Role of Public Policy in Promoting Diversity: Changes in Student Body Regional Diversity Post the...

8/13/2019 Role of Public Policy in Promoting Diversity: Changes in Student Body Regional Diversity Post the 2008 Changes in Admission Policy of the National Institutes

1/25

Role of Public Policy in PromotingDiversity

Changes in Student Body Regional Diversity Post the 2008 Changes

in Admission Policy of the National Institutes of Technology, India

Sachin Garg

The changing nature of work in the 21st Century calls for an innovative,

creative and highly educated workforce. Workplace diversity and increased ed-

ucation levels have been shown to be some of the drivers of innovation and cre-ativity. Studies have also shown the positive link between diversity and student

achievement. A diverse student body is also positively linked to democratic

functioning and institutional development, which are key to economic and all-

round human development. Thus it is imperative that institutions of higher

learning attract and nurture a diverse student body. This is especially true for

large developing countries like India, which are essentially an amalgamation of

different regional cultures with rich histories. College admission policies play

a key role in shaping student body diversity. The presence of afrmative action

and quotas play a "carrot and stick" role in building a diverse student body.

While they ensure that students are able to move to institutions which may

have been closed to them earlier, they also compel students to move away from

1


2/25

colleges that are geographically and culturally close to them and thus seek ad-

mission to colleges that may be culturally alien. This exploratory research deals

with the impact changes in college admission policy have on student body di-

versity. Using admission data from a leading Indian engineering school, we ndthat the changes in admission policy which occurred in 2007 and 2012 had a

signicant effect on the student regional demographic. Prior to 2007, with a

strict regional quota in place, the college had students from across the nation

and the regional demographic of the student body mirrored the national pop-

ulace. With the 2007 and 2012 shift to a largely merit based admission policy,

students gravitated to colleges near them, resulting in regional homogeniza-

tion. Future research in this area would extend it to multiple colleges and also

bring in various qualitative elements to analyze the impact of the changed stu-

dent demographic on various matters like instructional quality, administrative

challenges amongst others.

Diversity means being varied. The term means different things to different people and

in different contexts. In the US, diversity mainly implies ethnic and racial differences, whiledifferences in gender, tastes and preferences are also included. In this paper, I emphasize

the geographic and regional aspects of diversity which are exemplied by speaking different

languages or coming from different regions.

Diversity is extremely important to and for India. As the worlds seventh largest country

by area and the second largest by population it is an amalgamation of different sub-cultures

exemplifying unity in diversity. The country is sub-divided into 35 states and union

territories and is governed on a unitary federal model. Figure 1 on page 9 shows the

various states of the country. By virtue of its large size and long history, the country is

legendary for the large number of languages 1 in use. Language and dialect is an extremely

important part of culture. It allows culture to be communicated and one understands

1 The Indian constitution lists 22 ofcially recognised scheduled languages.

2


3/25

cultural coundaries when linguistic shifts start occuring. Similar cultures have similar

languages, and the reverse is also true. The protagonist in G. B. Shaws Pygmalion claims

to be able to pin a person down to the street in London depending upon their accent.

Because of the centrality of language in culture, most Indian states were re-organisedalong linguistic lines 2 .

1 Diversity and Culture

The presence of a large number of (sub) cultures in close proximity could lead to conicts.

As Huntington points out, most conicts today are a clash of civilizations [ 4]. A large

part of this clash is the lack of understanding and appreciation of each others cultures.

With the forces of globalization holding sway, an increasing fear amongst many cultures is

of getting swamped and losing their identity [ 7] which leads to a backlash against certain

forces and sometimes escalates into conict.

The best way to manage these conicts is still the age-old way of building people-to-

people contacts across these (sub) cultures which leads to people from diverse backgrounds

getting together to understand each other and realise that we are not really all that dif-

ferent. These contacts help defuse tensions. Diversity has also been shown to be good

for forstering innovation and creativity [ 5]. Therefore, one of the goals of public policy

should be to balance cultural diversity in an area. This is especially relevant to a large

diverse nation like India in order to keep it coalesced together, maintain national integrity

and promote economic growth.

Challenges to Building Diversity in India

Building people to people contact is not easy in nations as large and diverse as India.

