of classes and, assuming they are meeting athletic expectations, don’t go to classes in the spring semester.  They have eligibility based on the first semester and registration for the spring and that is all that matters.  So Kentucky should award an associates degree in basketball on the basis of one semester worth of academic performance.  That ought to handle it.

    If the NCAA wants to change the dynamic so that its schools actually play with students, make athletic scholarships 5 year deals for the students, rather than the one year guarantees they now are, and do not allow schools to award a new scholarship until the student initially awarded it has graduated from some university or until 5 years have elapsed.  That would bring a bit of student-athlete back into the system, should the NCAA care about that.

  • 22266017

     Exactly! And furthermore, Calipari has been one of the most vocal coaches against the current rules, calling out the NBA and the current NCAA president repeatedly. In addition, he celebrates his four-year graduates just as much as his NBA players. Take a look at his facebook page where he raves about Eloy Vargas and Darius Miller for graduating. Finally, the best evidence is that all of his past players love him and are committed to him, regardless of whether they’ve gone pro or not. Sounds players-first to me and sounds like a pretty decent fellow.

  • wisensale

    So should we be shocked by this article? Just read Taylor Branch’s article in The Atlantic last fall. Then think of Fred Friendly’s comment when he was at CBS: “Television is making so much money being bad, it can’t afford to be good.” Just change a few words in that sentence and apply it to college sports and the point is made.

  • kessingerw1

    You need to look up your facts on those one-and-done players. Only one has not completed their spring semester at Kentucky and he has since said that he wishes that he would have. That player was Daniel Orton. If you would look at this year’s team, you will see that they all finished out the spring semester and the projected #1 player in the draft ended up with a GPA of over a 3.0 (I can’t remember exactly, but 3.6 keeps coming to mind.)

  • cmmoore1

    Calipari got “stunned” when his UK team came to IU in December 2011.  What he is really inferring here is that he doesn’t want his home court winning record broken.  He doesn’t want the better and improved Indiana basketball team with players who are staying in school and pursuing degrees to come down to Lexington this December 2012 and go into “his house” and beat them.

    So to make it look legitimate he wraps in a package that includes neutral sites for everyone that’s a non-conference team and calls it practice for the NCAA tournament.  I guess that’s all part of the practice for being a professional play too.  You get to practice how to travel around.  Just add that to your schedule of taking classes.  I hope they are easy classes so they can get on with the profession of being a basketball player.

  • 22266017

    Or it could be that Crean was afraid of playing on a neutral court because he knew he needed the home court advantage to have any chance. Don’t get me wrong, IU will be much improved next year. But, I’d place my money on Calipari for long-term success over Crean.

  • robbie1

    11179102  wrote: … “Give Calipari this – he has created his model by following the rules provided by the NCAA and NBA and built in broad daylight.  We don’t have to like it, but reality is what it is.   In this light, Calipari is not the problem, just a symptom of the problem.” …

    I beg to differ with you on this: 

    The University of Kentucky, a major state university and educational institution, actually has the basketball team, not the coach. Kentucky is part of the NCAA and as such is obligated and expected to support and follow its rules, NOT  HAVE  A COACH FOLLOWING HIS MODEL. 
    Calipari following NCAA rules…since WHEN? Look at his record in the NCAA which has solid evidence of NOT FOLLOWING RULES, bringing PENALTIES upon numerous colleges and universities who hired him to perform as a professional (not as an unethical practitioner following HIS MODEL ), and having his record as a coach changed (since he’s been at Kentucky) by deletion of SUCCESSES he enjoyed when NOT FOLLOWING RULES. 
    It is a shame that a would-be-great University employs such a person.

    Numerous other coaches can win games and championships with elite players, so why is Calipari still a college coach when he does not respect or follow collegiate athletic rules? 

    “Pre pro, one and done” basketball players do not belong in student athletic programs at such institutions. This has become accepted because of the regrettable decline in American values. There seems to be just one value now: money.
    This is the change needed: Universities with athletic programs which recruit and play “pre pros” who are not and do not want to be students should have to pay taxes as entertainment enterprises. 

    Associate degrees may be awarded by the University of Kentucky (not sure if community colleges in their state are part of the UK system), but most major universities grant bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees. The “one and done” guys won’t be there long enough to earn even an associate degree, which involves taking courses and attending classes for two years, usually. In many states, associate degrees are awarded at community college level, not the major universities with big athletic programs. 
    The great universities (as Kentucky is intended to be) were founded to educate the citizenry (greatly needed in this country), to advance knowledge through research and to provide public service which fosters the progress and well being of their states and communities. 

