EdTech: Google Latest Tech Company To Edge Into Online Business Education
Business Because | Seb Murray | MBA Distance Learning | 28th October 2015 |
Search giant launches digital degree for tech entrepreneurs.
Google has become the latest big tech company to edge into business schools’ territory with the recent launch of a mini online degree for tech entrepreneurs. The search giant’s push into the nascent educational technology market follows the recent $1.5 billion purchase of online learning company Lynda.com by LinkedIn, which could see management courses hosted on the social network. It also comes as business schools strive to offer a market to entrepreneurs. Google’s partnership with Udacity, one of the top Mooc or massive open online course providers, will bear a four-to-seven-month long digital course on how to design, validate, prototype, monetize, and market a tech start-up. It is priced at up to $1,400. The Silicon Valley based company has signed up big-wigs of the start-up scene to develop the program, including Kevin Hale, a partner at Y-Combinator, the San Francisco accelerator that backed Airbnb and Dropbox, and Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, now owned by Google. All of the raw content is free — but Udacity provides additional paid services, such as access to coaches, career counselling, and a certificate upon completion of the course, costing $200 a month. Top graduates of the Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree program will be able to pitch their final product to venture capitalists at Google.
Udacity’s Nanodegree’s are part of a growing set of monetized online courses on everything from finance to marketing that are said to be disrupting business education. But Oliver Cameron, VP of engineering and product at Udacity, told BusinessBecause: “We expect online education and traditional education to coexist, supplement and increasingly intertwine with one another in the coming decades.” The announcement follows news of a growing pool of entrepreneurs warming to formal business education, and word that top business schools are developing new courses for the swelling number of MBAs launching companies. Jeff Skinner, executive director for the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, said many students at LBS go on to “create very successful enterprises”. “We make extensive use of entrepreneurs on our courses,” he said, adding that for the Entrepreneurship Summer School LBS recruits 50 successful entrepreneurs to act as mentors to students.
The flurry of business-related online programs offered by Mooc developers such as Coursera, edX or ALISON, however, is increasingly viewed as an alternative to schools’ expensive and often longer business masters degrees. Julia Stiglitz, director of business development at Coursera, which has nearly 16 million online learners, said: “Traditional degrees will remain as relevant and important as ever for the foreseeable future. But online learning will continue to emerge as a new category that propels lifelong personal and career growth.” Simon Nelson, chief executive of FutureLearn, the online learning company with two million users, said there are large elements of business school and university education that “can’t be replicated online”. But he added that online learning can make the experience of studying for a degree more flexible, convenient, and affordable. “We are just scratching the surface,” he said. Google’s online degree for tech entrepreneurs will ultimately be proved a success or flop by the fortunes of its graduates. However, while many MBA programs still pump students into investment banks and consultancy firms, an increasing number lay claim to greatly successful entrepreneurs. Graduates of Spain’s IE Business School, for example, have raised $360 million in venture capital for 39 start-up companies; at HEC Paris the figure is $275 million for 42 start-ups. INSEAD, another top business school, has produced 165 start-ups that have raised funding of $1.9 billion. These include BlaBlaCar, the French ridesharing start-up that recently secured $200 million based on a valuation of €1.4 billion, and MongoDB, a US database company that was valued at around $2 billion this year. – Courtesy https://www.edtechteam.com/
Engineering admissions: Weightage to Class 12 marks aided coaching institutes, says Government panel
The Indian Express | Ritika Chopra | New Delhi | October 28, 2015 |
This goes against the rationale cited by former HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, who had convinced all central engineering institutes to make drastic changes to their admission format in 2013.