People are loath to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar unless distinct rewards are in2 See the Indian States Reorganisation Act of 1956 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_

Reorganisation_Act (retrieved 17-March-2013)

3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_Reorganisation_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_Reorganisation_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_Reorganisation_Acthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_Reorganisation_Act


4/25

sight. Cultural afnity is extremely strong and prevents the movement into alien cultures.

Even when people move, they seek out the familiarity of their own ethnic or linguistic

tribe(s). Therefore, even though India provides for a lot of cross-country mobility, it is an

exception to nd people from different states in the same place. Most of these exceptionshappen for either of two main reasons jobs and education. The promise of getting into

a good job or a good education is what can force people to move.

Work related immigration largely happens into places where there are perceived to be

more opportunities. Thus it is largely from the underdeveloped regions (or rural areas) to

places that are more developed. It is only the more entrepreneurial folks who move into

less developed areas to exploit opportunity 3 . Migrants rarely move back to their origins

and thus their learnings often do not percolate back into where they came from. Another

source of movement due to work happens in the pan-national public service organizations

like the Civil Service or the Armed Forces. The Indian Armed Forces are an interesting case

study into how they have been able to assimilate people from all walks of like from across

the country into an institution that values diversity while instilling a sense of shared values.

Leena Parwar disusses diversity in the Indian Armed forces and the scope of further social

science research in her essay [ 6]. It is to be understood that these pan-national services

are highly selective and comprise a miniscule proportion of the population. For example,

the Indian Army though a million strong is still 0.1% of the countrys population.

The role of education opportunities in facilitating people-to-people contact is much

larger. Many students move due to the provision of better education away from their

homes. A prime example of this is the elite technical institutes in India like the Indian

Institutes of Technology. One sees a wider array of the student population here. But, theseinstitutes are highly selective 4 , and such movement impacts a miniscule population. Also,

3 An example of this is the migration of people belonging to business class from the Western state of Ra- jasthan into cities like Kolkatta (in East India), Bangalore (South India) or even the far Eastern state of Assam. It is to be recognised that these movements occurred many generations ago and these migrantshave assimilated into their adopted cultures.

4 According to the World Bank ( http://go.worldbank.org/OI8WBQVV50 ) (retrieved 17-March-2013)the elite Indian Institutes of Technology are accessible to less than 1% of the qualied students.

4
http://go.worldbank.org/OI8WBQVV50http://go.worldbank.org/OI8WBQVV50


5/25

most of these elite institutes are situated in the nations heartland - there are very few

top level institutions in the underserved areas of the country, i.e. the North East 5 which

means that students move from these areas to the heartland and very few make the re-

verse transition. Even amongst these institutes, students would prefer to move to placesthat are geographically and culturally near which means that other things being equal,

they would go to the nearest college available to them. Enhanced people-to-people contact

during college years leads to a life long appreciation of multiple cultures. Also, education

institutions, especially those focussed on higher education are a good place to build an

appreciation of diversity and reap the benets it brings ([ 3]).

In this backdrop, one set of institutions the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs)

(now the National Institutes of Technology (NITs)) had pursued a unique carrot and stick

admission policy that built a very diverse student body comprised of students from all over

the nation. This policy essentially was enforced a strict regional quota on admissions in

each institutewhich made these colleges unique a microcosm of the nation, or in other

words, a mini India. Each such institute had students from across the country, at a level

that would not happen in any other educational institute. Owing to various structural

changes in the funding and governance of the institutes, this policy was scrapped in 2008.

Current Research

In this paper, I seek to understand whether this policy change has impacted the regional

diversity of the colleges. Building on what we know of people trying to be as culturally

near as possible, we look at whether the removal of mechanisms that promoted regionaldiversity (by building articial barriers) would change the regional demographic of the

student body. Building on the assumption that students would have a wider choice in

getting into colleges nearer home, we postulate that this would be the case and regional

5 Though this has changed very recently with the setting up of a few national level technical institues in theNorth Eastern states.

5


6/25

homogeneity would increase (or diversity would decrease).

Our case is a single Regional Engineering College (now NIT) for which we analyse the

student body regional diversity for the years following the policy change (20082012) and

compare it with the year (2007) just before the change. Our dataset consists of the number

of students admitted from each state for the years in question. To test that any changes

seen were due to the policy, we use the 2 test for Goodness of Fit on this data and

interpret the results. The preliminary nding is that the postulate is correct.

