And yet, it is surprising how little attention is paid to written communication skills. The BPO industry trained thousands of people in spoken English, often accompanied with accent training. But English writing skills get little attention.

Why are English writing skills so important?

Internal business communication in an IT Services company is entirely in English. The offshore model means that business matters that could have been transacted in a meeting or over the phone, necessarily end up on email. If an email, or design document is not well written, a whole day might go by before a clarification or correction can be made. Big waste of productivity!

Second, Indian offshore service providers work with clients who are used to dealing with consultants who typically have excellent writing skills. In western markets particularly, writing with clarity and even flair, is a mark of a good education. That’s what you get compared with.

Over time, most clients on the IT side of the house have adjusted their mental models and no longer automatically connect good writing skills with IT skills. But as we start going in front of business, the same problems will start surfacing again with a new set of clients.

Nominally, Indians in the IT Services industry were educated in English medium schools. I would guess that over 90% of the industry took their XII board exams in English medium. But when it comes to writing English, unfortunately, that doesn’t mean much.

Indian high school education is all geared towards college entrance exams. Entrance exams for engineering colleges don’t test on English. The Physics, Chemistry and Math exams are entirely (?) multiple choice. As a result, nobody cares about English at school. Correction – nobody cares about any language, period.

And then came the mobile revolution. The kids coming out of college now write emails, the way they text. Short, unintelligible sentences full of typos. Not surprising since for them words texted far exceed words written in full sentences in email or any other form of writing.

Go to the comments section of any Indian publication online. You’ll see what I mean. I can’t understand half of what’s written there.

This is actually now a crisis. I believe that with the new generation, writing full sentences is just not cool any more. Every idea must be conveyed in 140 characters or less. Much of it will be SMS English. There will be typos galore, because, you know what, I am too busy to review what I just wrote. If you can’t understand what I’ve written that’s your problem.

As always, the industry will have to come up with its own solutions. We can never rely on the Indian education system to meet our needs. But unlike technical knowledge, it is really difficult to start writing well if you have ignored it in school and college.

English is the de facto national language of India. It is a bitter truth.

The article goes on to depict this battle between people who want to make English a national language and those who don’t. If English becomes a national language then

Accepting that English is the national language would have benefits that far outweigh soothing the emotions of Indian nationalism….

The chief beneficiaries if English attained this status would be the children who attend the free schools run by the central and the state governments. An overwhelming majority of such schools are not taught in English.

This was news to me. I thought English was an official language. The Wikipedia entry on India says that both Hindi and English are official languages. English is a ‘subsidiary’ official language, whatever that means.

I think the English genie is out of the bottle. It is the language of the aspirations of young Indians. Cultural jingoism is not going to be able to push back the economic drive of English. To get ahead in India today, to get a well paying job, you need English.

There are issues with this situation, of course. From an earlier post

One, English is a self-perpetuating advantage that creates haves and have nots across generations. If your parents can speak in English, if their friends and their children speak in English, you are much likelier to grow up to speak English. This self-perpetuation is true about education in general (if your parents are educated you are likelier…) but while better access to books, schools and teachers can, to a large extent, break the cycle for general education, this is really hard to do when it comes to speaking a non-native language.

Two, an English medium instruction may actually be detrimental to a child’s education. There must be millions of children who sit through say, a History class in English, not understanding much of what is being taught.

From another post English Medium Education Can Lead to Poorer English

Across the cross section of India, I think English medium education works to disperse educational outcomes. For a small minority, it results in better English skills but no better general educational outcomes. This small minority, who have an “English friendly” environment, an English medium education poses no hurdle, or a very small one. But the rewards are linked to opportunities in the global marketplace for higher education and jobs, including the export oriented service industries in India.

For the large majority, however, according to the research, English medium education works differently and leads to poorer educational outcomes and poorer language skills. If this is the case, it must be a matter of great concern to education administrators.

