Saturday, January 11, 2014

India's MOOC experiment: is it ill-conceived?

India has kicked off a big experiment in MOOC with a hundred engineering colleges getting recorded lectures of IIT professors in nine subjects, according to an article in BS:

Under the QEEE programme, courses will be taught by a combination of senior Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) faculty and others. During regular class hours, the students will hear and see faculty deliver recorded lectures. Regular faculty will be present during class hours, in a supportive role. In the evening, e-tutorials will be held to enable live virtual discussions between students and tutors. Real time online experiments will be made available via e-labs.
According to a news report, as many as nine subjects will be delivered in MOOC format, including in the fields of mechanical engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering and mathematics. The courses will all be in advanced subjects such as wireless connections, linear algebra, and heat transfer for mechanical engineering.


What took my breath away was the quote from the founder of one of the leading MOOC providers, Udacity, Sebastian Thrun:
Thrun said in an interview he "was realising, we don't educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product. It was a painful moment (when I realised this)."

Thrun's statement came in response to the weak performance of students who took MOOCs over the Udacity platform at San Jose State University in remedial mathematics, college algebra and elementary statistics. Only 25 per cent of the online students passed, less than half the pass rate for students who took the course face-to-face in real time. Thrun is so distressed with the performance of MOOCs that he is changing the focus of Udacity from academic education to corporate education
.



The author, Rafiq Dossani, raises pertinent questions about the viability of the programme. He distinguishes between MOOC for basic courses and MOOC for advanced courses. The latter require far more interaction in order to contribute to learning, he contends. Hence the former are more likely to succeed; deploying resources for the latter is not efficient.

I would go along with this proposition and I would add that MOOC can be used for scaling up student numbers at elite institutions by using it to provide very basic concepts, background and additional information and analysis. Scarce faculty time can then be deployed for exposition of more advanced topics.

Where MOOC is intended as a substitute for class-room education (other than executive training), the employability of students who have taken a MOOC diploma must be tested before we commit more resources.




 

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Economist's Aam admi politician of the year

The Economist selects its country of the year based on the way Paraguay's president conducts himself. Here is one politician at the top who actually lives up to the ideas professed by Aap here:
President José Mujica (of Paraguay), is admirably self-effacing. With unusual frankness for a politician, he referred to the new law as an experiment. He lives in a humble cottage, drives himself to work in a Volkswagen Beetle and flies economy class. Modest yet bold, liberal and fun-loving, Uruguay is our country of the year.

Saturday, January 04, 2014

Labour's falling share of national income

Workers' share of national income has declined across the globe, the Economist reports. It has happened not just  in the US but in more egalitarian economies such as those of Scandinavia  and it in emerging markets as well.

What has caused this and should be something be done about it? The Economist dismisses the familiar theories: exploitation by large firms and weakening unions. Labour's share of income, it notes, has declined in economies with different levels of unionisation. The bigger factors seem to be greater use of IT, which has increased the wages of those with better skills, greater capital-intensity and globalisation, which has led to jobs being exported to cheaper parts of the world.

What should be done? Jobs go to those with better skills, so education and worker retraining are important. More jobs need to be created - and this could mean a cut in corporate tax rates. Thirdly, higher taxes on capital gains, which would harmonise taxes on incomes of labour with those on returns to capital.

A decline in workers' share of income and a rise in incomes at the top are both contributors to growing inequality. Policy makers need to wake up before the social costs become unaffordable.

Friday, January 03, 2014

Where India's financial sector is truly world class

India's financial sector is truly world class on one dimension- gender equality. Female-led lending institutions control 40% of assets, a figure not matched, perhaps, by any other economy's financial sector, says a report in FT. Some of the institutions that have female heads: SBI, Axis Bank, ICICI, JP Morgan, HSBC, Morgan Stanley and NSE. At one point, two out of the four deputy governors at RBI were women. Whew!

AAP - a reality check

More than the AAP's success in Delhi, it is the media's treatment of the party that has come as a surprise to me- until one or two days ago.

Let us leave aside the uncritical acceptance of the AAP's approach to corruption- that it is a matter of some bad guys misusing office. One would have expected the media to make the elementary point that corruption is built into social and economic structures. What is talked of as corruption is some individuals taking better advantage of the system than their peers. It is not about tackling the underlying structure at all. When you replace one set of individuals with another, nothing much changes; it is the underlying structure that needs to change.

Mercifully, with the passing of the Lokpal Bill, both AAP and the media have gone beyond tackling corruption as the only or even the central issue. The AAP itself has positioned itself as addressing the needs of the masses. It has played on the perception that corruption is one reason why the masses do not have their basic needs met. That is, conceptually, a better position to take.

Suppose we move on to the bread and butter issues. There is a case for what the AAP has attempted in Delhi, namely, subsidies for water and power, provided such subsidies are carefully targeted and the costs of such subsidies are thought through not only for Delhi but at the national level. It is important to address the question: is the AAP approach to water and power replicable all over the country? In other words, subsidies will have to fit into an acceptable fiscal framework. Astonishingly, the very media, which has been vocal in criticising the UPA for its welfarist approach and for subsidies implied in the Food Security Act, Right to Education etc, seemed bowled over by AAP's rapid fire announcement of power and water subsidies in Delhi.

