IISER, NISER

In his blog, my colleague talks about setting up IISERs and NISERs. He mentions that the previous government mentioned that IISERs were supposed to be setup in Allahabad, Bhubaneswar, Chennai and Kolkata. The current government overruled it and said it will be set up in Kolkata, Chennai, Mohali, Bhopal and Thiruvananthapuram while a NISER would be setup in Bhubaneswar. Are the IISERs and NISER different? Obviously not, except that NISER is funded by DAE. Except for IISER-Chennai, all the others have been setup and their directors have been appointed. The following link even compares the academic credentials of the directors. Thus, the only city that was dropped was Allahabad and it becomes obvious why if you consider where the previous government's HRD minister got his doctorate from. People in the "know" seem to explain why IISER Chennai has not been setup, yet. The point of Abi's blog, however,is that the policies of the government has been changed by its successor is well taken but this is not surprising at all.

Regarding the question whether IISERs/NISER are successful, it depends on the criteria you set. I do not know how one evaluates an academic institution in India. I do know, however, that atleast two of the above IISERs have received more than thousand applications each for their faculty positions in the four science subjects. A large number of students write the entrance exam and are interviewed. Their faculty have got funding from DST etc and have started publishing papers. However, infrastructure problems remain but are hopefully, teething. Even an established institution like IISc, which got 100 crores in 2007, will complete all its buildings only in 2009. Anyone who works in administration will tell you that getting hundred crores from the government is much easier than spending it following all the myraid (and, maybe, archaic) rules.

However, I do think that the success of an institute is judged mainly by its students. If world-class motivated students join and their motivation is sustained, this will result in an excellent institution. Despite flaws, exams like JEE/CAT/GATE that filter out 95% of the candidates result in world class students. However, the motivation in them has to be sustained. [The fact that B.Tech students who do not get any jobs or admitted for higher studies teach other B.Tech students in many private engineering colleges demotivates most of the incoming undergraduate students.] The incoming students will remain motivated only if the faculty are world-class and motivated.

With the current scarcity of good faculty, a rapid recruitment of faculty just to fill up the position will result in a bleak future for these institutions. Even if world-class faculty are recruited by IISERs, these faculty will remain motivated if and only if it is augmented by excellent infrastructure like lab facilities , efficient administration that is not required to follow outdated arcane rules, merit based evaluations for all promotions/ awards, ability to expand without the mentality that small is beautiful, unfettered research grants, emphasis on excellence rather than social networks and, finally, money. However, granting only the last (money) makes that the required condition for excellence is met but sufficient conditions for creating and maintaining excellence (in academics) are not met.

Research Double

One of my former students recently wrote to me and congratulated me on the "double" of 200 papers and 2000 citations. The term double comes from cricket where 100 wickets and 1000 runs is the start for a good all rounder.

In research, however, citations are of more importance than the number of papers. I know of faculty in USA who have published less than 50 papers but have more than 2000 citations.For example, the editor of the journal (in which I regularly publish) has less than 75 papers but she has more than 4000 citations. However, there are no such exceptional cases in India. In India, the number of papers and citations seem to have a direct correlation. Some statistics based on the "double" for IISc (includes retired faculty),

Number of faculty who have > 1000/10000: 1 (Prof. CNR Rao)
Number of faculty who have > 400/4000: 2 (Prof. P.Balaram)
Number of faculty who have > 300/3000: 5 (0 in engineering)
Number of faculty who have > 200/2000: 26 (2 in engineering)
Number of faculty who have > 100/1000: 74 (7 in engineering)

In cricket, there is a treble: 100 wickets, 1000 runs and 100 catches. In research, we may have 200 papers, 2000 citations and h-index of 20. The above numbers do not change for the treble.

Okay, how this compare internationally? Let us take Purdue university. How many faculty of Purdue have > 300/3000? The answer is 300.

Faculty Pay based on teaching

My colleague provides some interesting links about better and effective teaching. Taking this to an extreme, my alma mater, Texas A&M University, has recently instituted a system where a bonus pay of $10,000 per year will be given based on teaching evaluations by students. This seems to be a blatant approach of consumerism to higher education. While student evaluations of faculty are important, it is well known that "good" student evaluations can always be obtained if the faculty gives out easy grades and does not give out hard assignments. A major study by Ohio State University in 2007 found absolutely no correlation between student evaluations and actual learning.

But Aleamoni said that even if his research suggests that some student evaluations — designed in ways that differ from the Texas A&M approach — can be reliable, he has always stressed that these evaluations should never be the sole basis for a decision about the quality of someone’s teaching. “Students are only in a position to judge performance in the classroom,” Aleamoni said.

Any real evaluation of teaching, he said, must include peer analysis of such issues as, “How well was the course designed? Are the materials current and up to date? Have they set up the right kinds of standards for the students?” And students aren’t in a position to judge these things, he added.

Of course, one does not have to worry about this in IISc, where teaching is minimal. At one time I used to teach three main courses and now I have decayed to teach three students in one course.

However, this is not dissimilar to the schemes instituted by the Government of India wherein one gets paid various amounts of money (sometimes, concurrently) if faculty get fellowships like the Swarnajayanthi, JC Bose etc., or awards like the Bhatnagar or are elected as Fellows of Academies. As Professor Balaram notes in his recent editorial, most of these are given based on promise and patronage rather than performance.