If things continue as they are today the future will see:

• English, not just talent and hard work, will be a key determinant of income. Did your parents speak English? Could they afford to send you to a English only convent? These factors will determine the kind of job Indians will get perhaps more than their capabilities. Class mobility while not being engrained for generations, will be restrained.
• We need a well educated population – for a 21st century economy, for a well informed electorate. Is a forced diet of English medium education going to get us there? Will children learn elementary school science better in English or their mother tongue? Do we even have the teachers who can teach Biology in English, in the numbers needed?
• Will English medium students actually join the work force with good English skills? If you go by the writing skills that one sees in the comments section of Indian websites, I seriously doubt that all the years of English medium education has done them any good.

If there is any policy direction that we need here it’s that India has to pay serious attention to the manufacturing side of the economy. Sophisticated manufacturing industries value skills. Factory workers don’t need English skills to work with global clients. Just like Germany’s world-beating machine tool industry is all German speaking. While the capital markets industry, being integrated into the global capital markets, speaks English.

And if we focused more on teaching English better, rather than teaching every subject in English, we just might turn out better workers.

The Financial Times has its Global MBA rankings for 2011 out. IIM Ahmedabad is ranked 11th. It was not ranked in previous years. So this is completely out of the blue.

The Economist recently also published their MBA rankings. IIM Ahmedabad was ranked 85th – the only Indian MBA program to be on the list. Which is better than not being on the list, but only just.

So the FT ranking is quite a shot in the arm. I have never had any doubt that my fellow alumni can stand toe to toe with the best. The faculty and research, I know, could improve. But the students are the best anywhere. Yes, they are picky and high maintenance and tend to not fit into every organization. But, at least in part, that is because they are just smarter than the people around them.

OK enough self-serving praise. If IIM A is so hot, how come it didn’t even get a rank till last year?

You have to apply to be ranked, and I don’t know if the institute applied or not. But even so, there are a few things it has ranked high on, which may depend on changes to methodology, and that may have pushed it higher in the rankings.

Take a look at the FT page I have linked to above. It allows some pretty neat analysis on-the-fly.

IIM A has ranked high on Salary Today (3rd) and Weighted Salary (2nd). Since these were computed using PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) it has ranked quite high. It also ranked high on Increase in Salary, before and after the MBA (3rd). Also on Careers and Employment.

Not surprisingly, it ranked low (92nd) on Research and International Faculty (last). It also ranked low on Women in Faculty (12%).

Now, how all this was factored into the final rankings is not something I went into. I expect, Salaries must have had a pretty high weighting in the overall rank computation. Using PPP there, helps a lot, and I would argue is absolutely the right thing to do.

Now if only the institute were freed from the clutches of the government it could do something to attract world-class faculty and focus a lot more on research. Like many things in India (the economy, for instance) IIM Ahmedabad shines, in spite of, not because of its ownership by the Government of India.

[Update: As many readers have informed me, the FT ranking is for the PGP X program which is a 12 month full time MBA that accepts students with considerable work experience (avg 10 years), unlike the PGP program which is a 2 year MBA but accepts many (most?) students straight after college (as I did). The PGP program does not qualify, because of the low work ex requirement, for the FT rankings. The PGP X program, which is new, was ranked for the first time.]

This could become one of the largest immigration frauds to ever hit the U.S. university system

With 95% of the students involved said to be of Indian origin, hundreds may face deportation

Tri Valley University, here in the Bay Area is involved in what might be the biggest immigration frauds with student visas. From The Hindu

When they launched a sting operation against Susan Xiao-Ping Su, the head of TVU, with undercover officers posing as foreign students, she was willing to offer them I-20, or student visas, even though they admitted they had no intention to attend courses and had improper status from previous schools.

Over 95% of the students are of Indian origin.

The TVU story is over. But the website is still up. It projects a strong association with “Christian education”. It won’t be the first operation to use religion as a cover-up.

God has been with us for every step the university takes. Initially starting with engineering program, Tri-Valley University quickly develop all of its academic programs in Christian ministry, business, law and medicine with helps and contributions from many faculty members, volunteers, as well as renown professionals.

TVU appears to be very new. They applied for accreditation in 2008. No news on whether it was received or not.

The first important milestone date of Tri-Valley University’s development is June 29th, 2008, the initial contact of Tri-Valley University with our accreditation agency. Ever since then, Tri-Valley University has been structured according to the prestigious accreditation requirement for all its institution infrastructure, administration, and academic programs in spirit and practice.

