I had some very interesting encounters recently. I was invited to be a Guest Speaker at an Institute of Management in Delhi on its convocation day. This Institute has been set up by some seniors from my alma mater—IIT, Kanpur. The convocation ceremony was well-designed, had all the appropriate rituals, and was largely managed by the students themselves. As a young, private Institute, it may not have the ‘market recognition’ as of now, but it surely is operating on some values that reminded me of earlier days of post-secondary education, where ‘graduation’ had some meaning.

The second encounter was as a keynote speaker at a premier Malaysian University in Penang, which had hosted the first Asian conference on ‘University-Community Partnership’. This University had recently been accorded an APEX status by the Malaysian Government, and provided substantial additional funding for its research, teaching and outreach activities. The argument made by this University to secure such a privileged status was its commitment to sustainable development and service to ‘bottom billions’. It argued that this path of exploration was indeed academic excellence.