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Purpose: The present paper concerns the domestic and international accreditations of business schools to find the commonalities in various accreditation standards. The study also addresses cost involvement and comparisons between various accreditations. Design/methodology/approach: The research examined the requirements, methods and preparations for many national and international accrediting authorities. The accreditation criteria, history and guidelines were collected from secondary data sources. The content analysis was used to draw conclusions about the similarities and differences between the data sources and identify any differences and similarities between various accreditations. Findings: The study found commonalities across accreditation standards and cost analyses, helping institutions achieve suitable accreditations. To unify the administrative procedure at the institutional level and reduce duplicates for schools seeking multiple accreditations, similarities in all accreditation requirements are analysed. The comparison helps organisations determine which accreditation standard best suits their needs and goals. Schools with limited budgets might compare accreditation costs to determine which are worth pursuing. Research limitations/implications: This study is limited to comparing a few accreditation bodies related to management education. In future research, the study may be extended to other areas. The use of the approach developed in this study for evaluating accreditation agencies of different streams, such as engineering, science and medicine, will be the study's future implications. Practical implications: The research indicates that schools can streamline accreditation by identifying commonalities, aligning procedures, comparing standards and conducting cost assessments. These insights aid efficient accreditation and inform accrediting bodies' framework enhancements. Standards facilitate global performance comparisons. Originality/value: This is likely the first study to compare Indian and international accreditations using the accreditation frameworks and cost analyses using comparative analysis. The study recommends strategies for achieving academic benchmarks through continuous improvement activities and success in international competition.

Policy-makers, research managers, and donors are interested in knowing the outputs, outcomes, and impacts of investment in agricultural research. Several institutions are engaged in rice research and impact assessment of rice research requires area coverage information for rice varieties. The area coverage information for individual varieties is not available at the national level in many developing countries as the conventional household survey method is expensive and time-consuming. This article aims to find a cost-effective and quick method to estimate the area under popular rice varieties in India and their spread in different states. Secondary data collected from 27 states and 1 union territory of India were used to estimate the area. The results of the new method compared well with some of the studies conducted at the state level. The most important varieties identified using the new method were Swarna, Cottondora Sannalu, Samba Mahsuri, Vijetha, IR-64, and Ranjeet, which covered more than 1 million ha each in the country. On geographical coverage, IR-64 has spread to 17 states followed by Swarna, Cottondora Sannalu, Samba Mahsuri, Vijetha, IR-36, and Swarna Sub-1 which covered 14, 14, 12, 11, 11, and 10 states, respectively. The area information can be used to compute returns to rice research by different research institutions and study dynamics of varietal change over time. The popular varieties identified should be used in future breeding programs and biotechnological studies for the development of superior varieties.

School voucher programs are scholarship initiatives -- frequently government funded or incentivized -- that pay for students to attend private schools of their choice. This study is the first formal meta-analytic consolidation of the evidence from all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the student-level math and reading test score effects of school vouchers internationally. Our search process turned up 9,443 potential studies, 21 of which were ultimately included. These 21 studies represent 11 different voucher programs. Utilizing a random effects and robust variance estimation framework, we find moderate evidence of positive achievement impacts of private school vouchers, with substantial effect heterogeneity across programs and outcome years. Suggestive evidence exists that voucher interventions may be cost effective even for null achievement impacts. Future experimental studies of long-term, scaled up voucher interventions could strengthen our understanding of achievement impacts.

