The University of New South Wales, Australia (UNSW Australia) has announced a new scholarship programme targeting bright Indian students. Under UNSW’s Future of Change scholarship programme, ten students residing in India will be awarded A$10,000 (Rs.4.9 lakh) each and one student will have her full tuition fee paid, said Prof. Ian Jacobs, president and vice chancellor of UNSW Australia, addressing the media in Delhi on March 10.

“India’s higher education gross enrolment ratio is a modest 18 percent as against the OECD average of 27 percent,” said Jacobs. “Students are looking for opportunities to study abroad and India is forecast to have the world’s fastest growing mobile student outflows by 2020. UNSW Australia is looking to hear from India’s brightest minds.”

A Top 50 university of the world, UNSW Australia is a globally-ranked teaching and research university. In 2016, it received A$150 million (Rs.741 crore), the highest government funding for research of any Australian university. 

 

TCLL-INSEAD executive programme

The Delhi-based Times Centre for Learning Ltd (TCLL) and INSEAD, Paris and Singapore, one of the world’s top-ranked B-schools, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to launch executive education programmes in India.

Under the MoU, INSEAD’s flagship Blue Ocean Strategy programme designed to enable top management executives to learn business strategy and ‘value innovation’ concepts will be delivered online by TCLL. 

“Through this first-of-a-kind executive programme in India, participants will learn how to create uncontested market space — their own blue ocean. The programme challenges everything you thought you knew about strategic success and provides a systematic and practical approach to making the competition irrelevant,” says Jukka Majanen, director of corporate partnerships of INSEAD. 

 

HEC-Coursera Masters programme

HEC, Paris the well-known French B-school, and Coursera, the pioneer US-based online higher education platform, have launched an Online Masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OMIE) international degree programme. 

Under the year-long programme, students will work in teams over a six-month period on a project of choice, from planning stages to bringing an idea to life. They will receive mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs and business leaders. “Successful graduates will be able to move their respective projects into the next phase by applying for seed funding from HEC Paris, and have their project come to fruition at HEC’s incubator, based at Station F, the world’s biggest start-up campus. This is a unique opportunity to earn an HEC Masters degree and join the exclusive HEC alumni network” says Peter Todd, dean of HEC, Paris. 

Applications are invited from graduates with classes starting in September 2017. 

 

New India Foundation fellows

The Bangalore-based New India Foundation (NIF) announced its latest fellowship awards which acknowledge scholars and writers working on different aspects of the history of independent India, on March 15. Now in its eighth year, NIF matches “public-spirited philanthropy with ground-breaking and relevant scholarship”. The fellowships are awarded for a period of one year and pay awardees a stipend of Rs.100,000 per month. “By the end of the year, fellowship holders are expected to publish original works that are an extension of their winning proposals,” says an NIF spokesperson. 

This year, the high-powered NIF jury received 410 proposals of whom nine NIF fellows were selected. The awardees of the NIF Fellowship 2017 are: Arupjyoti Saikia, history professor, IIT-Guwahati; Manoj Mitta, former senior editor at The Times of India; Nachiket Kelkar, a doctoral student at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment; Gautam Bhatia, advocate, Supreme Court of India; Abhishek Choudhary, ASER Centre (Pratham), Delhi; Nazia Akhtar, a Hyderabad-based gender studies writer; Kanato Chophy,  former faculty of the Central University of Jharkhand; S. Anand, founder of Navayana Publishing Pvt. Ltd and Neha Dixit, a Delhi-based journalist. 

 

Corrigendum

In the previous (March) issue of EW, we inadvertently published the report of the 43rd convention of NPSC. A report of the latest convention is published below.

The theme of the 44th National Progressive Schools’ Conference (NPSC, estb.1973), convened at Delhi’s India International Centre on February 16-17, was ‘Schools of Tomorrow… the Tomorrow of Schools’. Over 300 principals and senior teachers of 160 CBSE-affiliated schools in Delhi NCR  and 11 states, attended the two-day conference. Amitabh Kant, chief executive of NITI Aayog, was the chief guest and K.C. Singh, former secretary in the ministry of external affairs, was the keynote speaker.

“Our 44th national conference was a great success and provided members valuable insights on the shape of things to come in education and Indian society,” says Ashok Pandey, principal of the Ahlcon International School, and chairman of NPSC.