Wouldn't it be better if the rewards are given without personal money but with huge research or teaching grants? This would result in the faculty actually doing science rather than writing proposals to various funding agencies or lobbying to get themselves nominated for these fellowships.

Excellence in Research

Prof. C. N. R. Rao, in his inspirational talk today titled "Doing Science in India: How to Succeed!" gave four main tips for succeeding in doing research in India. They are picking the right problem, working hard, perseverance and publishing the work. He also mentioned the need to think big by graduating more doctorates (he mentioned that all IITs together graduated only a total of 598 doctorates in 2007) and publishing more papers.

Humanities Department in IISc

Recently, the student council petitioned that IISc should start a department of humanities and there was subsequently a meeting to discuss this. With the support of the Deans ("best courses I have taken are in these areas"), departmental chairmen ("best idea I have heard in IISc") and the alumni, it may become a reality.

While humanities may be very useful as part of an undergraduate education, I am not sure what major role it will play in the education of a doctoral student in science and engineering unless the department is at a world class level in terms of research. A humanities department with one faculty each in history, english, economics and sociology will not become world class due to the lack of a critical mass. Instead, it may be better to open a department with focus on subjects like anthropology or archeology and recruit ten world class faculty in this area. Of course, getting faculty will be a problem even though many people believe that the very mention of IISc opening such a department will make the faculty working at other institutions to leave their institution and join IISc.

Instead of becoming all-rounders, shouldn't IISc focus on doing better on something that we already do reasonably well ? Regarding the comment that the IITs have humanities department, IISc should not be compared with IITs but with IIMs, which also offer only post-graduate education. Maybe IISc should open a humanities department as soon as IIM-Ahmedabad opens a chemistry department !

Grad School to Professor

Recently, one of the students met me on the road and asked me to compile a list of links that may be useful to graduate students. 

If you are already in IISc, then the essay on whether you should attend graduate school  is probably not useful to you. After entering graduate school, the first major priority is that of choosing an appropriate research advisor. 

While in grad school, the most important aspect is to write research papers. Professor Whitesides, who has the highest h-index among all living scientists, says "If your research does not generate papers, it might just as well not been done. Interesting and unpublished is equivalent to non-existent" Professor CNR Rao, who has the highest h-index among all scientists in India, gave me sagely advice, "Do not be afraid to publish" 

Whitesides has written a wonderful article in Advanced Materials on how to publish a research paper. Whitesides says that one should start writing a paper at the same time one starts a research project. In fact, this was the same advice my postdoc advisor gave me and he used to say that by the time the experimental work and analysis was over, the paper should also be nearly ready. 

Recently, Prof. Kamat from University of Notre Dame, who is an editor of Journal of Physical Chemistry, recently visited IISc and gave an excellent talk on writing research papers and the use of figures in the papers and ethics in research. There is also an excellent guide on how to publish in top journals. In addition to writing papers, giving good talks to a wide variety of audience is essential in graduate school. 

For people like me whose first language is not English, books on writing are very useful. My postdoc advisor gave me an excellent book - The Elements of Style - by Strunk and White and it is perhaps the best known book on writing well. It is available online for free now. The best book on improving English that I have read is "On Writing Well". It is a great book that deals with grammar and other semantics in an entertaining and humorous way. However, if your English is really poor, then the above books may be too heavy and, unlike other people who recommend Wren and Martin's classic book, I recommend the book - Practical English usage - by Swan. The 2006 edition costs Rs. 260 and is available locally in IISc.

After you finish graduate school, you should be successful as a post doc.  At this point, you will start receiving requests for reviewing manuscripts. I follow these tips seriously and also try to limit myself to review only three times the number of papers I publish.

Finally, you may land up with a faculty position. Becoming a successful faculty member at a research university is not easy. The book—The Effective, Efficient Professor, by a famous chemical engineering professor Phillip Wankat—is a treasure trove of information on the strategies and techniques that would make a faculty member life successful and is a must-read for all new faculty.

Removing GATE

A recent article in NY Times discusses the trouble with using SAT as the sole criterion for admission. This is actually one of the followups from several articles published on this issue in the Chronicle of Higher Education. This is based on the report by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. which discusses that tests like the SAT and ACT were never meant to be viewed in isolation but considered as one of the factors that include grades, essays and so on. But with the college ranking systems considering SAT as one of the main criteria for ranking, the colleges seem to have preferred the exam as the one of the major criteria of admission until recently. Now many colleges in USA have made SAT optional, though the major institutes like MIT and Harvard still require SAT.

This backdrop is interesting considering that IISc is planning to drop GATE as one of the requirements for admission to its research degrees (masters and doctoral programs) in engineering. Under this proposal, the main criteria is the percentage of marks obtained by the candidate in the B.E/B.Tech examination and anyone who secures more than 70% marks in their undergraduation will be eligible for admission.

My opinion on the above has always been that we should not obsess with admissions tests like GATE for doctoral programs and we should take an expansive view of merit that would include GATE, the undergraduate scores, communication skills and motivation. However, for masters program, we need an all-India entrance exam just to screen the huge numbers. With nearly six undergraduates in engineering (and 2.5 lakhs of them expressing an interest in higher studies by writing GATE) with wide variations in the undergraduate marks awarded in each university, it would be nearly impossible to screen them only by interviews.