At the Guru Tegh Bahadur School in Model Town, the school bell doesn't mark the beginning of a lesson—but the beginning of something revolutionary. Here, classes go beyond four walls, and the syllabus consists of empathy, cooperation, and action in the world outside.

In a subtle yet forceful break from traditional school, the school is creating a learning culture of learning from each other and learning with each other. With its "Learning Buddies" program, high school students take on a mentorship role with lower students—helping them not only academically, but in building confidence and trust. It's a simple strategy that's rewriting the way children think about other children: not as rivals, but as teammates.

But learning does not go out of the door.

Under their "Classroom Without Walls" program, students go to city bazaars and conduct eco-awareness drives among the local people and vendors, convincing them to go green. Posters, street plays, and determination in hand, they're putting theory to practice—learning citizenship the hard way, not in class.

However, teachers are becoming learners too.  From exchanging tips on the latest pedagogical gadgetry to rethinking the art of lesson planning and assist each other in building classrooms that are more interactive and inclusive.

Principal Baljeet Kaur believes this shift is rooted in both vision and investment. “Even with a modest fee structure, we’ve upgraded our labs, introduced AI-powered teaching tools, and created an environment where quality education is not a privilege, but a right,” she says.

This convergence of social outreach, mentorship, and radical pedagogy is making exam-students, yes, but more importantly, future-students. In the midst of a time when rote learning still reigns supreme in most schools, Guru Tegh Bahadur School is different because it's producing critical thinkers and empathetic citizens.

It's evidence that if only schools are courageous enough to think beyond the box, then students become achievers no longer, but game-changers.

On August 25, 2025, at IIT Delhi the 56th Council Meeting of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) was chaired by Union Minister of Education Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, raising the bar of technical   education and innovation. The resolutions attempted to push ahead Prime Minister Narendra Modi vision of ‘Atmanirbarta se Samridha Bharat’ (a prosperous nation through self-reliance) using IITs as force-multiplier technology, inclusiveness, and building prosperity.

Major Decisions and Directions

Speaking at the event, Dharmendra Pradhan urged IITs to make quantum jumps and transform into drivers of Atmanirbhar and Samriddha Bharat, and he explained that their efforts could profoundly benefit society as a whole. He encouraged IITs to be in the foremost position of producing job creators rather than as job seekers and he pointed out their revolutionary impact in real world problem solving, translation research and in worldwide industry partnerships.

A major aspect was the advocacy of the use of Indian languages in technical education. The Minister particularly requested all IITs to start conducting courses in regional languages in addition to English by intending to reach all students and make IIT education more inclusive and accessible to students across all backgrounds.

Roadmap to the Future

Pradhan announced a 25-year roadmap in this meeting aimed at ensuring that the IITs are future-ready in ways that make them more inclusive and more aligned to the goal of advancement in science and society in India by 2047. The strategy emphasizes the broader accessibility of underrepresented populations, the creation of multidisciplinary teams, the development of international collaborations, and adoption of AI, quantum computing, and clean energy.

The Council decided to redesign Ph.D. programs to increase quality and international relevance, together with faster commercialization of research and better alumni engagement and student mentorship. Particularly, more than 6,000 start-ups, 56 unicorns, and close to 5,000 patents make IITs significant contributors to the national economy and Indian innovation ecosystem. 

Student wellbeing and Inclusion

The aspect of student health and campus wellbeing was highlighted, with the Council sharing the best-practices to adopt student care and support services, annual health check-ups, and healthy campus lifestyles. The minister emphasized the necessity of more caring faculty-student interaction to promote happier and healthier campus climates.

Stakeholder Participation

The meeting included the Union Minister of State for Education and Development of North Eastern Region Dr. Sukanta Majumdar, other senior dignitaries and discussed extending research parks, bringing new national accreditation systems and the feasibility of adjusting current curricula due to the current rapid development of artificial intelligence.