Purpose: COVID-19 outbreak has compelled the world-wide education system to use the digital collaboration platform (DCP) for online learning, for robust inclusive sustainable education. The purpose of this paper is to understand the adoption intention and effectiveness of DCP using technology acceptance model (TAM) for online learning among students studying in higher education institutes (HEIs) in India. Design/methodology/approach: A structured questionnaire has been adopted to survey and collect data from 324 students studying in HEI of Maharashtra state in India. The questionnaire consisted of 28 constructs. The constructs in this section were measured using a five-point Likert scale ranging. In the first step, first-order confirmatory factor analysis is carried out by using the software IBM AMOS-20. The initial model is generated for six constructs, and outcomes are used to analyze the model's goodness of fit and construct validity. In second step, structural equation modelling is carried out to do the path analysis of the proposed model. Findings: The findings connote that the interactivity, cost-effectiveness and the core TAM constructs as perceived usefulness form positive attitude towards usage of DCP and intention to adopt it in near future by the students of HEI of India. The research is an attempt to provide possible explanations for the epochal relationships between the constructs and discusses the usage of information, which can be further used to enhance the acceptance of DCP among students in urban as well as rural India. Research limitations/implications: The results and findings will provide a direction to the various stakeholders such as educators, management, learners and the parents on the adoption intention of digital collaborative platform from a learner's point of view. This will lead to the knowledge which will help in practical implementations of these technologies. Practical implications: The results and findings will provide a direction to the various stakeholders such as educators, management, learners and the parents on the adoption intention of DCP from learner's point of view. This will lead to the knowledge which will help in practical implementations of these technologies. The findings imply that the interactivity, cost-effectiveness and the core constructs of TAM such as perceived usefulness form positive attitude towards usage of DCP and intention to adopt it in near future by the students of HEI of India. This research provides possible explanations for the significant relationships between the constructs and discusses how this information can be used to enhance the acceptance of DCP among students in urban as well as rural India. Social implications: This research provides possible explanations for the significant relationships between the constructs and discusses how this information can be used to enhance the acceptance of DCP among students in urban as well as rural India, which is the need of hour for sustainable education. Originality/value: There are tremendous studies on online learning and use of digital platforms including the constructs of TAM but in the times of COVID-19, where it has become mandatory for all educational institutes to use the digital collaborative platform for continuance of education. The study is original and is an attempt to understand students' perspective towards usage of DCP and its effectiveness in learning in the rural parts of Maharashtra from where the students hail to study in HEI in Pune and Mumbai.

This paper illustrates the cloud-based telemonitoring framework that implements healthcare automation system for myocardial infarction (MI) disease classification. For this purpose, the pathological feature of ECG signal such as elevated ST segment, inverted T wave, and pathological Q wave are extracted, and MI disease is detected by the rule-based rough set classifier. The information system involves pathological feature as an attribute and decision class. The degree of attributes dependency finds a smaller set of attributes and predicted the comprehensive decision rules. For MI decision, the ECG signal is shared with the respective cardiologist who analyses and prescribes the required medication to the first-aid professional through the cloud. The first-aid professional is notified accordingly to attend the patient immediately. To avoid the identity crisis, ECG signal is being watermarked and uploaded to the cloud in a compressed form. The proposed system reduces both data storage space and transmission bandwidth which facilitates accessibility to quality care in much reduced cost.

There is a growing need to understand the global impact of poverty on early brain and behavioural development, particularly with regard to key cognitive processes that emerge in early development. Although the impact of adversity on brain development can trap children in an intergenerational cycle of poverty, the massive potential for brain plasticity is also a source of hope: reliable, accessible, culturally agnostic methods to assess early brain development in low resource settings might be used to measure the impact of early adversity, identify infants for timely intervention and guide the development and monitor the effectiveness of early interventions. Visual working memory (VWM) is an early marker of cognitive capacity that has been assessed reliably in early infancy and is predictive of later academic achievement in Western countries. Here, we localized the functional brain networks that underlie VWM in early development in rural India using a portable neuroimaging system, and we assessed the impact of adversity on these brain networks. We recorded functional brain activity as young children aged 4-48 months performed a VWM task. Brain imaging results revealed localized activation in the frontal cortex, replicating findings from a Midwestern US sample. Critically, children from families with low maternal education and income showed weaker brain activity and poorer distractor suppression in canonical working memory areas in the left frontal cortex. Implications of this work are far-reaching: it is now cost-effective to localize functional brain networks in early development in low-resource settings, paving the way for novel intervention and assessment methods.