The paper is structured as follows rst we look at the role of diversity in college edu-

cation and why public policy should attempt to balance it. Then we look at the structure of

the RECs, their unique admission policy and the current admission policy. Then the dataset

is analysed and hypotheses tested. Finally, we present the ndings and provide directions

for future research.

2 Role & Importance of Diversity in Education

One of the goals of higher or post-secondary education is to build analytical and criti-cal thinking skills that enable the students to face everyday challenges in the real world.

Gurin eta la. [ 3] emphasize the importance of college years in building these skills as this

is a time when students are at a critical developmental stage at institutions explicitly

constituted to promote late adolescent development. They opine that residential colleges

and universities provide students the opportunities to experiment with new ideas, new

relationships and new roles. They hold that attending college where the environment is

simply a replication or extension of ones home environment impedes the personal strug-

gle and conscious thought that are so important for identity development. They also quote

studies done by the sociologist Newcomb and others about the impact of peer inuence

on shaping students attitudes during college, which showed that these attitudes remained

stable even twenty-ve to fty years laters.

6


7/25

Thus, college life outside the classroom is extremely important in shaping the sort of crit-

ical thought processes which is the purpose of the college years. By forcing students into an

arena which is unfamiliar and encourages intellectual experimentation allows them to rec-

ognize the varied future possibilities. It allows disequilibrium - the process of discontinuity and discrepancy that spurs cognitive growth [ 3, pg. 335] to occur.

The Importance of Diversity

Gurin et al. [ 3] talk about three main forms of diversity:

structural diversity which is the diversity owing to pure numerical strength,

informal interaction diversity which involves both the frequency and quality of inter-

group interactions and is key to meanigful diverse experiences, and

classroom diversity which includes both learning about diverse people and interacting

with diverse peers.

It should be noted that structural diversity is a necessary condition for the other twoforms of diversity to occur. Unless there is a diversity owing to numbers, where will stu-

dents form the meaningful formal and informal interactions so necessary for the other

forms of diversity.

They [ 3] talk about the importance of diversity with regard to two main outcomes

(a) learning, and (b) democracy. According to them, learning happens when students

think actively and are intellectually engaged. They cite the research of psychologist Ellen

Langer who contends that people will engage in effortful, mindful, and conscious modes

of thought when they encounter situations that have discrepancies with their past expe-

rience. The importance of diversity to the learning process is that it brings up these fea-

tures so important to learning, along with multiple and different perspectives. Regarding

democracy, their [ 3] view is that democracy thrives due to the multiplicity of perspectives

7


8/25

and discourses that occur because citizens have differing points of view. Students sense of

community and democratic citizenship is increased when they experience how their lives

are necessarily shaped by others.

Diversity has also been linked with innovation and creativity [ 1])in a positive way.

3 The Regional Engineering College System

The Regional Engineering College system, was built as a network of institutes with the

purpose of serving the Engineering and Technological needs of the various regions in the

country. This network was setup in the early sixties and by the turn of the century num-bered seventeen. These regionally situated institutes were setup as joint enterprises of the

Central and respective State Governments 6 . We can see how the netwok was spread out

across the nation (c. 1994) in gure 2. These colleges are amongst the prestigious Indian

technical institutes, ranked just below the top tier institutes like the Indian Institutes of

Technology (IITs) and have consistently maintained their status.

The State government was to provide the land, building and electric power for each

REC, while the expenditure on developing laboratories and manpower training was to be

borne by the Central government. The recurring expenditure on teaching faculty and sup-

porting staff for undergraduate education was shared equally between central and state

governments. The central government bore the entire expenditure on postgraduate edu-

cation and its development. These aspects of shared responsibility percolated down into

other facets which impact day-to-running, mainly governance and admission policy.

The RECs were governed by an independent Board of Governors (BoG) constituted of

members nominated by both the central and state governments, which included represen-

6 This was a signicant departure from the policy of the Indian Institutes of Technology, which were setupas wholly central institutes and other technical colleges that were either wholly funded by the respectivestate governments or private instiutions which may or may not be supported by state governments. Othertypes of technical teaching institutes are those setup by various minority groups to impart instruction totheir own communities.

8


9/25

tatives from

the local industry,

the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex government reponsi-

ble for technical education,

the afliating university 7 ,

an institution providing higher technical education of the state (IIT or Technical Uni-

versity), and

an elected public representative (MLA or MLC of the region).

