BP courts Berkeley

Too many people criticize American Academia for its increasing corporate flavor.

Here's an interesting article, pick of the week at Mother Jones.

Does it Matter if BP Sleeps With UC Berkeley and Californians Fund Their Hotel Room?

By Julia Whitty

Excerpt:

Nature.com, website of the British
science journal Nature, reports on growing concerns about
oil-giant BP's $50-million energy research partnership with
the University of California Berkeley. On February 1, BP
announced it will fund a decade of alternative-energy research
by Berkeley and its partners, the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
-- fueling worries about the affair.

Some fear that the pact -- for
which final details are still being worked out -- could be a
repeat of a controversial $25-million contract that the
university entered into in 1998 with the biotech giant Novartis.
That deal expired in 2003, amid criticism that the academic freedom
of some university researchers had been compromised.

Click here for more.

From Dhaka and Tehran

So I tend to like most things Persian - Kiarostami, miniature paintings, khoresht, the excessive use of nuts and saffron in "polow" - and almost all of whatever I have been exposed to - of Persian architecture, arts and literature. I also love how Farsi sounds.

I was once shooting the shit with a Professor of Islamic History and he pointed to me, how political Islam has had an uneasy relationship with both Iranian and Bengali society. Perhaps.

I suppose the presence of long secular cultures, very productive in the arts and literature, true for both Bengal and Persia, might create problems for certain kinds of Islamisms. Of course, the history of political Islam in any Muslim country is nothing if its not inconsistent and checkered. So it's hard to generalize.

Another interesting analogy between Bangladeshi and Persian societies is the central role Dhaka and Tehran University have played in defining their states' religio-political cultures.


Dhaka University, founded soon after the first Partition of Bengal, to uplift the Muslim masses of East Bengal, went from strength to strength and played a pivotal role in nationalist politics leading up to 1947. After 1947, the university changed character dramatically, as many Hindu Bengalis vacated faculty positions and were replaced by an expanding Bengali Muslim intelligentsia. An intelligentsia that was increasingly secular in the way it imagined a raison d'etre for East Pakistan, and if not that, at least culturally very proudly Bengali. In 1952, the University became a central hub of demonstrations against the Pakistani State. Again, in the '60s, throwing their weight behind an increasingly outspoken Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the University students and faculty came under the radar of the Pakistani State. Little wonder then that many of the Pak Army's worst atrocities were carried out on the campus during Operation Search Light.



Tehran University was founded roughly sixty years before Dhaka University. The University was formed by integrating various independent faculties and schools. Initially, heavily influenced by French curricula, after WWII, it tried to Americanize its system more. Tehran University also became a battleground on which various religious and political skirmishes were fought by those struggling for state power. Of course the students have been more than pawns in these great games - they have played a central role in them.

In 1979, when the world watched a revolution as momentous as the French or Russian, a lot of impetus to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's anti-Reza Shah rhetoric came after mass-atrocities on the TU campus. The campus fell under the control of anti-state guerrillas who made weapons and Molotov cocktails . Of course, the agitation had deeper roots. The leftist, liberal Tehran University elements also witnessed the 2,500 year-old celebration of the Persian Empire as Reza Shah threw a party to end all parties. Pro-American, anti-leftist, anti-Islamist, Reza Shah alienated many, and as draughts raged in Baluchistan and Sistan, he had two hundred chefs flown in from Paris, served a ton of caviar and spent between $50 to a $100 million dollars for lots of corporate guests, both Western and Iranian. Students of Tehran University weren't very impressed.

Of course, the students of both Dhaka and Tehran University continue to be politically active. Although politically conscientious voices are fast disappearing on the DU campus, as Shibir cadres are increasingly ensconcing themselves there. Still DU remains a hot-bed of anti-state politics. As does TU, witnessed by the violent protests against against the closing of the reform-minded newspaper, Salam, and more recently against Mr. Ahmadenijad.


