College is not a trade school. Higher education as an investment "risk"

Whether it is in India or in the US, higher education sells, seemingly at rates faster than how tulips sold in the manic Dutch and European markets nearly 500 years ago.

Students (and their parents) operate with a skewed understanding of what higher education is about.  In economic terms alone,

colleges are not employment agencies.  Plus, the labor market rapidly changes; few schools are prepared to perfectly match students with open positions.  If they did, colleges would admit students (to the school or to majors) based on the supply and demand of available jobs.  Instead, students undertake a great deal of risk that their investment will pay off with increased income, but there is no guarantee.  Unfortunately, even as the student loan bubble continues to inflate, too few students (and their parents) appear to grasp the magnitude of risk that they are undertaking when they enroll in college.

So, what ought to be done?

While we can keep arguing whether college is worth it, the people who really need to answer that question are the ones who are ponying up the dough at the cash register.  We owe it to them to provide the best information so that they can make an informed decision.  They need a clearer definition of the assumed risk of enrolling in college.  They have to wrestle with the notion that a future graduate may have to pay $300 a month for 30 years after graduation, regardless of where that student goes after graduation.

Of course, a good college education does provide intrinsic rewards beyond a future paycheck such as an enlightened mind and a love of learning, but at the moment those benefits do not characterize the intentions of most students.  Hence, we need mechanisms to reduce (what Austrian economists call) the malinvestments in higher education.  The sooner this happens, the less pain will be involved and the quicker we can shift our intellectual energy from running in place to moving forward.  

The gutting of the traditional liberal arts is a tragedy:

As the former president of St. John's College in Santa Fe, John Agresto, argues in his essay, "The Liberal Arts Bubble," were it not for the continued infusion of government subsidies and the influx of foreign students, the bubble might already have burst. Agresto points out that the liberal arts, once the backbone of the higher education system, has fallen into a precipitous decline.
"What was once normative -- that Jake or Suzie would go off to college and study some history, some literature, learn a second language, and perhaps major in philosophy or classics -- has not been the case for years," Agresto writes. By 2008, the number of bachelor's degrees had risen to 1.5 million Americans, but few of these degrees were in the traditional liberal arts. Barely 2 percent of BAs were awarded in history and only 3.5 percent in English literature. Agresto points out that more than a third of undergraduate degress are now earned in business, health professions and education. Colleges have become trade schools by another name -- but far more expensive ones than their for-profit counterparts.

Yep, we have become expensive trade schools :(

Is India secular in the public sphere? Does it have a "religious" government?

Recently, I traveled in Tamil Nadu government buses.  These are buses funded and operated by the government. Yet, on one bus I saw a decal of a Shiva Lingam. Another bus had a cross.  A third one had a figure representing another Hindu god, Muruga.

We are not talking about the bus driver wearing any religious symbols--that pertains to the individual, and we generally do not worry about what a single person says.  Of course, if the driver were to discriminate against passengers of other faiths, for instance, then we worry. 

The decals were on taxpayer property!

Such acts in the public sphere are all too common in India. 

I was flummoxed to read in the newspaper that the Madhya Pradesh government was going ahead with its mass "surya namaskar" while conveniently pretending that there are no religious undertones, despite protests from minorities.  An editorial in the paper that dad subscribes to had this to say:

The ostensible purpose of these camps, which saw heavy participation by schools, colleges, and other organisations — many of them privately run and obviously feeling compelled to go along — was to get into the record books. Yet questions do arise when the entire State Cabinet led by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan makes a fetish of performing a particular asana that is known to cause unease among Muslims, including secular sections otherwise supportive of yoga. The surya namaskar carries with it a suggestion of sun worship, which is anathema to orthodox Muslims. ... Ahead of the surya namaskar mobilisation this year, the government secured presidential assent for a draconian law against cow slaughter, which was followed by reports of attacks on Muslims. Clearly, a stint in power and more than a decade of coalitional leadership have not changed the BJP, whose single preoccupation is Hindu sectarian politics. Matters have been made worse by the Congress' emulation of the BJP's communal politics — in reverse.

The editorial concluded that politics was making it increasingly difficult for India to shed its communal baggage.

Even as that was unfolding, there was another controversy--about Salman Rushdie's visit to India, in order to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival. 

A few--by no means any majority--Muslim leaders, who continue to be upset with Rushdie for this Satanic Verses, wanted the government to prevent him from entering India.  But, the federal law minister pointed out that  Rushdie, who apparently went through the process that I chose not to, has the paperwork that recognizes him as a "person of Indian origin" and, therefore, doesn't need a visa to visit India.  Rushdie can, legally, come and go as it pleases him.