Because it is so new, it probably hasn’t graduated too many students, though there may be some who have transferred credits elsewhere. Those credits will be worth very little now.

TVU exploited the scarcity of US visas and Su’s ability to award them. There are many, many people around the world who want to get into the United States, somehow, anyhow. H1-B visas are already scarce. USCIS ran out of the 2011 quota on Jan 26. That F-1 visa is worth something, even if the education around it is a sham.

A similar thing happened in the early days of the IT boom in India. There weren’t enough engineering graduates coming out of colleges for the IT Services companies. Which led to the rise of the donation college – colleges that essentially granted you a degree in exchange for money. The quality of education itself was almost immaterial. The smarter colleges focused on getting employers to come for campus hiring. Then stick some kind of entry criteria at the admission level so that you aren’t admitting totally unemployable students and the virtuous cycle of good students – good jobs – more good students starts working in your favour.

Some day, there will be a shakeout in the engineering college industry in India. Supply will catch up. Salaries offered on campus will diverge. And the game will be over for the fly-by-nighters. But then the owners never really invested too much in education anyway. The students will be left up the creek without a paddle.

It didn’t have to be this way. If accreditation agencies in India took their job to be anything other than making money for themselves, you could still ensure quality education while growing supply. But then, that wouldn’t be India, would it.

[Update: ToI has the best piece on the TVU scam]

Friend and former colleagues P R Ganapathy and Sandeep Shroff are both involved with non-profits. Guns, who is going back to India will spend part of his time with Teach for India. Sandeep has been involved with the Indian Literacy Project here in the Bay Area for many years. I do my little bit through my father’s trust Digjyoti Trust that supports higher education for orphaned and disadvantaged children.

Aside from the non-profit route, others are succeeding with a commercial model, but with a social objective embedded within it. Samhita Academy is one such educational institution. Their flagship school in Bangalore is doing quite well even though it is in just its third year.

The school is backed by the family of S. D. Shibulal, a friend, former colleague and founder of Infosys. Asha Thomas, Exec Director and her team have done a fantastic job in laying a solid foundation of the school. The infrastructure, staff, teaching methods – everything points to an excellent school in the making.

25% of the student population of Samhita Academy comprises of disadvantaged children whose costs are borne by the school. As Samhita Academy sets up more schools this objective will carry into the other schools as well. However, and this is the interesting thing, Samhita Academy is a commercially run enterprise. The fees must cover all costs. Why? because Shibu believes that this is a better model. If the schools are run like a commercial enterprise, the model becomes much more scalable. Ultimately, the social objective too is served better if the schools succeed commercially and expand to many more cities.

Samhita wants to now expand with more schools in other cities. They are looking for a leadership team. If you or anyone you know has climbed all the mountains you wanted to in your corporate job, and wanted to do something different and more meaningful, please contact Samhita. Or drop me a note and I’ll pass it on.

One that English medium education can lead to “poor educational outcomes”

“It is now well established that when a child begins learning in his or her first language that child is more likely to succeed academically and is better able to learn additional languages.”

I blogged about this in my post More English and More Non-English.

But the other interesting point made is that English medium education can lead to general “language impoverishment”. (L2 here is English and L1 is the mother tongue.)

Starting L2 as early as possible, and teaching as much of the curriculum as possible through the L2 does not result in effective or widespread L2 acquisition. At best, this results in “subtractive bilingualism”: an L2 acquired at the expense of L1. Most often, the result is simply language impoverishment; not being able to use either L1 or L2 adequately.

The essay cites many references. Please go read it if you can.

The second point, that an early start or transition to English medium education, can actually lead to communicating in all languages poorly, including English, is counter intuitive and some of you may disagree with it just based upon your own personal experience or the people you know. But I would argue that the readers of this blog likely had a privileged environment – exposure to English at home and with friends early on etc. – or may have been gifted enough to overcome the disadvantage. So you are not exactly a random sample of India’s population.