Academically, both universities are formidable with a former alumnus/a in each case, bagging a Noble Peace Prize recently: Shirin Ebadi in 2003 and Muhammad Yunus in 2006.

Private universities

My co-blogger's post on the BRAC University gives appropriate credit where credit's due. I share his sense of optimism about the promising things that are happening there. Particularly impressive are the specialized Institutes and various research and program development partnerships that BRAC Univ. is setting up. There is a longer-term vision of what the institution can achieve and become that's clear here that must be commended.

The mushrooming of private universities in Dhaka and increasingly, outside of Dhaka, has been a positive thing in many ways. For one, it's created a sizable job market for the smarter graduates from the public and other private universities. Teaching at private universities is also a useful source of income for chronically under-paid public university professors and even some civil servants. Private universities have also probably brought more resources and investment into the higher education sector than one would find otherwise.

It's not all positive, though. The fact that professors actually make more money teaching at private universities than at Dhaka University has had a negative impact upon the quality of teaching of many professors at Dhaka University, one hears.

But more importantly, many of the private universities are little more than fly-by-night operations. Departments and programs are opened without adequate facilities or faculties. And some of the better-known institutions have been guilty of this as well. Recall the student unrest over the Pharmacy Department at Stamford University back in the spring. Programs are marketed and sold to unsuspecting, ill-informed (and often, indigent or desperate) customers with promises of more than can be delivered. And then, there's also the problem of standards.

How exactly the excesses and problems with standards should be dealt with is not an easy question. My normal inclination is to say that the market will take care of things as the private education industry settles into an equilibrium. But a number of considerations make me less certain, including:

- The value of educational enrollment to the consumer is not just about the value of what is taught, but also about status, which may have nothing to do with the value of what is taught. This is particularly true in our cultural conditions. Answering "what do you do?" with "I am a master's student at XYZ" is deemed to be socially acceptable for a jobless 25-year old the way that saying, "I am jobless" or "I am looking for a job" does not. This is particularly true when the number of "acceptable" job opportunities are limited. This will mean that the market-driven standards will likely be lower than they would have been if status did not come into the picture.

A countervailing force to this of course will be that many institutions may have incentives (let's say pride) to avoid getting a reputation as that XYZ institution where the jobless 25-year olds enroll to pass their time. And jobless 25 year-olds themselves will want to be enrolled in institutions which do not have such reputations so that enrolling in them remains socially acceptable. This may mean that many institutions will have pockets of low and high standards.
[We see this in the educational market in the US as well, btw. Noone fails from an Ivy League school, for example - not because everyone there's a genius or works hard.]

- A degree is a fairly long investment, switching costs may be quite high, and information about institutions may be costly for prospective students to find. Particularly, think about the students from outside of Dhaka who come to the city to enroll at a program that has been sold to them with glossy brochures and bright promises. There's good reasons for the market to not work optimally.

Further, let's say that the market does work, for the sake of argument. But by the time the market settles into equilibrium, fly-by-night operators will have run away with the savings and dreams of thousands of vulnerable individuals. What do you do about and for them?

Of course, one can claim that rational individuals will take these risks into account, and the price charged by the institutions will reflect these risks. From what I have seen though, even staying with homo economicus, herd models may be more applicable for what happens on the ground. And individuals really may not be rational about such choices in the first place.


So how do we fix the problem? This is a hard one. The tendency is to think that government regulation will fix the problem. But bureaucratic solution, particularly in a country like ours, are prone to regulatory capture. More fundamentally, why do we imagine that a bureaucrat in the education ministry will be in the best position to process information about the allocation of resources and balance competing considerations and claims? A better solution may be private-public partnerships in standard-setting, but again, there are pitfalls (collusive exclusion of competitors, for example, when an industry is allowed to work on setting its own standards) that one has to watch out for. This is one area that I hope to return to over the course of the next few months, as one of my classes addresses exactly these issues.