The protesters won--Rushdie stayed away from the literary event.

A few writers, upset at the manner in which Rushdie was treated, decided to read a little bit from, yes, Satanic Verses, which is banned in India.  A book, authored by a person who was born in India and recognized around the world as a talented writer, is banned in India, which proclaims itself as a democracy. 

Anyway, does reading from the book mean it is an illegal activity?  Can those people be hauled off to jail?

Q.What then does this mean for Amitava Kumar, Hari Kunzru and the other writers who read passages from “The Satanic Verses”?

A.I would say that as a writer you must have not any fear of cases and other things. We must not have any fear.

Q.Could festival organizers be held liable for their readings?

A.When a case is filed, it’s in the investigation it would be known whether they were responsible or not. As far as I am concerned, as a civil liberties person, no law has been broken. As far as I am concerned, nobody has committed an offense. As far as the organizers being worried, I do think that they do have a right to be worried. I don’t think there is any reason for them to worry.

Crazy, isn't it?

An op-ed author writes:

Salman Rushdie's censoring-out from the ongoing literary festival in Jaipur will be remembered as a milestone that marked the slow motion disintegration of India's secular state. Islamist clerics first pressured the state to stop Mr. Rushdie from entering India; on realising he could not stop, he was scared off with a dubious assassination threat. Fear is an effective censor. ...

The betrayal of secular India in Jaipur, though, is just part of a far wider treason: one that doesn't have to do with Muslim clerics alone, but a state that has turned god into a public-sector undertaking.

I liked the argument that the op-ed author makes, and the evidence he provides for how the state has made god a big time government activity, with large budgetary allocations too.  And "god" as in budgets for every flavor of god:

Few Indians understand the extent to which the state underwrites the practice of their faith. The case of the Maha Kumbh Mela, held every 12 years at Haridwar, Allahabad, Ujjain and Nashik, is a case in point. The 2001 Mela in Allahabad, activist John Dayal has noted in a stinging essay, involved state spending of over Rs.1.2 billion ...

There are no publicly available figures on precisely how much the government will spend on other infrastructure — but it is instructive to note that an encephalitis epidemic that has claimed over 500 children's lives this winter drew a Central aid of just Rs.0.28 billion.

The State's subsidies to the Kumbh Mela, sadly, aren't an exception. Muslims wishing to make the Haj pilgrimage receive state support; so, too, do Sikhs travelling to Gurdwaras of historic importance in Pakistan. Hindus receive identical kinds of largesse, in larger amounts. The state helps underwrite dozens of pilgrimages, from Amarnath to Kailash Mansarovar. Early in the last decade, higher education funds were committed to teaching pseudo-sciences like astrology; in 2001, the Gujarat government even began paying salaries to temple priests.

In 2006, the Delhi government provided a rare official acknowledgment that public funds are routinely spent on promoting god.

I am pretty sure that his concluding sentences will not draw accolades from those who have a political fortune to make:

Dr. Nanda ably demonstrated the real costs of India's failure to secularise: among them, the perpetuation of caste and gender inequities, the stunting of reason and critical facilities needed for economic and social progress; the corrosive growth of religious nationalism.

India cannot undo this harm until god and god's will are ejected from our public life.

Will India ever be able to secularize its public sphere?

Oddest question at Kanchipuram: "What is your gothram, sir?"

The driver warned me that I would not be able to go inside the Varadaraja Perumal Temple because it would be closed during lunch time, from noon until four.

I was awfully tempted to ask him whether god has lunch and takes a siesta as well; but, am glad I resisted that urge to wisecrack that way in a town of a thousand temples :)

A thousand-year old structure, with a great deal of history and art.  A century or two older than the the Leaning Tower of Pisa, for instance, which is one heck of a tourist attraction.  (Yes, been there, done that!)  The tower at this temple hasn't leaned in any way over all these years.

To the inquisitive tourist that I am, there is a lot to see in Kanchipuram and I had to pick and choose.

There was no skipping this temple, though.

Even the doorway is massive and impressive.  The doors, with solid wood and iron reinforcements has a stone doorstop, which itself deserves a photograph.

I was almost through the doorway when a thirty-something looking brahmin came rushing.

He pointed to my camera, and then pointed up to the sign that said there was a five rupee fee to use the camera within the temple grounds.