The chairman of the BoG was appointed by the central government with the concurrence

of the state.

Figure 1: Map of India Figure 2: Map Showing the REC network (c. 1994)

7 Most colleges in India do not grant degrees on their own, but are rather afliated to a degree-grantinguniversity. Some colleges, like the IITs and now the NITs have been deemed to be universities withdegree granting powers.

9


10/25

3.1 RECs Unique Admission Policy

The RECs had a unique admission policy which stemmed from their nature as joint central

and state government enterprises. According to this policy, every incoming year, each REC

admitted half its students from the home state in which it was situated and the other half

from the rest of the country. The map in gure 3a on the next page shows the intake

for 2007. That year there were a total of 570 places, out of which the home state (UP)

accounted for half (265). The rest (265) were apportioned amongst the other states based

on their share of the national population.

The admission of out of state students was based on a quota system, whereby each state

nominated a xed number of students depending on its relative population in the country.

Each state was free to decide its own mechanism for nominating these students and these

mechanisms varied competitive exams, marks secured in the qualifying exam (High

school) or a mix of these.

Thus, each REC had representation from almost all states 8 . We have weighted the

statewide annual intake (as a percentage of total annual intake) by each states popu-

lation (percentage of national population) and represented them on the national map in

gure 3b. From this, we note that most states sent a number of students commensurate

to their national population, barring some of the small States/Union Territories. Another

outlier is the home state which has a signicantly higher representation owing to the fact

that half of the intake is reserved for them by design. Thus, each and every REC was a

microcosm of the nation a mini India where one could nd students from almost every

region of the country.

8 Some of the very small Union Territories (not more than a cpouple) unfortunately did not have enoughpopulation to send students to each REC, only a few.

10


11/25

(a) Actual Student Intake (Total: 570 places) (b) Weighted intake. (Share of State Students inOther State Quota) divided by (States Shareof the National Population)

Figure 3: Where do the Students Come from? The numbers represent the intake from thecorresponding state for 2007.

3.2 NITs Admission Policy (post-2007)

The admission policy mentioned in 3.1 was scrapped in 2008 following the restructuring

of the RECs and their upgradation to Institutes of National Importance. Now, these

colleges are referred to as National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and are fully centrally-

funded and managed.

Acccording to the new admission policy, the per-state quota has been abolished, while

still maintaining half of the intake for each college from the home state. The admission

process has been centralized, and all intake is through a common, nationwide competitive

examination the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) conducted by the

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). Thus, it is now possible for students from

any state to compete for the remaining places in any NIT. For example in 2007, a student

from the southern state of Tamil Nadu could compete only for the 13 places available to

him/her at MNNIT, Allahabad (see Table 1), while in 2009 the entire eld of more than

11


12/25

300 places 9 was open. Similarly, students from the neighbouring state of Bihar compete

for 28 seats in 2007, but now they too had the entire eld open. In 4.1 , we will note

that the new policy had the effect of signicantly increasing the home state population. To

take care of this bias, the policy was was amended in 2012 so that Admission against AllIndia Quota reserved only Other state candidates 10 . With this change, we note that the

population has shifted to favour neighbouring, culturally similar states.

The reason(s) behind this policy change has not yet been fully explored by me and is

part of ongoing research. Some research suggests that it occurred due to the complete

takeover of the colleges by the centre. The shift to full central funding 11 meant that the

centre felt a need to have a larger say in the institutes affairs, which includes student body

selection. Another reason touted is that was ostensibly a feeling that some states were

sending students who were below par 12 owing to lax selection norms.

These policy changes seem to have happened without much debate. It is interesting

to note that a question of the impact of changed admission policy on the interests of local

students was raised in the Rajya Sabha, in response to which no change in the composition

of the student intake was envisaged 13 . We intend to show that this change in the admission

9 The total intake for 2009 was 607. Out of this, half (300+) was set aside for the home state. This leavesaround 300 places to be lled by students from other states.

10 3.3.1 (pg. 11) of Central Counseling Board (CCB) 2012 INFORMATION BROCHURE (Version VIII) avail-able from http://ccb.nic.in/ says the other state quota seats in an Institute shall be available only to candidates from other states, home state candidates being forbidden from these seats.