Across the cross section of India, I think English medium education works to disperse educational outcomes. For a small minority, it results in better English skills but no better general educational outcomes. This small minority, who have an “English friendly” environment, an English medium education poses no hurdle, or a very small one. But the rewards are linked to opportunities in the global marketplace for higher education and jobs, including the export oriented service industries in India.

For the large majority, however, according to the research, English medium education works differently and leads to poorer educational outcomes and poorer language skills. If this is the case, it must be a matter of great concern to education administrators.

Whether there is language impoverishment in India compared to other countries, is a tough question to answer. In the companies I have worked in, American employees in the same role have uniformly had better English skills than Indian employees. But language impoverishment would imply that the English skills of the American employees were better than the Mother Tongue skills of Indian employees, which I wouldn’t know. My guess is they are.

Now if you think about it, if the child has learnt to use the word in a sentence, there is little value in an illustration. Especially, since most of the words pertained to intangible things like “blatant”. If it were an art class I can still see some value in an exercise where students reflect and then draw a picture depicting “blatant”. But not for 50 such words and not for an English class.

There is a phrase for this kind of work. Its called “Make Work”. Basically teachers are giving homework just to make up the 3 hours or whatever of homework they need to give per day. Like many issues, there is economics behind Make Work Homework.

Public schools and most private schools in the US have a student-teacher ratio that has gotten higher and higher over time. Obviously, there are cost reasons for this. The primary driver of cost efficiencies in a school is the average number of students in a class.

A teacher spends time on preparing for class, grading homework and other small activities. The time required for preparing for class does not vary by the number of students in class. It also goes down with experience. But grading homework varies directly with the number of students. And it can add up to quite a lot of work. If the teacher is hard pressed for time, she can’t reduce the amount of homework given to students. But she can give the kind of homework that takes less time to check. The example I cite above is exactly that kind of homework – with asymmetric workloads for student and teacher.

I believe this is the root cause of Make Work Homework. It takes a lot of time for the student to draw an illustration and very little to eyeball it while grading. This asymmetry works in favor of the teacher. She can give the prescribed amount of homework and still keep her grading workload low.

This is not to say that anything requiring an illustration is Make Work. Not at all. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary. Visual learning can be very powerful. And sometimes it can be justified with the argument that children learn in different ways and at different paces. What may seem like gratuitous drawing and coloring to one student may be essential reinforcement of what is being taught in class for another student.

But a lot of what passes as homework for our children, is the product of a teacher trying to reduce his workload.

During one of the few serious sessions on campus, we talked to some of the current PGPs and PGP Xs about careers and career choices. (PGP is the Post Graduate Program, which is the regular two year MBA. PGP X is a 12 month program akin to an Exec MBA). Given how bleak the job scene out there looks, and how concerned the students were, I thought I’d do a post for IIM A students graduating this year or the next.

First the bad news. The recession in the developed economies is not going away any time soon. Not this year, probably not even next year. Even when it comes back, it will be years before employment gets back to its peak before the recession. Asset prices may not regain their peaks for even longer.

Part b of the bad news is that India is not immune to what is happening in the western world. However, I remain optimistic about India. I think the size of its domestic market will cushion the downside. Growth rates may not get back to 9% in a rush, but then my graduating class didn’t see these growth rates for the first fifteen years of our careers and we did fine.

Finance jobs that accounted for most of the top quartile, will be the most impacted. [an earlier post]This includes Investment Banking, Asset Management, Private Equity, Research – not so much retail banking which will have a different trendline in India, I think.

In the US it is quite clear that landscape of Finance jobs has changed forever. Financial Services in the US went from accounting for 15% of all corporate profits to 30% in just 15 years. Even if its ‘true’ share is 20%, that means a massive deflation of the sector.

In India, the secular growth of the economy should mean that the capital markets should remain strong in job growth. However, even in India, there are some things that would have changed forever. The use of leverage, for instance, globally has undergone an overnight change to where you simply can’t amplify returns like you used to. That means there’s less available to pay the banker. FII capital flows will also take a long time to get back to their peaks. If asset prices are weak, finance jobs and compensation suffer.

That said, a finance job will always be the best paying job in the market. I can’t think of any other industry where a smart individual and a decent balance sheet can spin money like an investment banker can. There may be fewer jobs, but they will be the best ones. So if that’s what you want to do, go for it, but have a back up.