"Where do I pay for the ticket?" I asked him.

The brahmin, clad in a traditional dhoti and bare-chested with the namam on his forehead, said he would get the ticket for me.

"No problems.  Just show me where the office is" I cautiously replied.  I know I have become one paranoid American tourist.  But, that is better than to cry later!

"I can help you.  I can even open those closed gates and you can take photos there" the brahmin said.

"No, thanks.  I will get the camera ticket and look around on my own."

"Why are you so afraid?  I only want to help you."

I laughed.  "Well, things are that way these days" I said, and gave him a five rupee coin.

"You be here, and I will bring you the ticket."

Of course, there was no way I was going to trust this guy--I walked right behind him.  From behind a tree materialized a guy with a receipt book and the brahmin traded the coin for a receipt, which he handed to me.

Now, we were standing very close to each other and there was no breeze.  I smelled alcohol breath on him.  Yes, alcohol. At about 1:45 in the afternoon.  In a place religious Hindus consider to be one of the holiest of holy temples.  As Shakespeare wrote, "So are they all; all honorable men."

"What is your name, sir?"

"Sriram."

"You are from ....?"

"From Madras.  But, been in America for a very long time."

"I see. What is your gothram, sir?"

I laughed big time.  "I gave up on those things decades ago."

Meanwhile, another "guide," who was wearing a pair of pants and a shirt that was tucked in, walked up to us. He had been siting a few feet away, beside a White European-looking woman.  I wasn't sure if he was coming up to try to rescue me, or to assist the brahmin into trapping me.  Am I paranoid about people, or what!

The brahmin looked at him and said, in Tamil, "he is Sriram from Madras. He has been abroad. And seems to doubt me."

With a chuckle that "guide" replied, "maybe he will trust you if you are a real iyengar."

I walked away, but always watching out for the alcohol-smelling iyengar who wanted to know my gothram.

A Neyveli artist in Chennai's Besant Nagar. No, it is not me!

In a corner of the day's supplemental pages of the newspaper that dad buys daily, I saw a note about an arts exhibit.  For three days. Across from the beach.

Always looking out for activities like this, I was excited enough to decide that I would go there the first day itself!

It was a great call.

The address said "1, Elliots Beach Road."  I hailed an auto.  After winding through a few side-streets after a long ride, I suddenly heard the driver ask me for the address.

"Number 1" I replied.  And added, "is this Elliots Beach Road?"

"No, sir, Elliots Beach Road is after I make this right turn."

He turned and I could see the beach on the left.  I looked to the right, and there it was: a huge banner that said "Paalam."

"Right here" I told the auto driver, and paid.

It was much smaller than what I had anticipated.  But, it was a wonderful setting.

Across from the beach.  Under some gorgeous trees.  With an arty and small amphitheater.

Way cool.  It didn't matter that I am severely art-challenged!

I checked at the reception desk whether it would be ok for me to take photos.  No problems.

I scanned the inner set of art work, near the amphitheater:

As I stood there trying to make sense of this surreal experience of art in Chennai, by the beach, on a glorious afternoon, a guy came up to me with a tray of paper cups full of tea. 

"Some tea?" he asked.

"No, thanks."

I walked around, and stood under another tree:

Artists certainly seem to know how to hang out in some awesome places.  The conferences I go to are held in climate-controlled semi-dark rooms where people talk while pointing at crappy PowerPoint slides!

I retraced me path, and was delighted to see a flapping paper that had the artist's name and hometown: he was from Neyveli.  Yay!!!

I couldn't locate the artist. But, I was not too keen on inquiring either. 

I figured it was time to visit the beach.  In one section, I spotted a lone man sitting facing the waters. I imagined that he was the artist from Neyveli and that is why he was not to be found in the art exhibit.

On seeing a Chinese guy in Kanchipuram!

After visiting Mahabalipuram for the first time in my life, I was all the more convinced that I ought to visit the old temple structures in Kanchipuram.  Which is what I did.

As one who doesn't care for any religion-based explanations for where everything came from and what happens after we die, my interest in this old town with a gazillion temples is in its history, art, and architecture.

Thus, I was especially interested in two old temples that are now under the care of the government's archeology folks: Kaliasanathar Temple, and Vaikuntha Perumal Temple.

The two have been decommissioned, so to say, to borrow from the modern technological vocabulary. Believers no longer go to these because the main and ancillary idols have been uninstalled. Non-patronage, therefore, creates maintenance problems different from those resulting from huge numbers showing up.  As the driver who took me there remarked, "only foreigners come here, sir."

