Why are IT honchos plumbing for education?

Last week one of the marathoners of the IT industry called it quits. Pramod Bhasin, CEO of Genpact and one of the founders of the business process outsourcing industry in India, said he was stepping down. What is he doing next? Something in education, he’s been telling the media. [caption id=“attachment_13710” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Does education in India needs an IT connect? Jim Young/Reuters”]  [/caption] I am not surprised, a bit perplexed, though. Bhasin is one of the many top IT executives to have exited the sector recently (either consciously, citing exhaustion as a reason, or falling victim to organisational restructuring) and have named education as the place of second innings. Names that come to mind offhand are Mohandas Pai of Infosys, Ravi Venkatesan ex-chairman of Microsoft India, Srini Koppulu ex-MD of Microsoft’s India Development Centre in Hyderabad, and so on. The only person I’ve had  a conversation on this is with Venkatesan (during this incisive exit interview in Forbes India) when he said, among other things, he’d like to start a university as he is concerned about the quality of higher education in India. Since then he’s become a board member of Infosys and we haven’t heard much about his education foray.  (It’s still too early I must admit.) After his resignation from Infosys on 22 April, Pai announced his involvement in setting up a new economics school at Bangalore University. As far as I know, Koppulu, who left Microsoft, last August, has funded an online gaming company in Hyderabad Street Mojo. Sure, that doesn’t mean he’s not interested in education anymore but that leaves me wondering why these executives consider education as their next battleground. Is it a noble cause to lend their name to (as most of these people have created some sort of a personal brand name) at the time of exiting a high-flying job? Or is it simply that education offers too big a business opportunity in India to be left unexplored? It’s a no-brainer that there’s a huge unmet need in the sector and education, and education alone, can provide solutions to most of the ills in the country. A somewhat flippant answer would be: Guilt; as some of them contributed (through outsourcing wave) so much during the past decade to dumb down the Indian student population. (The industry desperately needs a second coming as this recent story in Forbes India will tell you.) One a serious note, I decided to ask Prof S Sadagopan, director of IIIT-B. He thinks IT and education have some common characteristics: people are the assets, the service offering is soft, brand is built over time, and trust is a must. The possible motivation, according to him is familiarity: IT folks interact with the education sector as it provides their key resource. “And since it is so under served, they see a huge opportunity.” On a cynical note, I asked an IT academic-turned-entrepreneur, who, through a for-profit small venture is trying to make a modest dent in the problem of high quality technical education in the country. You may call it professional jealously but he makes a very valid point: “In education, like politics in India, one does not need any qualifications.  Make the right noises, have money backing you, and you can succeed. And that success breeds more success. That is the only way you can explain Azim Premji starting an education university and appointing a finance guy as the VC; NIIT starting a University and claiming to educate millions by their franchisees,  ex-lackeys of politicians being VCs of their education empires, the examples are too numerous to list. “So if you have a personal brand, and in India you get it if you are part of any large money making enterprise, then that brand can be used profitably in education, since, as you mention, it has this plausible do-good tag attached to it! And our media celebrates such initiatives, without any critical analysis, further adding to the number of people who want to jump into education.” Well, if you are a qualified researcher and teacher in the education field, it’s very unlikely that you’d like to work in a university where the vice chancellor does not have a PhD. Again, I have no answers why Premiji’s University, which has excellent intentions, could not find an experienced academic to run this? Won’t it lead to attracting mediocre faculty? Academics are almost religious about professional qualifications. Not sure how many of you remember this, but a few years ago, APJ Abdul Kalam (after retiring from DRDO chief’s post and before being nominated for the post of President of India) was denied faculty position at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore as he didn’t have a PhD. If you look at philanthropists in the US setting up universities, you’ll notice that they provide the money, get the best academic-administrator to run the place and prefer to stay on the sidelines as a munificent and dignified benefactor. That’s not the case in India. I am told “Even at IISc (which was started by JN Tata in 1909), there is no guiding Constitution (a document).” Getting back to the initial point: so do these high-profiles IT executives really mean to transform the sector, which even the HRD minister Kapil Sibal has made many recommendations about but hasn’t implemented many of those well-meaning decisions? Or is this again a low-risk, high-ROI business proposition, too alluring to ignore? What are you readers saying?