Oh, and one more thing. That bus that Lehman and a few other banks used to back up at the IIM gates to load them up for New York. Forget about it. Stick to India, that’s where the fortunes are going to be made. Build your networks in India because that’s what will help you be successful in your job as well as get a new one when you want it.

Well, that’s a big help, I hear you say. Finance covers about 2% of the graduating class this year. So if you are not in the lucky few who land a job in these sectors, what should you do? I won’t cover each industry individually, but here are a few guidelines:

• Pick companies with lots of staying power. Lot’s of cash or big consumer businesses, for example. If there was a time when big was beautiful, this is it. Shut your mind to the bureaucracy, the slow promotions, the mindless toiling in the basement before you get noticed or promoted. Be smart. Losing your job in a bad job market may not mean you go unemployed (the letters IIM still get the attention of recruiters). But you might lose control of the direction of your career.
• Pick companies with a history of hiring MBAs. If they have a management training program, that is a good sign. Think long-term. You want to get a solid grounding in the industry so that when the economy improves you have the skills to get ahead. If your employer is investing in you to train you, grab it with both hands. A management training program is also a good sign that the company will not ruin its reputation by not honoring an offer letter or doing a LIFO layoff.
• Don’t worry about getting locked into a sector. If you go into say FMCG, there is no reason why you can’t make a transition into any other sector when things turn around. These are unprecedented times and the old rules just don’t apply. In any case, a career is a long time and losing a year while shifting sectors (if indeed that happens) is just a blip in a long career. I know people who have done a second MBA or have sat for the Civil Services and then gone back to industry and have done phenomenally well.
• Don’t turn up your nose at sectors other than the usual top MBA employers. They may not pay as much to begin with and their interviewers may speak in accented English, but those industries will also grow with the rest of the economy and they will need your management skills more than the others. And don’t forget, the road to the top can be a lot easier if you are not competing with a bunch of high achievers from your batch.

But when all’s said and done, the biggest favour you can do to yourself is this – ignore my advice and follow your heart. For there is nothing worse than regretting a choice you made because it was the rational thing to do, not what you wanted to do. You are among the fortunate few that made it to IIM A. I don’t want this to go to your head, but there is no state of the economy where you will be left among the unemployed for any length of time. And take it from someone who has worked with MBAs from around the world – you are still the best.

Photo credit zimble thimble

The night before we went to an old favourite gujju thali joint called Vishala. The bull session back at the Institute went on till 3am.

A few things I learnt over the trip –

• Indian businesses have started postponing hiring. The credit squeeze is hurting business. In export sectors, the hardening rupee and the interest rates are like a double whammy. Mr. Chidambaram, enough already.
• In a country like India where real estate is expensive and labour is cheap, a small format grocery retail chain like Subhiksha is far more competitive that a large format, push-your-cart-through-the-aisle one. In case you missed the Info Edge or Indiainfoline.com IPOs, here’s your chance to buy into the ‘futures’ of PGP 89 – watch out for the Subhiksha IPO.
• Ahmedabad has the best infrastructure in India. Broad, double carriageway roads. A massive airport. Sufficient power. They are doing things the right way over there. If we were to ever build another office outside of Mumbai, Ahmedabad would be a top choice.

A tragic event occurred last month. Prof. M N Vora, our Marketing professor at IIM, passed away. He was 73. He was a great teacher – much loved and somewhat feared by those of us who would occasionally land up in class not having read the case. He taught generations of IIM A grads who went on to do great marketing in leading Indian consumer product companies. He also did a lot of work with local Ahmedabad small businesses. He will be missed. I reproduce his obituary below which is on our alumni site but behind a user id/password wall.

It is with profound sadness I write that Prof. M.N.Vora who taught many of us while were students of IIMA passed away today morning due to a massive cardiac failure. He was 73 years of age. Even after his retirement from IIMA, he used to teach here as a Visiting Faculty.

Prof. Vora was one of the pioneers of marketing education in India. The first set of Indian case studies on marketing issues were written by him. He was an outstanding teacher and perhaps the most dedicated teacher that I have come across in my professional life. He never looked for personal glory in what ever he did; but always focused on helping his students learn better. Till the last days, he was active.