11 The reason behind the takeover itself seems to be certain governance issues like the inability of state gov-ernments to provide for funds, especially salaries and the growing political interference in administrativeaffairs. The status of pay and benets for the staff were also unclear (whether to provide central scales of state scales). This created dissatisfaction among employees and tension between them and administra-tion resulting in continuous disturbance in academic working and hindered the growth of the institutions.(Personal Communication from a former REC Principal).

12 An article making this point was published in the Times of India (24 th June, 2008) ( http:

//articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-06-24/india/27781083_1_ nits-regional-engineering-colleges-admission-process ). The contention here isthat students who secure low marks (are less meritorious) are still able to get admission into an RECoutside their state in a good stream like Computer Science/Electronics Engineering etc., even whenthose ranking higher to them were not able to get admission in these streams in the home REC. A counterto this point is that no-one stopped such students from doing the same going out of state. Incidentally this is also a form of diversity a diversity of educational levels.

13 From 9 of the proceedings of the Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Commit-tee on Human Resource Development 178 th Report on the National Institutes of Technol-ogy Bill, 2006 (Presented to the Rajya Sabha on 23 rd November, 2006) (retrieved from

12
http://ccb.nic.in/http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-06-24/india/27781083_1_nits-regional-engineering-colleges-admission-processhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-06-24/india/27781083_1_nits-regional-engineering-colleges-admission-processhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-06-24/india/27781083_1_nits-regional-engineering-colleges-admission-processhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-06-24/india/27781083_1_nits-regional-engineering-colleges-admission-processhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-06-24/india/27781083_1_nits-regional-engineering-colleges-admission-processhttp://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-06-24/india/27781083_1_nits-regional-engineering-colleges-admission-processhttp://ccb.nic.in/


13/25

policy did indeed result in a drastic change in the composition of the student intake and

thus the demographic composition of the student body.

4 Student Body Regional Diversity

For the purpose of this study, we use actual admission data for the Motilal Nehru National

Institute of Technology (MNNIT) ( http://www.mnnit.ac.in ) situated at Allahabad in

the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. This institute, founded in 1961 is named after Pandit

Motilal Nehru, father of Indias rst Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who hailed

from the city of Allahabad, and was earlier known as MNREC (Motilal Nehru RegionalEngineering College).

Our data set consists of the number of students admitted per year from every state for

the years 20042012. We use actual admission data for the years 2009, 20102012. For

2007 and earlier, we use the sanctioned strength as a proxy for the statewide quotas.

Unfortunately, the actual admission data for 2008 (the rst year the changed policy was

effected) is unavailable. Hence, we impute data for 2008 using the same student distri-

bution as 2009, with the addition of the special supernumerary quota 14 which was put in

place for the 12 states and union territories that did not have their own NIT.

We use 2007 (the last year admissions were based on the quota system) as the baseline

year for comparison. Data for this year is presented in Table 1. The same data can be seen

in gure 3 on page 11 graphically.

To do a statistical analysis of the data, we need to categorise it. We build categories

http://164.100.47.5/book2/reports/HRD/178threport.htm on March 16, 2013):The Committee observes that NITs also have a Region/State specic focus as they cater to the needs

of the local industry. In the governance structure that is envisaged in the Bill, NITs would have enoughautonomy to maintain their individuality. Taking note of the fact that NITs have their own admissionpolicies as far as giving specic preference to local students is concerned, the Committee enquired aboutthe impact of the Bill on the interests of local students. The Committee is happy to note that the existingadmission policy would continue under the proposed Act and there would be no change in the composition of the student intake . It believes that the NITs will develop and grow faster separately than with the IITs.

14 This special quota comprised 445 seats in total, with MNNIT having a share of 28.

13
http://www.mnnit.ac.in/http://www.mnnit.ac.in/


14/25


15/25

StateNum

State/Unionterritory

StateCode Border

State%age of Natl Pop.

Actual /Sanc-tionedIntake(Seats)

Collegepop.

(%age of other state

quota)

Collegepop. (wtdby state

pop.)

RoundedWtd Pop.

