Friday, May 11, 2007
Time Magazine on Anil Agarwal and Vedanta University
Time Magazine in its recent issue lists Anil Agarwal at number in its list of 12 Powergivers. The others in the list are Angelina Jolie, Rania al-Abdullah, Yu Panglin, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud, Sir John Templeton, Li Ka-shing, Pierre & Pam Omidyar, David Rockefeller, Gordon Moore, George Soros, and Bill & Melinda Gates.
Following is an excerpt of what Time says about Mr. Agarwal and Vedanta University.
Cause: University education in India. The London-based mining magnate has pledged $1 billion to establish a world-class, need-blind university in Orissa, eastern India. To be called Vedanta (the name of his mining group), the school will focus on liberal arts, in contrast to India’s many technically oriented schools.
Impact: Vedanta will help address the region’s dearth of university spots, which keeps qualified students from going to high-quality colleges.
It says Vedant University will focus on liberal arts and not like the technical schools in India. What it means probably is that it will not be unidimensional like the IITs were (they are changing), the IIMs are, etc. It does not mean that it will not have disciplines like science, engineering, management etc. In fact Vedanta University’s website lists all these disciplines and my guess is that in their first phase they will have disciplines like Engineering, Management and Medicine (as they recently promised) which are in demand and which will attract paying students.
(Thanks to Jibanendra babu for tipping of about the Time magazine article.)
