Joint CTARA-CSE Talk
                         --------------------


			 Dear all,

			 The second talk in the current chapter of
			 FUSS is on FRIDAY, JANUARY 31,
			 2014 FROM 5:15PM TO 6:15PM. The speaker is
			 Milind Sohoni, who is a faculty
			 member in the CSE department and is also
			 the Head of CTARA (The Centre for
			 Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas).
			 The details regarding the talk
			 are given below. Venue of the talk is F.
			 C. Kohli Auditorium, 'B' Block,
			 01st Floor, Dept. of CSE, Kanwal Rekhi
			 Building.

			 TITLE: THE ELITE UNIVERSITY: ARE WE TOO
			 SELECTIVE?

			 ABSTRACT:

			 Elite Indian universities, such as the
			 IITs, IIMs, IISc etc., are an
			 important part of the intellectual
			 landscape of India. These capture the
			 imagination and aspirations of our society
			 and wield considerable
			 influence on the conduct of higher
			 education in this nation. Whence, it is
			 important that we understand and evaluate
			 their impact on the well-being
			 of our society.

			 This talk will analyse the so-called
			 "placement data" (i.e., career
			 choices made by fresh graduates) for 2013
			 of a large segment of graduates.
			 We classify these by sector, location and
			 salary. We show that the data
			 reveals two serious problems (i)
			 allocation of students to
			 non-engineering, and to companies which
			 have little direct impact on the
			 Indian economy, and (ii) a limited
			 relevance of the course-work to career
			 options.

			 Next, we do a formal analysis of how this
			 could have come about. This
			 points to the exceptional selectivity of
			 the JEE and GATE as a possible
			 factor. The so called "meritorious" (i.e.,
			 those who succeed in these
			 multiple-choice exams), are literally too
			 "smart" to be useful for the
			 Indian situation, and that the training
			 does not add any utility. We point
			 to a study by Maskin and Kremer which
			 points to exactly such a possibility
			 and also its consequences of higher
			 inequality and poor social outcomes.
			 Following Stiglitz, we propose a
			 reasonable definition of a "meritocracy"
			 and show that we fail it on several
			 counts.

			 Finally, we suggest some remedies and also
			 some additional work in this
			 direction. A working paper for the talk is
			 available at
			 www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~sohoni/sel.pdf [1].

			 This is joint work by Maunik Shah and
			 Vinish Kathuria.