Congratulations on your out-of-the-box ranking of India’s best engineering colleges, not including the IITs (EW June). Your logic of excluding IITs makes perfect sense. An estimated 500,000 students write the IIT-JEE exam every year, of whom a mere 10,000 are admitted into them. For the large majority of Plus Two students, getting admission into an IIT is a pipe dream. By ranking India’s top non-IIT engineering colleges, you have rendered a valuable service to students and parents.

However, I believe you shouldn’t have stopped at the Top 100. There’s a lot of apprehension about the quality of education delivered by many private engineering colleges mushrooming across the country. Expanding the rankings to at least the Top 250 will be of great advantage to parents and students, who otherwise have to rely on hearsay and exaggerated and bogus advertising campaigns.
Naveen Kumar
Chennai

Shocking medicos drain

Your survey ranking India’s most respected medical colleges (EW June) was informative. It’s reassuring to know that despite the shenanigans in the Medical Council of India, the country’s best medical colleges have managed to maintain high academic standards.

However, I was saddened to read about the brain drain plaguing medical education in India. It’s shocking that over 53 percent of AIIMS, Delhi graduates who receive fully subsidised education, leave for foreign shores never to return. All this when the country is grappling with a crippling shortage of doctors in the rural hinterland.

Students whose education is subsidised and paid by Indian taxpayers should be accountable to the public. Either they should pay the full cost of their degree programme — Rs.31.31 lakh — or work in rural India for a minimum of five years. A similar payback proposal should be implemented for graduates of state government medical colleges who also receive subsidised education.

I also believe that government should seriously consider raising tuition fees in its colleges as it needs to invest money in upgrading infrastructure facilities and maintaining teaching hospitals. Quality education comes at a price and it’s time medical students began paying for it.
Surabhi Mathur
Delhi

Words of appreciation

Thanks for the latest issue containing the league tables of India’s best non-IIT engineering colleges (EW June). The issue has come out very well. Your comments are very apt.

My heartiest congratulations!
R. Natarajan
Bangalore
Dr. R. Natarajan is a former director of IIT-Madras and former chairman of AICTE — Editor 

Fantastic & informative

I read your cover story feature on India’s most respected medical colleges  (EW June) and am most impressed with it. The story is very informative  and it is a pleasure to see reputed institutions in India being recognised and acknowledged. They truly deserve this recognition.

I read every single issue of EducationWorld. It offers the best and most updated information on education. Thank you for coming up with this fantastic magazine that provides so much thought and due diligence into an industry that needs more recognition than what it currently gets.
Swapna Pawar
Asian International College
Singapore

Sub-standard textbooks shock

I read your education news story ‘Textbook howlers furore’ with shock and disbelief (EW June). How can such egregious errors creep into textbooks meant for distribution to over 21,000 schools? It’s nothing but pure callousness on the part of textbook writers and other officials employed by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education. Evidently they have not taken the elementary precautions of proof-reading and facts-checking. How else can one explain the geography text omitting the entire state of Arunachal Pradesh? It goes to reflect the poor quality of writers/editors hired to write the texts.

I doubt if the education department will overhaul the process of selecting textbook committee members because of some errors, which by the time you print this letter, would have already been forgotten. It requires political will which is clearly missing. The only way is for parents and educationists to pressurise the government to outsource the textbooks writing process to top private publishers like Pearson. 
Puneet Deshpande
Mumbai

Unjust principal

I would like to bring to your attention the injustice being meted out by Anjana Upadhaya, principal of Shreeyas Vidyalaya, Baroda to former student Drashti M. Parikh. Drashti cleared her class X exam from the school averaging 67 percent. However, the school is refusing to admit her into class XI.

Behind the refusal is that when Drashti was a class X student, she together with some others (Priya Borse and Meghna Navelkar), complained against Upadhaya for favouritism. Moreover they also repeatedly complained about sexual harassment by some boy students (not of Shreeyas Vidyalaya). But Upadhaya didn’t initiate any action against them.

Another reason for denial of admission to the three girls is because they don’t belong to the Brahmin caste. This matter has been brought to the notice of Gujarat education minister Ramanlal Vohra. We are awaiting his reply.
Rudra Pratap Ranavat on e-mail