He came from a very modest background. Being a bright student, he pursued his education after 10th standard with the support of elders from his village. While studying, he has worked as a news paper distribution person and has taken tuition for school students to meet the study expenses. Be completed his B.Com from Gujarat University with first rank. He immediately joined H.L. College of Commerce as an instructor and while working, he completed his M.Com and Cost Accounting qualifications. He then went to the Wharton School for his MBA. On his return, he joined IIM Calcutta as one of the first faculty members. He joined IIM Ahmedabad as soon as the Institute started. He then went to Harvard for his DBA.

I, as his student, pray to the Almighty to give his family (his wife and daughter & her family) the courage to bear this loss.

Vora sir, rest in peace.

I left Hisar after my 10th boards. On trips back to Hisar to see family I would drop in for a chat with my school teachers. Then my family left Hisar and I never went back until recently the internet brought some of my old school mates together. On this trip to India I went back to Hisar and to Campus School after more than 20 years. It was quite a trip down memory lane.

Within hours of our arrival in Hisar, we went to see our old school. I didn’t know what to expect, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. The school was in ruins. Every spot that held a cherished memory of my childhood was now overgrown with weeds or in complete disrepair. It looked like something that was at the end of its natural life and should be put out of its misery. But in reality, the school had more than five times the number of students it had when I was there!

The playgrounds were all overgrown. The classrooms were falling apart. I met a few of my old teachers who lamented the state of the school. Over-stuffed with students, no funds for maintenance, interference in teacher appointments – the school was no longer the best school in Hisar. It was among the worst. University staff – those who could afford it – were sending their children to better schools outside the University.

But come to think of it, why should I be surprised about how the school turned out. It is after all a government school. It is funded by the University, which is funded by the Haryana state government. Like any institution funded by the government it would have been under-funded while having no control of fees. The use of those funds, wherever there was discretion involved, would have seen outside interference if not downright corruption. Teacher appointments would have been based upon many considerations other than competence. Ditto, teacher performance management. Slowly, the parents who cared would have pulled their children out and sent them to schools that were further away, but offered a better education. As the quality of students dropped, results would have dropped, sending the school into a tailspin.

If you read this blog, you know that I am a strong proponent of the power of markets and private enterprise. I think that it is great that there are so many private schools and colleges opening up in India. They are much needed. Our ‘population dividend’ is useless unless we have a healthy and educated workforce.

But private schools and market forces are not going to fix primary education in India. Gurcharan Das has an interesting article on the subject. Some of the data he presents is worth reproducing here:

The Kremer-Murlidharan study shows that one out of four teachers is absent from our state primary schools and of those present one out of two is not teaching.

And another one,

Today, the government the Centre and states together spends on an average Rs 4,000 per child per year on primary education. Headmasters confirm that a child can get a decent education for Rs 4,000.

This last quote is quite interesting. It raises the delicious free-market possibility of a ‘school voucher system’. The school voucher system has strong support from many economists (Milton Friedman first suggested it) and Republicans in the US and is actually being implemented in a few states to mixed results. Basically, the way it works is that the government issues vouchers to people for their children’s education. Parents can take their children to any school and use the vouchers to pay the school fees. Good schools will attract more students, bad schools won’t and basically, the market will decide which schools deserve to thrive. Since the vouchers would work at private schools also, the system would incentivize schools to offer higher quality education to attract more students and be able to raise fees.

Obviously, this kind of a system would never work in India. Like 80% of our socially targeted spending, it would never reach the beneficiary. We have no option but to make our government schools work. They serve sections of the society – rural, poor – where the difference that education makes is great. The big question is how?

Anyone interested in a more in-depth study on education in developing countries will find this interesting.

Also, on my trip to Hisar I took this photo.

They clearly haven’t repainted in the 20 years I’ve not visited, but if you look closely at the map of HAU you’ll find something interesting – just the way it was when I left 20 years ago. The legend at the bottom ‘You are here’ appears without any arrow to indicate where you are on the map!

Some things are meant to stay the way they are!