1

Andaman

and NicobarIslands AN 5 0.03 2 0.75 25.16 25

2 AndhraPradesh AP 4 7 18 6.79 0.97 1

3 ArunachalPradesh AR 5 0.11 5 1.89 17.15 17

4 Assam AS 4 2.58 10 3.77 1.46 15 Bihar BR 1 8.58 15 5.66 0.66 16 Chandigarh CH 2 0.09 1 0.38 4.19 47 Chhattisgarh CG 1 2.11 9 3.40 1.61 2

8 Dadra andNagar Haveli DN 5 0.03 0 0.00 0.00 0

9 Daman and

Diu DD 5 0.02 2 0.75 37.74 38

10

NationalCapital

Territory of Delhi

DL 1 1.38 10 3.77 2.73 3

11 Goa GA 5 0.12 2 0.75 6.29 612 Gujarat GJ 2 5 13 4.91 0.98 113 Haryana HR 1 2.09 5 1.89 0.90 1

14 HimachalPradesh HP 2 0.57 7 2.64 4.63 5

15 Jammu andKashmir JK 3 1.04 3 1.13 1.09 1

16 Jharkhand JH 2 2.72 8 3.02 1.11 1

17 Karnataka KA 4 5.05 9 3.40 0.67 118 Kerala KL 5 2.76 9 3.40 1.23 119 Lakshadweep LD 5 0.01 1 0.38 37.74 38

20 MadhyaPradesh MP 1 6 12 4.53 0.75 1

21 Maharashtra MH 2 9.28 21 7.92 0.85 122 Manipur MN 5 0.22 3 1.13 5.15 523 Meghalaya ML 5 0.24 4 1.51 6.29 624 Mizoram MZ 5 0.09 3 1.13 12.58 1325 Nagaland NL 5 0.16 4 1.51 9.43 926 Orissa OR 3 3.47 8 3.02 0.87 127 Pondicherry PY 5 0.1 3 1.13 11.32 1128 Punjab PB 2 2.3 7 2.64 1.15 129 Rajasthan RJ 1 5.67 10 3.77 0.67 130 Sikkim SK 5 0.05 6 2.26 45.28 4531 Tamil Nadu TN 5 5.96 13 4.91 0.82 132 Tripura TR 5 0.3 3 1.13 3.77 4

33 UttarPradesh UP 0 16.49 265 100.00 6.06 6

34 Uttarakhand UK 1 0.84 14 5.28 6.29 635 West Bengal WB 3 7.55 25 9.43 1.25 1

Table 1: State Quotas as in 2007 (baseline)

15


16/25

4.1 Findings

Analysing where the students come from after 2007, we nd a distinct trend. Figure 5 on

page 18 shows graphically how the intake changed between 2007 and 2009 15 . We note

that the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala did not send a single student

in 2009, compared to a combined total of 31 in 2007. The western state of Gujarat also

did not send a single student (from 13 in 2007), while Maharashtra drastically cut down

from 21 to just 3. The entire North Eastern region (which had sent 34 students) now sent

none. The big changes happened with the home state (UP) whose number increased by

200, Rajasthan which more than tripled the number it sent.

In Figure 6 on page 19 , which shows the percentage change in 2009 and 2011 from the

baseline of 2007, we note that these changes are consistent over time. From gure 6, we

note that the largest increases happened in the proportion coming from the home state.

To obviate this home state bias, the policy was tweaked in 2012 to prevent home state

students from getting places that were supposed to be for students outside the state (see

3.2 ). The effect of this is shown in gure 7, which shows the percentage change in

student population from 2007 baseline. The number of students from adjoining states (the

so called Hindi Belt 16 where Hindi is the primary language spoken) increased manifold.

For example, Rajathan sent six times the number it sent in 2007 while Bihar tripled the

number of its students. There was a little change in that some of the states did send a

few students (comapred to 2009 and 2011). For example. Gujarats contribution was

not -100% as in 2011, similar was the case with Punjab (decline of 35% only). Andhra

Pradesh stands out as a possible beneciary of this policy, as it is the only non-Hindi Belt

state which increased the number of students it sent.

These results can also been seen as the change in overall college regional demographics.

15 There was a small increase of 70 places (around 11%) between 2007 and 2009, so the absolute numbersare not exactly comparable. But most of the changes show a more than 10% variation, so even with thisfact, we can see a denite shift.