Three years after IITs and NITs first introduced Class XII board marks as an admission criterion to reduce the influence of coaching and bridge the gender and urban-rural divide in classrooms, an expert committee appointed by the government has found that the decision has not served that purpose. A nine-member panel, headed by C-DAC director Rajat Moona, studied the admission data of 31 NITs over the last three years and found that instead of registering a decline, the influence of coaching among candidates taking the JEE (Main) grew by four percentage points. This goes against the rationale cited by former HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, who had convinced all central engineering institutes to make drastic changes to their admission format in 2013. Sibal had argued that giving weightage to Class XII board performance would help students focus on school education and wean them away from coaching classes. In 2013, an ASSOCHAM survey had pegged the worth of the private coaching industry in India at $24 billion.
The review panel, however, found that the number of JEE (Main) examinees assisted by tuitions increased from approximately 15 per cent of the total in 2012 to 19 per cent in 2014. The total number of examinees taking JEE (Main) has hovered between 12 lakh and 14 lakh from 2013 to 2015. The panel report, a copy of which has been reviewed by The Indian Express, also shows that the NITs have not witnessed “substantial gains” in the number of girls qualifying the JEE (Main). With girls traditionally outperforming boys in Board examinations, the HRD Ministry under UPA-II had felt that the inclusion of Class XII marks would help increase their presence in engineering classrooms. However, the number of girls in the top one lakh remained virtually stagnant at 22 per cent from 2013 to 2015.The urban-rural divide in classrooms, too, did not change dramatically, with the number of rural students in the top one lakh candidates of JEE (Main) increasing by less than one per cent over three years, from 29.47 per cent in 2013 to 30.20 per cent in 2015. A student’s Class XII marks were incorporated as an admission criterion by all central engineering institutes on the ground that it will help temper the bias for urban candidates, who have easier access to coaching classes.
“In order to be free of urban-rural bias (or to minimise this bias), the number of candidates appearing in the JEE (Main) should be close to the rural-urban ratio of approximately 7:3, whereas this ratio has been close to 9:11 and heavily biased towards the urban population… The new method of ranking was suggested in which board marks were incorporated to encourage this division to be as close to the population ratio as possible. By introduction of this scheme in 2013, and three years into the scheme, no substantial gains are noticed,” the report states. All central engineering institutes had agreed to accord weightage to Class XII Board marks in admissions in 2013 at the behest of Sibal. Since then, the NITs have been admitting students by giving 40 per cent weightage to Class XII marks and 60 per cent to JEE (Main) performance. The IITs, on the other hand, grant admission only if a candidate, apart from qualifying JEE (Advanced), is either in the top 20 percentile of his or her Board results or has scored above 75 per cent. Both IITs and NITs are reportedly unhappy with this experiment and want it scrapped. They are in favour of admitting students on the basis of just their performance in the entrance examinations. This issue was raised at a recent meeting of the IIT and NIT Councils, following which the matter has been entrusted to another expert committee. A final decision by the HRD Ministry is expected next month. – Courtesy
Lokayukta probe ordered into marks card scam in Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU)
Deccan Herald | October 28, 2015, Bengaluru, DHNS |
Upalokayukta Justice Subhash B Adi has ordered a Lokayukta police inquiry into a marks card scam in Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU).
The complaint filed by Chaitra B N, an engineering student in Bengaluru, stated that one of her friends, who works at an engineering college in the city, is suspected to be involved in altering the marks during the revaluation. According to the complaint, Chaitra’s friend, who is working at JSS Academy of Technical Education at Kengeri, had taken her laptop sometime ago. After some time, Chaitra found that her friend had downloaded the results of several students across the colleges using her laptop. All these USN numbers (used to identify the college the student is enrolled with) had failed in the examination and later their results were reversed during the revaluation. “He (friend) is known to me for the last seven years and he had taken my laptop for his use. I got suspicious on seeing several USN numbers downloaded in the folder. My friend had not only downloaded these USN numbers but also mailed them to a person who is associated with MindLogicx,’’ she has stated in the complaint.