It is proposed to establish an Integrated Distance Education System in India by designing modern technology based information communication network, connecting all its ODL (Open and Distance Learning) institutions to the headquarters of the ODL system in India. The principle roles to be performed by such a system have been discussed; according to which it would enable, educate and empower every member of the academic community including distance learners so as to provide them quality distance education. The connectivity between the ODL institutions would be achieved through the use of VPN (Virtual Private Network) involving wireless networking and optical networking. Various benefits of providing VPN connectivity to the ODL institutions in India, such as cost effectiveness, security, and shared applications/services have also been discussed. Thus, the networking of all the ODL institutions in India would provide a national framework so as to build an excellent Integrated Distance Education System necessary for providing equity and quality distance education at national level. (Contains 4 figures.)

Past efforts invested in computer-based education technology interventions have generated little evidence of affordable success at scale. This paper presents the results of a mobile phone-based intervention conducted in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in 2012-13. The BridgeIT project provided a pool of audio-visual learning materials organised in accordance with a system of syllabi pacing charts. Teachers of Standard 5 and 6 English and Science classes were notified of the availability of new videos via text messages (SMS), which they downloaded onto their phones using an open-source application and showed, with suggested activities, to students on a TV screen using a TV-out cable. In their evaluation of this project, the authors of this paper found that the test scores of children who experienced the intervention improved by 0.36 standard deviations in English and 0.98 standard deviations in Science in Andhra Pradesh, relative to students in similar classrooms who did not experience the intervention. Differences between treatment and control schools in Tamil Nadu were less marked. The intervention was also cost-effective, relative to other computer-based interventions. Based on these results, the authors argue that is possible to use mobile phones to produce a strong positive and statistically significant effect in terms of teaching and learning quality across a large number of classrooms in India at a lower cost per student than past computer-based interventions.

This article is an attempt to build an empirical ground for supporting the increased role of public funding in higher education. The rationale for the same becomes pertinent in the current scenario when "public good" nature of higher education is rapidly eroding. Various measures like the proportion of GDP/GSDP spent and the trend of per capita public expenditure on higher education have been calculated from 1990-1991 to 2009-2010 using 2004-2005 constant price. The calculations are done at an all India level and also across the 15 major states. The study also measures the distribution of subsidy in higher education to assess if it is progressive/regressive among five quintile groups, across 15 major states, and at an all India level, using National Sample Survey 64th round (2007-2008) unit level records. The tool of benefit incidence analysis has been used to arrive at the results for the same. Suits index and concentration curves have been used to supplement the results. Although the results at an all India level show a pro-rich distribution of subsidy at the higher level of education, a state-wise analysis showcases varied results, on several occasions breaking the India level norm which warrants appropriate reflections on policy implications.

Drawing on evidence from a wider study on the cost and cost-effectiveness of sexuality education programmes in six countries, and focusing on the examples of India and Nigeria, this paper argues that advocacy is a key, yet often neglected component of school-based sexuality education programmes, especially where sex and sexuality are politically or culturally sensitive issues. It also suggests that advocacy is not a one-off activity but needs to be carried out continuously and adapted as contexts and needs change. Overall, this piece recommends that advocacy should be a key component of sexuality education work, and needs to be planned and budgeted for. Without such investment, country-level sexuality education programmes are likely to fail. (Contains 1 table and 6 notes.)

This paper estimates the distribution of educational returns by gender for India. While previous studies focus on mean returns, the variance of educational returns has important implications for policy-making and micro-level decision making with respect to education. If the variance of educational returns is large, it can leave large sections of the population with negative returns; if the variance of educational returns is gender specific, it can influence households' decisions to educate girls versus boys. Our econometric results provide evidence that India's labor markets are characterized by significant uncertainty and that the uncertainty is systematically larger for women. (Contains 3 tables and 4 figures.)

The present study gives an account of how the e-resources in general and EBSCO, PROQUEST, Project MUSE, and JSTOR in particular were used in the Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India. It studies and highlights the access pattern of the patrons in an open university. The study suggests consistency and uniformity in computing and presenting usage statistics reports so that reports from various providers can be compared. (Contains 15 figures and 1 table.)