16 The Hindi Belt consists of around 9 states in North-Central India where Hindi is spoken. UP is the mostpopulous state amongst these. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_belt

16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_belthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_belt


17/25

Figure 8 shows how the total home population moved from 50% in 2007 to around 70%

in 2012, while the furthest states (BORDER=5) reduced their share from a little over

10% (2007) to almost zero in 2012. Table 3 shows the calculated Simpsons Diversity

Index 17 . From this we note the decreasing heterogeneity of the college. This also comesout very well in gure 7b which shows how the percentage of students from the Hindi Belt

increased from a little over 60% in 2007 to well over 90% in 2012, both in annual intake

and total college population.

Now, that we have identied that there has been a demographic change in the student

body diversity, we need to test whether this change was in the realm of probability or

denitely due to the policy change.

4.2 Statistical Testing

For purposes of statistical testing, we postulate that students tend to attend college at a

place which is culturally and geographically near. In order to verify this postulate, we

test two null hypotheses. We use the 2 test for Goodness of Fit to test both of these

hypotheses.

Hypothesis I

H 0 : There is no change in student intake composition with the new admission policy. That

is, the incoming student distribution in 200812 is not statistically different from the

baseline incoming distribution of 2007.

We use Table 4 for calculating this. The degrees of freedom for this is 5 (as we have6 categories). For this, we have the critical values for 2(5, = 0.05) is 11.070 18 . We

17 The commonly measure of diversity measure was created by Gibbs and Martin [ 2]. The index ( D) iscalculated as D = 1

n

i =1 p2i , where pi is the proportion of individuals or objects in category i and

N is the number of categories. A perfectly homogeneous population would have a diversity index scoreof 0. A perfectly heterogeneous population would have a diversity index score of 1 (assuming innitecategories with equal representation in each category).

18 http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda3674.htm

17
http://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda3674.htmhttp://www.itl.nist.gov/div898/handbook/eda/section3/eda3674.htm


18/25

F i g ur e 5 : I n t ak e C h an

g eb e t w e en2 0 0 7 ( b a s el i n e ) an d 2 0 0 9 .

18


19/25

Year Border0 1 2 3 4 52007 50 14.15 10.75 6.79 6.98 11.322008 56.77 14.48 9 5.13 5.26 9.36

2009 63.65 14.96 7.48 3.65 3.74 6.522010 72.11 15.05 5.15 2.11 2.07 3.512011 79.22 15.32 2.99 0.73 0.7 1.042012 72.65 21.48 3.36 0.91 1.47 0.13

Table 2: Percentage of Entire College UG Demographic (2007-12) (sorted by BOR-DER)(Assumes Intake is constant between 2004-2007)

(a) Percentage Change (2009) from 2007Baseline.

(b) Percentage Change (2011) from 2007Baseline.

Figure 6: Intake Change is Consistent over Time (Percentage Changes in 2009 and 2011compared with baseline 2007).

Year Simpsons Index2007 0.712008 0.642009 0.562010 0.452011 0.352012 0.42

Table 3: Simpsons Diversity Index

19


20/25


21/25

Figure 8: College Demographic Over Time (Categorised by BORDER).

note from Table 4 that the calculated value of 2 is much greater than this for all the years

in question. Even with the policy amendement in 2012, the composition has changed

signicantly from the 2007 baseline.

Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected. The new policy does signicantly impact theincoming student distribution.

Hypothesis II

H 0 : There is no change in the college demographic after the new admission policy. That

is the college demographic (as a whole) is not statistically different in 2012 from the

baseline demographic of 2007.

We use Table 5 for calculating this. The degrees of freedom for this is 5 (as we have 6

categories). For this, we have the critical values for 2(5, = 0.05) is 11.070. We note

from Table 5 that the calculated value of 2 is much greater than this for all the years in

question.

21


22/25

Year Border 0 1 2 3 4 5 Total 2

2007 Actual 265 75 57 36 37 60 530 -Proportion 0.50 0.14 0.11 0.07 0.07 0.11

2009 Actual 467 97 29 6 6 2 607 234.54Expected 304 86 65 41 42 69

2010 Actual 650 117 17 6 4 0 794 395.81Expected 397 112 85 54 55 90

2011 Actual 692 129 11 3 4 0 839 443.77Expected 420 119 90 57 59 95

2012 Actual 420 316 46 13 31 2 828 494.96Expected 414 117 89 56 58 94

Table 4: 2 Test Contigency Table (Annual Intake)