"AAP DELIVERS ON POLL PROMISE", the headlines boomed. Yes, but at what cost? More broadly, many of the measures favoured by AAP would position it to the left of not just the UPA but the erstwhile CPM in West Bengal. There is, perhaps, space in Indian politics for such a position but is this what the financial press would favour? I thought the weight of media opinion, as also the general economic wisdom, was in favour of moving away from subsidies and towards more investment as a means of addressing the needs of the poor.

Fortunately, in the last couple of days, we are seeing AAP being subjected to a reality check. ET and Business Standard have both voiced serious reservations about the AAP approach. ET comments:
Its water policy seeks to further subsidise those with piped metered connections, barely half the households, never mind that over 50% of Delhi's daily supply is lost in leaky distribution.

The AAP decisions on water and power would have several unintended consequences. For one, the plan for nil water charges for up to 667 litres per day, and a sharp increase in the rates thereafter, would be perverse incentive for meter tampering and exaggerated claims of leakage in the system. What is required, instead, is a vastly improved piped network that reaches all and sundry, and regulated user charges linked to usage. .....  


.....As for power tariffs, we need to eschew needless politicisation of the rates. The AAP government has reduced tariffs 50% by executive order for those consuming up to 400 units a month, who constitute a large majority. It would make the rates probably the cheapest nationally, but also among the most subsidised. Worse, the fiat would discourage badly-needed power investments, including in last-mile distribution.

Business Standard is equally critical:
Responsible governments know that subsidies are easy to declare, and not so easy to take back. There are also leakages and misuses of such subsidies, which in the normal course can be neither plugged nor prevented. In its rush to fulfil campaign promises, the AAP has chosen to overlook the principles of good governance. And, in the act, it has rendered its promise of an audit irrelevant, too. The new government need not be in such a hurry; responsible policy making requires it should ascertain the facts first. If it fails to do so, all its potential may come to naught.

I might add: too much should not made of the superior moral calibre of the leadership of AAP or its commitment to austerity. The idea that there is a special set of people who got together at AAP and who are free from the temptations of power and money and are there only to serve people is ridiculous. There could be some committed individuals (as there are in Congress or BJP or in any other party) but the distribution of virtue or vice in the party as a whole is unlikely to be different from that in society at large. After all, it is not as if members of the AAP were parachuted onto the planet from their abodes in heaven.

As for austerity, that's how the Congress started off (and it still keeps that pretence at AICC meetings where people sit on the floor and are propped up by cushions). We know now what the Congress version of austerity means.

It is best to recognise that the exercise of power requires certain privileges, whether in the form of a large house or office or a certain minimum of security or a police escort to minimise time spent in commuting. It is good that the media has highlighted the twin duplex bungalows to which Kejriwal intends to move; and also the elaborate security that was required at the metros to facilitate AAP members reaching the Ram Lila maidan for the swearing-in ceremony (and this security was, from all accounts, much greater than the deployment at the typical swearing-in function). The media should also have focused on the disturbing fact that Kejriwal has chosen to keep so many important portfolios (home, power etc) to himself. Is it suggested that nobody in AAP qualifies for these positions? One was ominously reminded of AICC general secretary Digivijay Singh's observation that there is a dictatorial streak in Kejriwal.

We need those in power to have a coherent set of policies and the administrative ability to implement those policies; we do not need self-proclaimed ascetics or a set of godmen free from human foibles. The AAP, like any other party, must be judged not by appearances but by the acid test of sustainable performance.
As for power tariffs, we need to eschew needless politicisation of the rates. The AAP government has reduced tariffs 50% by executive order for those consuming up to 400 units a month, who constitute a large majority. It would make the rates probably the cheapest nationally, but also among the most subsidised. Worse, the fiat would discourage badly-needed power investments, including in last-mile distribution.


Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/28253857.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
The AAP decisions on water and power would have several unintended consequences. For one, the plan for nil water charges for up to 667 litres per day, and a sharp increase in the rates thereafter, would be perverse incentive for meter tampering and exaggerated claims of leakage in the system. What is required, instead, is a vastly improved piped network that reaches all and sundry, and regulated user charges linked to usage.

Its water policy seeks to further subsidise those with piped metered connections, barely half the households, never mind that over 50% of Delhi's daily supply is lost in leaky distribution.

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/28253857.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Its water policy seeks to further subsidise those with piped metered connections, barely half the households, never mind that over 50% of Delhi's daily supply is lost in leaky distribution.

Its water policy seeks to further subsidise those with piped metered connections, barely half the households, never mind that over 50% of Delhi's daily supply is lost in leaky distribution.

Its water policy seeks to further subsidise those with piped metered connections, barely half the households, never mind that over 50% of Delhi's daily supply is lost in leaky distribution.