MindLogicx is the firm which has developed examination management system for the VTU, sources said. The complainant has also submitted three mail IDs of her friend and two mail IDs of the person who is reportedly working with MindLogicx. The e-mails sent by Chaitra’s friend has all the names of the students who had earlier failed in the examination but later got through next semester after revaluation. The complainant stated that her friend is pursuing his seventh semester engineering at BMS evening college. “The allegations made in the complaint shows some examination malpractice alleged to have been committed at the examination section of VTU. It could be that some officials of the VTU are hand in glove with such students in such malpractice. I have directed the SP of Belagavi Lokayukta to hold an inquiry based on the complaint and materials provided by the complainant,’’ Upalokayukta Justice Adi said. The Upalokayukta has directed the SP of Belagavi Lokayukta to submit a report on November 18. – Courtesy
WeMakeScholars: A Study Opportunities Search and Discovery Platform
Iamwire | |
Founded by Arjun R Krishna and Damini Mahajan in 2012, WeMakeScholars (WMS) is an online study opportunities search and discovery platform providing information on everything related to international education. The company holds a vision of connecting the world through education by providing the right opportunities.
Speaking about the conception of this idea, Damini maintains- “The idea originated with the struggle we, cofounders had while searching for a scholarship for our masters in 2012. Later, Arjun received the prestigious UK Govt. Queen’s Jubilee Scholarship which fully funded his studies, including visa, airfare, tuition costs, and a monthly stipend. I received “Developing Solutions Master’s Scholarship” which covered 50 % tuition fee. This was when we started an online community to fill the gap between available opportunities and students knowing about it. The community quickly grew to 160K members in 2 years time. Upon request from these members, we decided to build a dedicated platform to keep data more organised & upto date. Hence, WeMakeScholars was born.”
Key Features of WeMakeScholars
In this case, there are majorly two types of stakeholders- One is the global student community, looking for higher education opportunities. They can search and shortlist right scholarship and internship opportunities. The startup is also working out to build a worldwide course database, making it easy for students to find the right courses of their interest. And others are its customers including Universities, Consultants and Test preparation centers.
These Customers get:
-Genuine student data and analytics reports.
-Place to market to their rightmost target segment anywhere globally (students looking to study abroad)
Problems Addressed by the Startup
Every year billions of dollars are provided as funding/Scholarships by Education Ministries of various countries, by Universities and trusts/foundations. But there is huge gap between this information reaching the students. Currently, WeMakeScholars is focussed on solving this problem by providing a global scholarship finder. Wholly, for students it fulfills the need of a reliable source to get information for international education including scholarships, universities, courses and internships.
Technology
The company uses web technologies- PHP, AJAX, JS and HTML/ CSS to develop the platform. Features like email official, smart sorting and quick short listing of opportunities make the platform an easy to use resource for students and scholars.
Business Model
WeMakeScholars helps global student community in finding international education information, with main focus on Scholarships. The main value comes for user from the data quality and smart sorting features on the website. While being free for students, WeMakeScholars has clients such as educational consultants, test preparation service centres which offer services to this target market. These clients come on the portal mainly as advertisers. Various universities around the globe are also its clients and they be a part of the platform to add, edit and advertise their scholarships.
Revenue Model
WeMakeScholars has always been and will always be free for its users, i.e. students. It makes money by selling various products to clients which comprises of Universities, consultants, test preparation centres and other advertisers globally.
Traction Details
Being a global platform, it is used by people from 210 countries worldwide. WeMakeScholars.com has been used by 357,000 unique users in first 5.5 months of its launch (29th April 2015- 13th October 2015), in the ratio- India (30 %), Pakistan (12.5%), United States (6.5%), Egypt (5%), Bangladesh (5%), Germany (4%) followed by Malaysia, Italy, Sweden and Myanmar (Burma) in top 10. It gets close to 1 million hits every month.
How is it Different from its Competitors?
It is a one stop solution for students who are looking for higher education globally. It has competitors in individual domains. For Scholarships, internships, courses, the platform provides global database with high accuracy. Its algorithm works on Smart Sorting function, wherein the user’s Nationality, subject of study, Degree & country of interest are used to find the right opportunity. Importantly, its concept creates the web for scholarships and courses, allowing to search courses based on scholarships and vice-versa. These are the factors which distinguishes WeMakeScholars from existing scholarship, internship or courses portals.