Anyway, one of these days, the nerd in me will read up and get a clearer idea of when this was built with respect to the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram.

Why is this important?  Because ... 

... Even to the art-challenged me, it was evident that the sculpture styles are so similar at this temple, at Kailasanathar Temple, and Shore Temple. It was, therefore, a wonderful pleasure, when the archeology department employee, who doubled up as a guide for an informal fee, pointed out the following on the wall:

The guide said it shows the Pallava king on the left celebrating, and the Shore Temple on the right.

I asked him which king it was, but he pretended that he didn't hear me.  When students pretend they didn't hear me in the classroom, I repeat the question all over again; here, I chose not to :)

The carvings and frescoes will, I am sure, have recorded a lot about the major events during those years.  There are quite a few inscriptions in the old Tamil script.  I am not sure how much have of those treasures have been appropriately documented and studied.

As I tried to keep up with the guide's show-and-tell, I realized how difficult it was for me to absorb them all.  I wished he would slow down. To take his time in sharing with me whatever he knew.

Meanwhile, another foreigner came in.  The driver was right on the money!

So, we backtracked a tad for her to catch-up with whatever I had seen by then.

Poor woman; she struggled even more than me because (a) the guide's accent made it very difficult, and (b) she was unfamiliar with the content.

Anyway, after a while, we were now two tourists trying to keep up with this guide.  I asked her where she was visiting from. "Perth." And then after a very slight pause, "Australia."

I was reminded that Australian tourists--and from Perth, to boot--marked my own vacation beginnings.  And then my brother's visit.  I wonder where else, and how many more, Aussies are going to pop up over the rest of the travels here.

The guide then stopped and dramatically pointed at something.  We also looked.

"A Chinese man came to the Pallava court" said the guide.

See the Chinese guy on the left side of this panel?  How awesome!  1,300-plus years ago, a guy from China comes all the way to this southern part of south India and becomes a part of the history. 

It was a small world even back then, and it is rapidly getting smaller and smaller and smaller ...

Image of the day: Wikipedia Blackout

Wikipedia's statement here

CNN explains (?) the two

Here's how Google explains SOPA/PIPA

Has Zuckerberg figured out ideas on how to monetize this, too? :)

A London cabbie in Chennai? Believe it, or not!

Dad arranged for a call-taxi for me.  By 2:40, I was all ready for the cab, which was scheduled for 3:00.

2:50, and I got a tad antsy that the cab might be late.  Dad called them, and updated me.

I was pleasantly stunned when the call taxi arrived at 3:00 sharp.  Another measure of India's economic progress.

As I got in, dad gave the driver details for the destination.  After all, I am always a visitor in Chennai and don't know anything about the city other than a handful of landmarks.

I closed the door and put my seat belt on.

The car started its jumpy drive over the gravelly road when the driver asked me, "are you from America?"

I am impressed every time when this happens.  There are plenty of guys around in this city who are dressed no differently from me--shorts or jeans and tee-shirts.  Yet, drivers and vendors figure out from my behavior that I am from the US.

This time, I wanted to know how and why he asked me that question.

"Only people from America wear seat belts here in Chennai" he said.

Yes, he spoke to me in English.  Not any choppy sentences either.

I normally stay away from conversations with autorickshaw drivers.  But, with taxi drivers, I am ready to chat, as I am with taxi drivers in any part of the world that I have been to thus far.  We ended up talking all the way to my destination.

"So, will the Democrats win this time?"

I laughed away the question because I didn't know if he wanted them to win or lose. 

"Last time, when Obama won, I felt as if I won" he continued.  "Even now I get emails from his campaign website.  The site doesn't care if the supporters' email addresses say co.uk or co.in.  I even get the fundraising emails"

The guy's English was pretty good, and his behavior was different from the typical taxi drivers I had encountered.

Turns out that he has been driving in Chennai for less than a year now, after having been a London cabbie for a few years.  That's right--London as in the UK!

"I came back because I didn't like the life there."

"So, are you from Chennai, or you chose to come to this place, after having grown up elsewhere in India?" I asked him.
"From Chennai. Triplicane. I went to Hindu High School."

I am mostly inclined to believe that he was in the UK, driving a taxi.  Of course, it is always probable that he was taking me for a ride, figuratively as well.  But, even if he was lying, well, he was one good actor in the Shakespearean world stage in which we are all actors with our own entrances and exits, eh!