Why IIT Kanpur? - Shashwat Chandra

This is a part of a status by my friend, Shashwat Chandra about Why Choose IIT Kanpur?

Why IIT Kanpur? The cultural festival of IIT Kanpur, Antaragni, is run virtually entirely by students. The Students' Gymkhana is a body made of students of all batches. The New SAC (Students' Activity Center, a place for people to hang out) was majorly planned by the students of three batches, and the franchises selected for its food court were selected by a panel of students. The degree of freedom given to students at IIT Kanpur is, in my opinion, definitely larger than most other institutes. IIT Kanpur also has the distinct advantage of being in a city that is much lesser developed than places like Mumbai and Delhi. Why is this an advantage? IIT Kanpur has become self-contained, because there is a larger incentive to make everything available on campus. The choices of extra-curricular activities are larger, the food options are cheap and more varied, and all sections of the campus are together, making it a tighter, closer-knit location. Each club has its own advantages. Some clubs improve your speaking skill; others teach you a new art; even others let you hone your intellect in the direction you want. Art, music, literature, dance, electronics, robotics, photography, whatever your interest, there is going to be an outlet. If there isn't, it is not hard to create an outlet or a club for an interest you feel will benefit you. There are certain to be more people interested in the things you like.
 

Importance of Inexpensive Education

Importance of Inexpensive Education (https://medium.com/teaching-learning/45fbfadcf9c6) first post live on Medium.

I am normally against price control regulations & in favor of free markets. But I believe that college fees for higher education have crossed into the realm of craziness. To understand the problem, we have to understand what the true purpose of education is.

True Education is meant to free the mind & the spirit.

Whereas modern higher education is doing exactly the opposite. It is binding people in financial loans which leads them to think of just one thing, MONEY. True Education must empower human beings, it must set us free. It must give us the confidence, the knowledge & the ability to learn to achieve what we want to do, no matter how herculean the task, it must teach us to accomplish one step at a time, learning all the way.

Intelligence + Character, that is the true goal of education. — Martin Luther King.

If you have a student loan of $100,000 when you graduate, it is that much more difficult to refuse a job offer & follow your heart & do what you really want to do. You might want to teach the underprivileged, work on climate change or just take a year off & explore your interests. But it is not an easy decision to make for anyone, & it becomes that much harder when you have a $100,000 loan.

For the creativity of our generations to flourish, for educated people to follow their heart, it is imperative that they not be bound in loan at their peak, right after they graduate.

Importance of inexpensive quality education

I am normally against price control regulations & in favor of free capital markets. But looking at what has happened to the US higher education system & hence the educated youth of USA, I think it is very important, especially for a country like India, to sustain high quality education at inexpensive prices.

& this I say, not just for higher education, but primary schooling & K-12 too.

The commercialisation of education is bad, it binds the students, it restricts creativity & gradually suffocates quality out of the system.

Continued at http://medium.com/teaching-learning/45fbfadcf9c6