Status of Fund Raising
“We were keen on bootstrapping until a threshold traffic, so we turned down few funding offers earlier. Now, as we feel that we are ready for external funding, we are on our way to raise seed round from TBI, BITS-Pilani fund,” states Damini.
Scope and Opportunities
About 189 K and 694 K students from India and China respectively went for studying abroad in 2012. According to Forbes magazine, “On an average, a Chinese student pays $60,000-$70,000 just in the application process to study in US”. This is a very fast growing market wherein International education is gaining lot of traction. According to ICEF Monitor, there has been 25% rise in Indian students going abroad for degrees longer than 6 months just from 2013 to 2014.
“Stats being this, we aim to capture 5-10% of this market in the year 1.”-Damini
iamwire’s Take
Education is the most empowering asset a person could possess, and every individual by the virtue of their existence has the right to education. However, given the fact that most of the good universities have exorbitant tuition fees, many meritorious minds fail to avail of the opportunities, they deserve. Another factor that restricts candidates from receiving higher education from the best of institutions around the world, is the lack of awareness regarding the procedure of getting scholarships. Hence, platforms like WeMakeScholars could be of immense importance in bridging this knowledge gap between students and institutions . – Courtesy Connect with the best universities and the right opportunities : Ultimate guide for aspiring scholars : WMS aims to build the world’s largest scholarship database with over $1 billion in total available funding, benefiting millions of aspiring scholars esp. from developing countries. Visit http://www.wemakescholars.com/
Kerala Self-financing engineering colleges to woo foreign students
The Times of India | |
KOCHI: After failing to get enough students from Kerala, private self-financing engineering colleges are now eyeing foreign students, especially from Bhutan, Nepal, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. “We are submitting a proposal to the government that there should be no entrance exam for 50% seats – that includes 30% management, 15% NRK and 5% NRI seats – and we should be allowed to admit students from not only other states but also other countries,” said K Sasikumar, president of Kerala Self Financing Engineering College Management Association (KSFECMA) which has representatives from 120 private colleges. Rules state that any institute that has AICTE approval to admit foreign nationals can admit them through the ministry of overseas Indian affairs. As of now, only five private engineering institutes in the state have permission to admit foreign students and this year Rajagiri School of Engineering & Technology has admitted seven students from Africa.
Many educationists remain sceptical. “With the present poor infrastructure and facilities in the colleges, it would be difficult for them to attract foreign students. The number of engineering colleges are now more than the demand and closing some of the institutes that fare poorly is the only option,” said B Iqbal. Sasikumar said KSFECMA will seek AICTE approval to admit foreign students. To attract students from other states, they will ask the government to ensure that the Controller of Entrance Examinations sets up an exam centre in each state capital and the entrance exam should be conducted online so that students don’t have to come to Kerala, besides doing away with normalization. “We will submit a detailed proposal to the government on Tuesday,” Sasikumar said. – Courtesy
KTU wants to simplify entrance exam procedures : The Times of India : .
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University – formerly the Kerala Technological University – has asked the commissioner of entrance examination to do away with the complicated manual procedures that are followed for the conduct of entrance examination. Sources said the university has asked the commissioner to introduce an online mechanism for interested candidates to submit their applications for entrance exams. “Also, the practice of printing prospectus in book format should be limited to serve legal and administrative purposes. The application should be a four-page document, which is simple and easy to understand,” it said. The commissioner of entrance examination had sought the university’s suggestions regarding the new prospectus for engineering admission. It is learnt that the university had asked the commissioner of entrance examinations to introduce fresh provisions in the prospectus to empower colleges to admit students from other states as well.
