No academic institution can have faculty that can teach all types of courses well. There will be areas of strength and there will be areas of weaknesses. But we want our students to pick up knowledge from diverse fields. How do we manage this. Different universities solve this problem in different ways. The simplest way is to ask a faculty who cannot do justice to the topic to still teach it anyway. It is alright to do this for basic set of courses. Most good faculty members can do a reasonable job if not an excellent job of teaching courses which are not in their area of research but in the same broad discipline.  Since Covid, when we all got used to online teaching and learning, some universities are allowing students to earn credits from Swayam and other online portals.  Another unique way in which this is achieved at JK Lakshmipat University is by encouraging student mobility . Students, particularly in Engineering, spend a semester or two at some IIT or other fine instit...

We often talk about JK Lakshmipat University, Jaipur being a philanthropic venture of 125-year old JK group. Yesterday, someone on social media asked, "what does it mean?" In particular, does it mean that there is no fees. I explained there, but I thought this might be a question that many may had, and hence this brief blogpost. Almost all private universities have only one source of funding which is the fee that they charge the students under various heads. Usually the promoters will fund the initial setting up expenses and after 3-4 years will stop further investments. Indeed, even expansion of infrastructure for more students is typically done through loans which are repaid from student fees. And it is a good model as long as promoters don't find ways to take out the surplus. In case of JKLU, the JK group is funding the university even after such a long time (we have been in existence for 12 years). We get philanthropic gifts from many sources. This allows us to keep ...

 At JKLU , we have a very generous scholarship program. We are, after all, a philanthropic venture of a 125-year old very well respected industry house. The university manages its expenses not through tuition income but through the generosity of the members of JK Organization and various other well wishers. But when we offer scholarship to a student seeking admission in one of our programs, parents often use the word "discount" for what we are doing. When we protest, they tell us that this is what every private university does. Give some discount at the time of admission to lock in the admission and then charge full fee for the remaining 2 or 3 years. The so-called scholarship is granted to may be 80% students seeking admission but the continuation of the scholarship in the 2nd year is only 5% or so. I do not know what are the statistics of other private universities/colleges. But I thought we should have full disclosure on how our scholarships operate. So, first of all, the ...

At JKLU, we believe that the quality of faculty is key to quality to education. To that end, we are very highly selective about our faculty. Most of our faculty have a degree from IITs or BITS or NITs. And most of our faculty has a PhD degree. We do have several types of faculty recruitment and this blog is an attempt to describe them. First a summary: Recent PhD from a top institution in India or abroad. This is our most common recruitment. MTech from a top institution as Lecturer. This is only for Computer Science. Existing faculty of IITs/NITs to come to JKLU on leave for upto 2 years. Recent Retirees or about to retire faculty of IITs/NITs. Professor of Practice - people in industry who love to teach full time. Senior PhD students as part-time faculty Visiting faculty for teaching a course: From top institutions or industry Lateral recruitment at all levels from other fine institutions. Any other mode that you can think of. Our recruitment process is multi-stage. It is expected tha...

A lot of people would agree that spending a semester away is a great learning experience. But somehow the mental block is that it is a great learning experience only if it is abroad, in a foreign university. The next mental step in any such thought experiment is that it would be terribly expensive and hence not worth considering. We think like that since we haven't seen any exchange program within the country. The student mobility within India is rather limited. NEP2020 is trying to change that and strongly encourages universities to consider credits earned from other universities for giving a degree. J K Lakshmipat University (JKLU), Jaipur is a pioneer in student mobility within India. It was the first one to realize that whatever benefits are accrued to a student while studying abroad, can also accrue when s/he studies in another college within India. For example, learning different cultures. The difference in culture across India is vast and it can be very enriching experience ...

 A lot of people would agree that having an admission offer early reduces stress. This allows them to focus on other exams (various admission tests and board exams, etc.) in a much better state of mind and hence they are more likely to succeed. But on the flip side, if they do get an admission offer from a "better" institution later on, it seems that they would have lost a lot of money in the university that offered them early admission. Also is it wise to invest a lot of time in filling up many applications now. Also, most institutions who offer early admission are likely to offer admission in June/July also. So why bother. And would institutions offer early admission without the 12th class marks or is early admission only for students who dropped one year. First, it is the psychological thing. Even an admission in a Tier 2 institution where you would surely get admission in the summer reduces stress. Having an admission offer in hand is better than 99.999% probability of ge...