Quality must trump infrastructure

Dr Sunil Karad works as a trustee and executive director of the MIT Group of Institutes and was instrumental in establishing, amongst others, the MIT Institute of Design, MIT Academy of Engineering, VishwashantiGurukul. The MIT Group offers graduate and postgraduate qualifications in Engineering, Medicine, Management, Art and Design, Humanities and Social Sciences, with a student base of 51,000 fulltime students and over 2,000 teaching faculty. He is also founder and managing director of UTS Global, the biggest online education company in India with active student base of more than 16,000. Sunil is a trained engineer with MSc in Material Science from University of Sheffield. He did his PhD and post-doctoral research at University of Sheffield in Polymer Composites and was a recipient of number of awards for his research work.

We caught up with him in the lead up to the Conclave 2013 to ask him about his views on the Indian e-learning markets and what he thinks about the country's regulators.

You have established 12 educational institutions in ten years. What are your key learnings about setting up an education business in India

Education activity in India is highly regulated and still considered a social service. In the last decade, despite plenty of discussion at the central and state level, this has not changed. I have seen some positive change at the state level, while some states like Gujarat and Karnataka have come up with very innovative policies. Indian regulators are mostly focused on physical infrastructure without any emphasis on the teaching and learning process or quality of education.

But in the last decade students have become well informed, which has forced educational institutes to improve the quality of their teaching and research. The days when colleges got students only on the basis of government recognition are gone. We have seen large number of seats going vacant in last three years, while many colleges have shut down due to a lack of student enrolment. So in the end I feel, that even though the government itself is not acting, students as end-customers have started demanding higher quality and migrating away from the poor quality institutes.

Can you tell us a little more about how UTS Global started, and its business model.

UTS Global started in 2010 with the mission of providing skills based training to the youth of India to make them employable. Taking into consideration the diversity and size of the country, UTS decided to be a completely online-based learning platform from Day 1. In UTS, marketing, student admissions, fees payment, teacher learning process, assignments, examination and placement activities are offered entirely online. In the span of three years, UTS has recorded more than 16,000 active students pursuing skills-based programs from three months to three years in duration.

What kind of international partners has UTS worked with

UTS is working with US education software company Blackboard, and is the biggest user of the Blackboard e-learning platform in Asia. Recently UTS has tied up with German technical service provider TUV Nord to develop short-duration skills-based programs for Indian corporates.

How is distance learning in India different from, say, the Open University in Britain

In India distance education is still treated and run as a correspondence education with few exceptions. With limited availability of seats on campus, distance education in India has really catered to the need of the students who don't get admission into campus-based colleges. So, majority of the students enrolled in distance education in India are doing so in order to get government recognised degrees, and not for upgrading their skills. In a country like Britain, the majority of students enrolled in distance education do so to upgrade their skills or to acquire new skills.

How has e-learning and online education provision in India has changed over the last few years

Unfortunately, the regulator has not issued any guidelines for online education. The majority of the conventional distance education providers are still running the courses in a conventional way with study materials, contact sessions, classroom examinations etc. with some online input in the form of e-books and recorded lectures. There are few players along with UTS Global which have emerged in recent past but they cater to a student population of less than one % of students enrolled in distance education.

Where do you see the sector evolving over the coming years

The government is expected to issue guidelines for online education in the near future. With students becoming more demanding and concerned about learning outcomes, existing distance education providers need to improve their learning processes and student experience, which is only possible by adopting e-learning technologies. The days of students studying just for a degree certificate are gone. Students are now becoming increasingly concerned about employability than merely a certificate.

The above article was published in India Inc′s Print edition of India Investment Journal launched on October 2013 in conjunction with Education Investment Conclave.
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