Meanwhile, stepping up its demand for a comprehensive overhaul of the conduct of entrance exams, Kerala Self-financing Engineering College Managements’ Association (KSFECMA) has demanded that the new prospectus for 2016-17 should be prepared in consultation with them. “We want the government to understand the new realities in the field of engineering education. Now the number of seats has overshot the demand. Unless some realistic changes are made, the charm of engineering education will be lost. We want the government to hold consultation with us before finalizing the new prospectus,” said KSFECMA president K Sasikumar. The association also demands an online mechanism to eliminate unnecessarily complex procedures. The practice of asking students to submit all supporting documents such as nativity, caste, and income certificate along with the application form should be discontinued. “Let them ask the students to pay Rs 1,000 online and allow them to participate in the exam. There is no logic in asking all the applicants to submit a whole set of certificates at once with the application form,” the association president, adding that a memorandum in this regard would be submitted to the education minister on Wednesday. The association said that it would push for its earlier demand that the entrance test should be held only for candidates seeking admission in the merit quota seats. It also would ask the government to discard the normalization process, which according to them was erroneous as it gave undue advantage to state-syllabus students. – Courtesy
HRD ministry to continue giving non-NET fellowships to M.Phil, PhD students
Live Mint | Prashant K. Nanda | Mon, Oct 26 2015 |
As a result, about 35,000 students pursuing M.Phil and PhD in institutions such as JNU and Delhi University will continue to get their monthly stipends without having to pass NET.
New Delhi: In a reprieve for thousands of research scholars, the human resource development (HRD) ministry on Sunday took back a four-day-old decision and decided to continue giving non-NET (national eligibility test) fellowships to M.Phil and PhD students for the time being. It set up a committee that will review all research fellowships and submit its report by the year-end — and until that time, all fellowships for M.Phil and PhD students will continue, the ministry announced. As a result, some 35,000 students pursuing M.Phil and PhD in top universities like Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University will continue to get their monthly stipends without having to pass NET, a qualifying exam for lecturership in India. Non-NET MPhil students get Rs. 5000 per month and non-Net PhD students get around Rs. 8000 per month, according to the HRD ministry.
Earlier this month, university regulator University Grants Commission (UGC) decided to discontinue non-NET fellowships, leading to protests by thousands of students and representatives of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. For over two decades, the NET, a competitive examination conducted twice a year by the UGC has been the basis for government research fellowships, currently numbering nearly 9,000, that enable students to pursue M.Phil and Ph.D programmes. The Non-NET Fellowship Scheme was introduced by the UGC in 2006. It is currently limited only to 50 institutions including central Universities and those with potential for excellence. Nearly 35,000 students are at present on these fellowships, a ministry statement said. In December 2014, the HRD ministry enhanced the support provided to research fellowships based on the NET. While Junior Research Fellows were receiving Rs. 25,000/- per month and 30% House Rent Allowance (HRA) as well as a contingency grant for each year for the first two years, Senior Research Fellows are receiving Rs. 28,000/- per month, 30% HRA and a contingency grant for three years.