Brac University Leading the Way

The city of masjids is on its way to becoming the Boston of South Asia, the city of Bishyabidyalays. A Indian journalist friend of mine on his return from an assignment in Bangladesh was remarking on the strangeness that is the private university phenomenon in Dhaka. Apparently, there are more than 50 private universities in the city. The number sounds as ridiculous as the lack of originality of their names (South West, North East, East West, North South are all names of Universities). Therefore, to say that BRAC University was my automatic choice of employer would not be a non sequitur. For "BU" turned out to be a very unique institution in several rather impressive ways.


Firstly, the whole idea of the summer residential semester at their satellite campus in Savar, 90 minutes or so from Dhaka, is unique. This is a semester in which many elite kids who are otherwise shuttling from their air-conditioned, servant-served interiors of homes in the Gulshan-Banani-Baridhara tri-state enclave to equally luxurious private university spaces - are made to live independently for two months - simulating a boarding school or an American college town experience. I hear from ex-students that many went back home after the 2 months of living alone, knowing how to cook basic meals, do their own laundry, be more disciplined overall and emotionally independent. Not to mention the students got to party much.

The courses the summer students took were also quite unique. It was a set-menu: Bangladesh Studies, Ethics, and English Language Proficiency (El-Pro). Bangladesh Studies (which I taught) was a multidisciplinary exposure to the history, literature, folk-life, religion, economics, public and foreign affairs of the Bangladeshi state. Something else I liked about the course was a larger South Asia focus. The course on ethics was largely an introduction to various German philosophers taught by an aging Germanophile professor.

The way El-Pro works is that at the moment of admission, students take a test of proficiency in the English Language and are assigned a score out of 8. For the rest of their time in BRAC, courses ranging from basic writing and speaking skills in English to more advanced compositional skills are meted out to students depending on their level. And what's more impressive is that thanks to Dr. Anisuzzaman, a legend of Bangla Studies at Dhaka University, BRAC U. plans to implement a mandatory Bangla language class in the same model as El-Pro. The idea being that Bangladeshis of this generation need to be perfectly bi-lingual and undermine the substantial divide that seems to exist on university campuses between Bangla-Medium and English-Medium kids. Of course, the divide is also a reflection of class differences, a harder problem to address.

Another high-point for me as well as for the students, were the numerous field trips that BU organized. Students, many of them for the first time (as was also the case for me), got to see various historical sites - from 8th century CE Buddhist Bihars (a Bihar was something like a monastery cum university) to World War II cemeteries. They also obtained first-hand, on-the-ground exposures to BRAC's impressive micro-credit and healthcare services.

Before the end of the semester I attended a high-profile meeting among Brac U. administrators to set up on-campus counseling services. In Bangladeshi society, emotional and mental health are still talked about in very culturally-coded language. Mental ill-health, counseling serves and such are looked at disparagingly. Parents seem to regard such issues as superfluous at best - evil western imports at worst. As a result, I was impressed by Brac U. administrators' seriousness in identifying stress- and depression-related problems in students and making institutional innovations to facilitate their treatment. The idea, still a work-in-progress as I understand, is to have a trained psychiatrist teach an intro course in psychology and build confidence with students thus. The lecturer cum psychiatrist can thus warm up to students and identify better those in need of help.

Brac University also runs a fabulous scholarship "Britti" program that targets the poorest of the poor families in Bangladesh, providing a stipend to stipend to ones that send children to Brac's elementary schools. After which, there is some talent-spotting, and many kids are paid to continue on to secondary school. If they continue to do well, Brac University admits them with full scholarships. This level of sustained financial support and mentoring is also unique. Certainly gives the for-profit enterprise an ideological edge that seems unsurprisingly lacking in the cash-cows that are the other private universities in Dhaka. Lastly, the admissions committee has a quota and greater scholarship arrangements for girl students, ensuring equitable gender distribution on campus.