Globally renowned Universities take a lot of effort to be created. They are not built around one or two disciplines or locations.

India is planning to spend Rs 9 billion ($189 million) on education programs which will leverage IT and Communications network within the country to reach the poorest. The budget laid this out.

Although for India’s size this is paltry. If I take India’s population as 1.5 billion, then this amounts to Rs 6 per person. Which isn’t a whole lot to begin within. But given the other expenses of Government schools and NGO funding over the year, one would assume that some of this will benefit the poorest of the kids.

There will be a hike of Rs 20 billion in spending on higher education including setting up the new IITs and spending on existing IITs. I certainly do not understand this race to create more IITs. As if just by calling it an “IIT”, it will somehow become “great”!

Yash Pal graduated with a degree in physics from Punjab University in 1949 and was awarded a PhD degree in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958. During a long academic and research career he served as a visiting professor at the Niels Bohr Institute, the California Institute of Technology and the Danish Space Research Institute. Yash Pal has held several prominent positions during his career which includes Chief Consultant, Planning Commission (1983-84), Secretary, Department of Science & Technology (1984-86) and Chairman, University Grants Commission (1986-91).

Yesterday, Yashpal Committee report on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education (embedded below) was accepted by Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal. It is an interesting document and a well times one. According to the foreword, this document has full backing of PM Dr. Singh and the HR Minister Sibal.

A lot of years back, I had once watched in interview with Prof. Yashpal. He is a scientist with interests in arts. So, the interviewer asked him about his varied interests to which he replied that at the end of his life he did not want to look back and see only one road on which he had walked. He wanted to wander on the sideways and smell the beautiful flowers and watch the streams also that were away from the main road. That one answer of his has impacted me a lot over my years of growing up.

I think this report includes that thinking. The report is very wide ranging – from structure of the Indian education to the examination system to the inequities to how a good and high level University should be structured. He has taken his learnings from MIT and Caltech to fashion the next generation of the Indian Universities. There is also an admittance on the peripheral education structure of donation colleges that proliferate the Indian landscape. There is also the acceptance of the uselessness of the traditional Undergraduation degree courses – which has taken a long time coming. There is also the push to a more robust and meaningful vocational strata of education.

Entry of law graduates from Common law countries has become easier into Canada as lawyers.

“The National Committee on Accreditation (NCA) has decided that three-year full-time law degrees from Common Law Countries including India, England and Australia should be treated equivalently regardless of their country of origin. It is a substantial reduction in barrier to entry into legal profession,” Vern Krishna, outgoing executive director of the NCA, said on Sunday.

This means that Law degrees from India, Australia, Bangladesh, England, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, USA, Wales and West Indies will be treated equally.

Now grads from these countries will have to (i) qualify exams in about six subjects, depending on their past education and expertise and (ii) write bar exam in Canada for equivalence.

This is a rather interesting chart of how the students in the different departments fare in terms of virginity rates in Wellesley College. It is regarded as arguably the best women’s college in the US. It also has a very diverse student population frm 66 countries and probably all 50 states.

• 0% of students with ‘studio arts’ major are virgins
• Virginity rates for Spanish major (43%) is much lower than virginity rates for English and French majors (50%)
• Nerds from Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics lose their virginity the least.
• Interestingly, the geeks in perhaps the toughest of them all “Computer Science” have an unusually high promiscuity!

Do you agree with this picture?