“The government has decided to establish a review committee to go into the issues related to the research fellowships provided by the UGC, covering both NET and Non-NET fellowships. The review committee will submit its report to the ministry within December 2015,” the ministry statement said. The committee will explore the feasibility of enhancing the number of NET fellowships, which are merit-based, help in establishing a transparent system of transfer of fellowship amounts each month to Non-NET fellows, which at present is being done on a reimbursement basis, “without the Direct Benefit Transfer mandated by the Government”, and bringing the benefits and opportunities of the Non-NET fellowship scheme to a larger number of universities, including state universities. It will also consider economic and other criteria for eligibility for non-NET fellowships, and recommend guidelines for the selection, coverage, award, and administration of non-NET fellowships. “Irrespective of the recommendations of the review committee, all existing and continuing fellowships, NET as well as Non-NET would be continued; there will be no change retrospectively,” the ministry said.- Courtesy
Bengaluru’s RV College of Engineering’s Solar car (Soleblaze) fails in Australia’s World Solar Challenge
Economic Times | By Bharath Joshi, ET Bureau | 26 October, 2015 |
BENGALURU: Days before RV College of Engineering (RVCE) students left for the prestigious World Solar Challenge in Australia, IT czar NR Narayana Murthy told them to brace for Murphy’s Law to play its full role: If anything can go wrong, it will. And it did go wrong for Soleblaze, the single-seater solar car that a 20-member team toiled hard for two years to build. On October 16, two days before the race, Soleblaze was to undergo dynamic scrutiny -a verification of the car’s safety and regulation compliance through actual driving. What dashed the hopes of students was that the 5 kWh storage battery, a critical part of the car, arrived there from Bengaluru on the day of the scrutiny in a damaged condition. Soleblaze could not take part in the race. Backed by a host of corporates, including electric car pioneer Chetan Maini, the Rs 2-crore Soleblaze was India’s only entry in the competition -a 3,000 km race from Darwin to Adelaide. Firms such as Wipro, TCS % and SunEdison also aided the car’s development.
“All of us should stand up and cheer them. For students of a local engineering college to apply what they learned in class to design something like this and go through the rigmarole of getting parts from different parts of the world is extraordinary . We have nothing to feel diffident. I’m proud of them,” said Murthy , one of India’s most respected philanthropists who gave RVCE students `30 lakh for the car’s development. T he Infosys cofounder believes Soleblaze can, with more effort, be developed into a viable solar car. In fact, Silicon Valley majors Apple, Google, Tesla and Uber are looking at the automobile sector as the next space for innovation. “A solar car isn’t something American universities have not made. What matters is that this one made it to Australia, with a car that was competition-worthy,” he said.
The shipping company promised the RVCE team that the car and battery would arrive at the venue on October 9. “The car reached us on October 14. The battery came two days later and it is highly possible that it was damaged during transit,” said Vikram R Nath, a mechanical engineering student who led the team. The exact cause of delay in shipment is not yet clear. “We couldn’t control our emotions. We cried,” RVCE associate professor S Mahendra Kumar told ET from Adelaide.”The University of Michigan offered us its battery but it wasn’t compatible with our system.” The students learned that other universities are “at least 25 years ahead in building solar cars,” Kumar said. Dutch team Nuon claimed victory by finishing the race in 37.56 hours. Murthy urged students to plan early for the next attempt. “They should go to Australia three months in advance and run the car to get enough experience.Time is of essence.”- Courtesy
3D Online Course on Engineering : LearnEngg.com
The New Indian Express | Express News Service | 26th October 2015 |
CHENNAI: For the first time in India, engineering education content is available in 3D on the internet. The web portal is aptly named LearnEngg.com. It delivers visual-based engineering content for the entire degree course. A total of 214 subjects across different branches of engineering are available now. Further, the product is customised for the syllabus of Anna University to offer direct benefit to the students. According to S Srikanth, MD, Infoplus Technologies, “LearnEngg.com will revolutionise engineering learning in classrooms as well as home. It is a pathbreaking initiative in delivering visual engineering content directly to the students.” The course level contents are named as 3DM Classroom because of its 3D visuals across the subject.
“The utilisation of this in teaching and self-learning would help build excellence in engineering educational system and generate industry-ready youth of higher order productivity” said R Siva, director of Infoplus. Infoplus 3DM Class Room is user-friendly and fully menu-driven for ease of handling by the users – faculty for teaching and students for self-learning. It is developed on a platform that adapts to various interactive multimedia formats like texts, audio, 3D / 2D demonstrations and block diagrams. Recap of previous lessons, objectives of the current topic, summary, MCQs and self-assessment tools are provided. Audio is provided in all the demonstrations, facilitating self-learning by students. It enables principles of engineering from daily life and industrial examples using 3D models. What is taught in the classroom is available for students to learn any where, any time. – Courtesy
Visual Based Knowledge System for Technical Education
LearnEngg.com delivers “Visual Based Knowledge System” (3DM ClassRoom) which addresses the Industry readiness of the students and their understanding of engineering concepts. 3DM enhances pass percentage and employability. Our technology enabled solution is the BEST at least-cost for capacity building of vital resources and to thin-down the RURAL-URBAN divide through bridging the gap between industry and Institute. 3DM ClassRoom specifically developed for graduate Engineering, Polytechnic, ITI and Skill development. The 3DM™ ClassRoom objective is to create conducive and effective learning / training environments and accentuate the visual expression and thinking of Students, by integrating three-dimensional visual thinking into existing critical thinking studies across disciplines at all levels – thro real-life applications and industry practices, virtually bringing into the classroom.
