Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies Nuzvid

A person born into a low income, rural family in India can't really aspire to study at an IIIT or aim to be selected into the IAS. This is true is many cases. The reason for this is because they start with many inherent disadvantages such as:

• The educational level of the parents
• The quality of teachers and the schools they go to
• The ability to pay for coaching classes, and
• The time on task devoted to study the material

It has been observed that, on an average, the marks obtained by the students in rural India are about 10-20% lower than the marks of students studying in private schools of urban India. As a result, most of the seats for higher education get filled by students from these private schools when the basis of selection is the marks obtained. Even if a rural student is capable, the educational system doesn't allow him to go ahead. The goal of RGUKT is to help remedy this unfortunate situation.

At RGUKT, a a “Lowest Best Model” is used to select students from a small community like a Mandal which had a few hundred students graduating each year in comparison to selecting students based on a state wide or nationwide ranking system based on marks or entrance tests. Such a practice overcomes the disparity in the selection process between the urban and rural environments. Therefore, the better performance of students in an urban Mandal doesn't have an impact on the selection process of students in a neighboring rural Mandal.

The other issue RGUKT is attempting to tackle is the issue of "Early Specialization". In most cases, once a student goes into a Junior College for a pre-university program, he gets routed through coaching factories that drill them to get the top ranks in entrance tests which will enable him to secure a seat in a good college or university. This kind of intensive coaching makes students uni-dimensional with very little understanding of anything other than what they have been coached in.

Once students get into professionals colleges, they don't get any exposure to Humanities and Social Sciences for the rest of their lives. RGUKT attempts to deal with this issue by giving students direct admission into a 6-year integrated program after class X. Here, they are not subjected to two years of torture preparing for entrance tests. Since these students are already gifted and belong to the top 1%, it is expected that they will do well naturally and don't need other entrance tests. However, the reservation system, based on the Affirmative Action Program of India, requires that students belonging to the weaker sections of society be given at least 50% of all the available seats. Many of these students, due to their backgrounds, are likely to be less educated and less trained even though they might be the best in their sub-group. Thus, the student body entering RGUKT will have a diverse educational level. What is common is that they are selected because they are the best in that community. Medium of instruction is almost always Telugu. This in turn brings about the need for remedial programs to be developed so that all students can go through an educational program with English as the medium of instruction.

In Andhra Pradesh, over a million students pass the class X state wide exam yearly. Of these, the top 1% or about 10,000 students are probably brilliant but their educational levels of achievement are diverse and disparate based on their schooling and quality of education. Since admission into RGUKT is based on a "Local Best Model" and uses the rule of reservation as put forward by the government of India, this top 1% has a wide diversity of marks. 60-70% of the students come from rural backgrounds and will have the opportunity to study in a world class institution.

Education at RGUKT is based on the intensive use of Information Technology. Every student has access to a laptop and education uses the latest advances in Learning Sciences such as Learning by Example, Learning by Doing and Problem-based Learning. Online lectures are provided and lectures are followed by problem solving sessions that reinforce what has been covered in each lecture.