Year Border 0 1 2 3 4 5 Total 2

2007 Actual 1060 300 228 144 148 240

2120 -Proportion 0.50 0.14 0.11 0.07 0.07 0.11

2008 Actual 1262 322 200 114 117 208 2223 52.82Expected 1112 315 239 151 155 252

2009 Actual 1464 344 172 84 86 150 2300 224.33Expected 1150 325 247 156 161 260

2010 Actual 1849 386 132 54 53 90 2564 636.74Expected 1282 363 276 174 179 290

2011 Actual 2276 440 86 21 20 30 2873 1239.49Expected 1437 407 309 195 201 325

2012 Actual 2229 659 103 28 45 4 3068 1215.95Expected 1534 434 330 208 214 347

Table 5: 2 Test Contigency Table (College Population over 4 years)

Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected. The new policy does signicantly impact the

student demographic.

5 DiscussionBased on the foregoing, we see that the changed admission policy change has resulted in

a decrease of the heterogeity amongst the student population. One of the main reasons

for this trend is that students tend to self-select themselves into institutes towards which

have cultural afnity, especially in a regional sensefood, language and other customs.

22


23/25

This implies as per Gurin et al. [ 3], students miss out on some of the cognitive learnings

that foster active thinking and personal development. They have also pointed out some

of the research topics in the area of the impact of diversity on both college and lifelong

learning which would need more research in the Indian context like:

1. students own assessments of the benets they do or do not receive from interaction

with their diverse peers;

2. faculty assessments about the impact of diversity on student learning;

3. returns to students and larger community due to diversity; and

4. analyses tying diversity experience during the college years to a wide variety of edu-cational outcomes.

A limitation of the current study is that it has looked at data from only one institute and

not controlled for the presence or absence of other colleges nearby. For example, the

southern states have a very well established network of reasonably good private engineer-

ing colleges and some of these are obligated to give places to students at fees set by the

government, which is much less than they would normally charge and roughly similar tothat in government colleges. A broader study would extend this to multiple NITs and see

whether their student demography has also changed similarly, and if not, why?

Also, one has to look at whether the students in under-developed regions like the North

eastern states are losing out by the new policy in not being able to secure a place. Another

point is whether the far ung, underdeveloped regions are losing by not having students

from the heartland going there and how does a lack of brain circulation impact the

regional economies.

Having more data on the socio-economic status, educational background, gender etc.

would also help us understand how students select the college to go to and how pub-

lic policy cah help towards steering students to meet the larger developmental needs of

society.

23


24/25

Thus, this research has a lot of potential to open up fresh vistas of understanding by

extending this line of enquiry not only to multiple NITs, but other institutes like the IITs,

state government colleges etc. This should help us uncover more the impact diversity has

on a country like India and the important role public policy plays.

References

[1] Wesley M Cohen and Daniel A Levinthal. Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on

Learning and Innovation. In: Administrative Science Quarterly (1990), pp. 128152.

URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2393553 .

[2] Jack P Gibbs and Walter T Martin. Urbanization, Technology, and the Division of

Labor: International Patterns. In: American Sociological Review 27.5 (Oct. 1962).

Diversity Index, pp. 667677. URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2089624 .

[3] Patricia Gurin et al. Diversity and Higher Education: Theory and Impact on Educa-

tional Outcomes. In: Harvard Educational Review 72.3 (2002), pp. 330367. URL:

http://hepg.metapress.com/content/01151786U134N051 .

[4] Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations. In: Foreign Affairs 72.3 (1993),

pp. 2249.

[5] Sam Youl Lee, Richard Florida, and Zoltan Acs. Creativity and entrepreneurship: a

regional analysis of new rm formation. In: Regional studies 38.8 (2004), pp. 879

891.

[6] Leena Parmar. Cultural diversity in the Armed Forces: An international comparison.In: ed. by Joseph Soeters and Jan van der Meulen. Routledge, 2007. Chap. Diversity

in the Indian Armed Forces, pp. 111124.

24
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2393553http://www.jstor.org/stable/2089624http://hepg.metapress.com/content/01151786U134N051http://hepg.metapress.com/content/01151786U134N051http://hepg.metapress.com/content/01151786U134N051http://www.jstor.org/stable/2089624http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/2393553


25/25

Date post:	04-Jun-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	sachin-garg
View:	218 times
Download:	0 times

Role of Public Policy in Promoting Diversity: Changes in Student Body Regional Diversity Post the...

Documents