The customization will be done using our content and 2D/3D demonstrations available with us as “Large Engineering Content Data Base” developed in last 5 years by a team of more than 200 employees and over 75 Professors and Industry consultants. These developments being done from 2009 and achieved a creditable content quality. 3DM ClassRoom implementation in Technical Universities and Institutes to bring-in standardization of highorder in education by imbibing the knowledge and expertise of eminent professors and Industry experts. 3DM facilitates filling the gap between the growing demand for, and the scarce supply of, skilled personnel across sectors by featuring the latest ICT based technology into the curriculum of specific skill development. —-> http://learnengg.com/
India set to produce world’s largest number of engineers
The Times of India | |
LONDON: India is all set to produce the world’s largest number of engineers. The first ever global report commissioned by the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and to be made public on Monday has revealed that while just 20% of 16 to 17 year-olds from the UK and 30% from the USA are interested in an engineering career, in India the rate is as high as 80% – the highest in the world. The report will also unveil another interesting finding – India has closed the gender gap in engineering to an all-time low of 14% in 2015. Around 66% men in the world are interested in engineering while the figure stands as low as 43% for women globally. However when it comes to India, both men and women have shown great interest in engineering – the highest percentage in the world. While 85% Indian men have shown interest in engineering, the number stands at a close 79% among women in India. In comparison, 62% women in China are interested in taking up engineering as a career, 55% in Brazil, 48% in Turkey, as low as 35% in US, 33% in Germany, 28% in UK and 27% in Japan. Also when asked whether they would like to take up engineering as a career, 80% of 16 year olds in India said it was their first choice, while the number rose to 81% among 18-24 year olds, and 87% among 24-30 year olds.
Queen Elizabeth II invites Indian-origin engineer,Roma Agrawal to Buckingham palace
The Times of India |
Roma Agrawal, 29, will join a group of other female engineers at a reception being hosted by the 89-year-old monarch to encourage more women to take up the profession.
LONDON: An Indian-origin structural engineer who helped build Europe’s tallest building, the Shard in London, has been invited to Buckingham Palace by Queen Elizabeth II. Roma Agrawal, 29, will join a group of other female engineers at a reception being hosted by the 89-year-old monarch to encourage more women to take up the profession. “We need to break the stereotype of an engineer and show young girls it’s a fun career,” Agrawal said in advance of the event on Monday. The palace has also released a photograph of the then Princess Elizabeth as a driver and mechanic in the Auxiliary Territorial Service during World War II.
An official told Britain’s Sunday Times, “In part, this is born of personal experience. As a young woman serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the queen learnt vehicle maintenance skills that have stayed with her to this day”. “She got her hands dirty, enjoyed it and would encourage young people today to have the same experience. And at a time when there is a big industry push for more girls to become involved in engineering, the queen would wholeheartedly support that. It’s no coincidence that some brilliant and inspiring young female engineers will be coming to the reception,” he said. The queen’s support comes as a report published this week is expected to reveal that Britain lags behind other nations in the status it gives to the profession. Only 6 per cent of registered UK engineers and technicians are women, the lowest number in Europe; just 15 per cent of UK engineering students are female. – Courtesy
Engineering, Science & Technology Resources Portal 