The founders felt that the education system was not doing its job, that we were all products of this rote learning system and that for the new world students needed a new kind of education and that's where the idea of Ashoka came about.
Three takeaways worth carrying forward.
- 01
I think the unique promise is a world class education right here in India, the ability to learn for life so no matter what you do later because these students will have multiple careers over the course of their lives.
- 02
I think speaking of Ashoka, the gap that we are filling is really at the level of teaching people how to learn and how to think and giving them knowledge of various aspects of various disciplines at the same time.
- 03
So while we may physically not have lacks and lacks of students, hopefully what we are trying to do will influence other universities to reach the same thought to those lacks and lacks of students.
Connected to the DMAasia operating frame.
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Durable lessons from the record.
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- Treat digital transformation as a behaviour change, not a software purchase.
- Measure effectiveness without losing the brand story.
If brand purpose is now table stakes, what will make the brand genuinely harder to ignore?
Take it into Unfinished Business →READABLE TRANSCRIPT764 words
and that for the new world students needed a new kind of education and that's where the idea of Ashoka came about. Hi Ali, to start off there is a significant case for quality higher education in India which the public sector can definitely not solve at scale. How has Ashoka University stepped in to fill this gap? So I think that's the obvious reason why Ashoka was set up. The founders felt that the education system was not doing its job, that we were all products of this rote learning
system and that for the new world students needed a new kind of education and that's where the idea of Ashoka came about. Obviously we are not going to replace the public university system but we are providing a very strong alternative and the hope is that this will in turn influence other universities to introduce elements of what we are doing and you can see that today actually including even the technical universities which are talking about liberal education which they never used to before
Ashoka came along. So while we may physically not have lacks and lacks of students, hopefully what we are trying to do will influence other universities to reach the same thought to those lacks and lacks of students. Which brings me to the next question. What is the unique promise that Ashoka University offers to young students in India? I think the unique promise is a world class education right here in India, the ability to learn for life so no matter what you do later because these students will have
multiple careers over the course of their lives. Whatever you do later what you learned at Ashoka will help you to navigate and lastly you will be taught by the finest faculty in the world. Skill gap is a major concern for the industry with the curriculum not keeping pace with what the workplace needs today. How does one solve this? Depends on the level of people that you are talking about. I think speaking of Ashoka, the gap that we are filling is really at the level of teaching people how to learn and how to think and giving them
knowledge of various aspects of various disciplines at the same time. As far as some other vocational skills are concerned, I think the government is trying to do something there. But I think you are right, this gap needs to be filled immediately if we have to have any hope of giving these people a worthwhile employment and good prospects in the future. India has traditionally been known as an engineering and IT powerhouse and liberal arts education has suffered in that respect.
How does one balance out the skill? Well, that's what we are trying to do. I think as an engineer myself having been there, I know that what we learned was very bookish and then same with management. It was almost assumed if you do well in school, you will do engineering and then you will do an MBA. But what that is teaching you was never explained to us and whether that is teaching life skills or not. And to that extent, what we are doing now with the liberal curriculum is teaching students what
they are actually going to need when they start working. So, technical skills are not enough. Even so called management skills are not enough. You need to know how to write, how to speak, how to communicate, how to connect the dots, how to look at problems from 360 degrees. That's what we are trying to do and seems to have met with a very good response so far. Research is a major area where most universities in India fall behind, global rankings especially. How do we change this culture?
I think you have to get the right faculty in. Obviously, you can't change all the faculty that you have, but you have to link incentives to research. Faculty must be incentivized to do research. It must be part of their goals. They must feel the need to create new knowledge because universities are not just about teaching what already exists, but about creating new knowledge and that's again something that we try to do. Interestingly, students are a very big part of assisting faculty in the research. So,
there is no reason why if you have the right students, even faculty who have never done research research before can be incentivized to do it. Thank you so much.