    How do “pre pro, one and done” athletes relate to fulfillment of those purposes?

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=33902806 Gerald Harris

    “Were founded to educate the citizenry.” So whats not going on in this process? “To advance knowledge.” Preperation for whatever their future holds for that individual, not our egos. I think sometimes as faculty members and administrators we talk about development, but we don’t know how to act when its not administered under the traditional format. We love to play high and mighty. We enjoy looking down on those who do not register in our same thoughts. Instead of making the main thing the main thing. And the main thing involves preparing our students to follow thier passions. Preparing them for an opportunity of life long learning. And preparing them for their next step. And if you believe it or not, that is the opportunity we have standing before us.

  • rescomp

    It’s pretty interesting reading all the posts from those trying to find a rationale for Calipari’s behavior. Oh he’s playting within the rules, but let’s see what cost Kentucky will eventually pay from associating itself with him. Calipari will leave Kentucky in shambles as he did with UMass and Memphis. This is not a good guy. He’s a snake oil salesman who comes to town, makes a few million, and leaves you far worse off than you were before he arrived. Sure, you’ll get some temporary thrill, but it all catches up to you for hiring him — and with any luck it will catch up with him.

  • 22266017

    He had no knowledge or control over what happened with Camby. And with Rose, the NCAA cleared him to play for Memphis and then reversed course only after Rose had already left for the NBA. How is Calipari supposed to plan for that? You can hate him for his success all you want. But, there’s no evidence that he has been aware of or participated in these major violations.

  • pianiste

    “‘No other program is losing five or six players a year’ to the NBA, he wrote on his blog. ‘This is a players-first program, and you cannot put a young team into situations that are not fair to the players.’”

    Hello? The reason that Calipari loses a half-dozen players to the NBA each year is because he recruits players who are ready for the NBA after one or two years of college. And when those go pro, he recruits more. John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins went pro and were replaced by Anthony Davis (2011-2012 college player of the year), who will be replaced by another one-and-done star. If anybody has cause to end the series, it’d be Indiana, which every year plays against a Kentucky team that’s more NBA D-League (probably better) than NCAA.

    And as for Calipari’s record of good deeds, his supporters ought to review his record, especially that at UMass.

    Kentucky, which had a pretty good pro basketball team, the Colonels, in the ABA, lost it in the merger. Since then Kentucky and Louisville have filled that bill.

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  • rcsloan

    I am sympathetic to your suggestion that there could be courses of study that could prove beneficial to athletes who intend to pursue careers in athletics or physical education.  Future athletic trainers, coaches, sports agents, etc., can avail themselves of academic programs or specific courses available in various colleges and universities that will help them realize their aspirations.  However, I believe it is unlikely that all those colleges and universities that currently serve as feeder schools for pro basketball and pro football (I assume this is mostly what we’re talking about) are going to institute a degree program as you propose, particularly when, as you suggest, it would remain an “option” to get a degree, as for “athletes that are forced to go to college for a year by the NBA.”  Considering the situation as whole, I believe we both wish it were otherwise. (This is out of order as I was unable to reply to your reply to my first message.)

  • icbomber23

    The problem with your argument, Kessinger, is that almost none of the players who play sports at the college level go pro, let alone have lucrative, long-term careers. Last season, there were 46 players drafted into the NBA from colleges.

    http://www.basketball-reference.com/draft/NBA_2011.html

    Even factoring in other professional leagues around the world, there simply aren’t as many jobs out there as there would likely be players who wanted to take advantage of it. This isn’t unique to basketball, but would skills they learned be transferable, especially if the player only stayed in school for a few years?

    While I think your idea to include a degree component on the business side of the game is a good idea, I’m not sure that an AA degree alone is going to prepare those players for the “business side of professional sports.”

  • cmmoore1

    Indiana doesn’t want to end the series.  They want it more than ever now.  They have been in basketball hell and climbed out of it. They have brought themsleves back from from near NCAA death and they have done it legitimately and academically. The team had an academic GPA of right around a 3.0 this past year.

    They want to prove that a team doing it the right way can beat a team doing it the professional way!!!

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