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how knowledge transfer between individuals influences performance in product development (PD) organizations and whether this influence is contingent to the degree of novelty in the PD work. Design/methodology/approach: A set of hypotheses describing the relationships between knowledge transfer by codification (KTC), knowledge transfer by personalization (KTP) and performance is developed. It is hypothesized that performance decreases when KTC interacts with novelty, but improves when KTP and novelty interact. Survey-based data were collected from 287 knowledge workers across 19 PD units of Indian manufacturing companies, and multiple regression analyses were performed to test the hypotheses. Findings: Of the eight hypotheses stated, only one was supported by the data. KTP significantly influences the efficiency of PD work, highlighting the relative importance of personalized, as compared to repository-based, knowledge transfer to performance. No significant interaction effects of KTC/KTP with novelty were detected. Practical implications: The findings strongly suggest that PD work can benefit from interpersonal relationships and knowledge exchange, something that requires diligent cultural interventions. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, the contingent effects of novelty on the productivity of inter-individual knowledge transfer have received little, if any, attention to date. This study helps improve understanding of the nature of knowledge transfer that is best suited where the nature of work involves creativity. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 2 notes.)

The paper argues that access to public infrastructure plays a crucial role on the presence of private schools in a community, as it could not only minimise the cost of production, but also ensure a high return to private investment. Results using community, school and child/household-level PROBE survey data from five north Indian states provide some support to this central hypothesis: even after controlling for all other factors, access to village infrastructural facilities is associated with a higher likelihood of having a private school in the community. This is also corroborated by an analysis of household demand for private schools. The paper concludes by examining the effect of private school presence on year 5 pass rates: while all-school pass rates are significantly higher in villages with a private school, private school presence fails to have significant effect on local state school pass rates.

The development of integrated, portable, transformer condition monitoring (TCM) equipment for classroom demonstrations as well as for student exercises conducted in the field is discussed. Demonstrations include experimentation with real-world transformers to illustrate concepts such as polarization and depolarization current through oil-paper composite insulation. The developed equipment has also been used to understand and illustrate the phenomenon of recovery voltage. Finally, the portability and robustness of the equipment enables students to collect data from transformers installed on-site for the purpose of validating the nature of curves obtained in real-world environments. (Contains 9 figures and 2 tables.)

The "mushrooming" of private schools for low-income families has been widely noted in the literature; however, very little is known about the quality of these schools. This research explored the relative quality of private unaided (recognised and unrecognised) and government schools in low-income areas of Hyderabad, India. A preliminary census to locate unrecognised private schools--not on official lists--was conducted. Data were collected on achievement and background variables for 3,910 pupils from a stratified random sample of schools. Using multilevel modelling shows that pupils in private unrecognised and recognised schools, when controlled for age, pupil's IQ, and class average IQ, achieve higher scores in mathematics and English than equivalent pupils in government schools. There is no significant difference between private and government schools in pupil achievement in Urdu. The achievement advantage for private schools did not arise because of greater resources available, at least in terms of per pupil teacher salaries. (Contains 16 tables and 8 figures.)

This article argues that given its structural conditions, development aid bears a particularly heavy burden of learning and accountability. Unfortunately, however, the organization of evaluation guarantees that evaluations will be inconsistent and it creates incentives for positive bias. This article presents evidence from organizational studies of aid agencies, from the public choice literature, from eight development projects in Africa, and from one in India, that demonstrates positive bias and inconsistency in monitoring and evaluation. It proposes that the evaluation function should be professionalized through an approach titled "monitoring and evaluation for cost effectiveness," and it compares this approach to the World Bank's results-based monitoring and evaluation, the Development Assistance Committee's five evaluation criteria, and evaluations based on randomized trials. This article explains the analytics of the proposed approach and suggests directions for further research. (Contains 3 tables and 2 notes.)

Reviews a pilot project (teaching science) in India. Objectives included the following: developing reliable locally-produced low-cost equipment; finding experiments compatible with the equipment that illustrate principles and practice of modern chemistry; providing teachers with workshops, manuals, and videotapes; establishing a production unit to supply kits and assembled equipment; and encouraging curriculum changes that enable students to be better trained for careers in chemistry. (AEF)

The Institute of Correspondence Education (ICE) of the University of Madras (India) is highly cost-effective when compared to the conventional system. The fact that a major portion of the cost is recoverable in student fees makes the ICE system more economical; however, the requisite level of resources has not been allocated for student-support activities. (AEF)