This historical meeting is one step closer to making IIT a more inclusive, innovative, and globally competitive system. Focused on regional languages, quantum leaps in research and innovations, and student support, the decisions of the Council chart the course of how India needs to drive its aspirations into the Amrit kaal and beyond through its premier technical institutes

In a pride moment for Odisha, young Cuttack boy Pooshan Mohapatra has become the all-India topper in the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test Postgraduate (NEET PG)-2025, result of which was released by the National Board of Examinations in Medical Sciences (NBEMS) on Tuesday.

A Kaligali native from Cuttack, the 24-year-old has done his MBBS from SCB medical college and hospital. He achieved a record-breaking 707 out of 800 in the exam, securing rank-1 in his first attempt while taking care of the patients simultaneously.

Addressing the mediapersons, Pooshan explained that he made up his mind to appear for the examination in January this year. "My internship got over in March and I began preparing for the exam at home from April. I had availed the services of an online platform and had done test papers. Although I had done well in the exam, scoring the position of all-India topper was something unexpected for me," he said.

Pooshan feels his diligent work along with fate reaped the prosperity he is experiencing today. The 24-year-old gave credit for his success to the incessant guidance from his older sister throughout his preparation and motivation from parents Jaykrishna Mohapatra and Rachita Mohapatra.

"My older sister who is currently studying PG after finishing MBBS from SCB MCH has inspired me. Apart from that, the humongous amount of support I got from my parents who never pressurized me for anything else, allowed me to give all my attention to my preparation," said Pooshan.

We had left him free to study in his own way since the very start and never pressured him for anything," said Pooshan's father Jaykrishna who runs a printing and publishing company.

Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi himself met Pooshan and congratulated him on his success. Referring to X, the chief minister said, performing well in a very competitive examination and topping the list is no mean challenge but Pooshan has achieved it. His achievement is an inspiration to the state's youths. The state requires diligent and gifted individuals like him," he added advising those sitting for any exam or interview to believe in themselves and their efforts.

Union Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan also congratulated Pooshan on the achievement. When asked about his future, Pooshan replied that he wishes to specialise in either medicine or radiology. He also told aspirants to prepare sincerely without worrying much about the ranks.

Ever wondered how will AI affect computer science degree at the university level? Ex-Google engineer Jad Tarifi of the pioneering gen-AI team has warned about the dangers of getting a university-level degree in such a scenario, proving how AI can make their learning irrelevant in five years!

Tarifi, a former member of Google's original generative AI team and now co-founder of Integral AI, believes that it is not a viable choice for most future technologists to get a traditional PhD in the field. The ever-accelerating rate at which AI is evolving implies that when a student has finished an AI doctoral program, Tarifi argues, the expertise that they have in their area of specialty will be obsolete.

Former Google engineer says AI PhD is not needed

Speaking to Business Insider, Tarifi warned students who get a PhD just to "cash in on the AI hype" will be completely disillusioned. "AI itself will be obsolete before you've done a Ph.D.," he asserted, forecasting the technology underpinning it would be replaced by better ones. He went on to say that the science is developing at record speed and amazing robotics, medicine, and natural language system advances occur on a practically daily basis within industry research labs and new start-up companies. Generative AI technology will have exploded into even bigger ideas and applications before a fresh PhD graduate can even get a job.

What, then, is a technology student to do?

Tarifi is a hands-on person. Tarifi had earned his PhD in AI from the University of Florida in 2012 and worked for ten years at Google before starting an independent firm, Integral AI. In retrospect, he believes that a long academic career can be "sacrificing years of one's life" without being in a place to keep up with the speed of the industry of the real world.

He suggests that it's only worth doing a PhD for the "odd people" who are "properly obsessed with research" for its own sake, not for career.

Engineering and Management were mostly taken as dual disciplines. Accordingly, the premier B-schools like IIMs have long enjoyed the maximum influx of engineers. The engineers dominated management classrooms for decades; their numerical strength was well entrenched in the system, and the non-engineers used to appear to be mere aberrations. But the scenario is shifting now. Engineers' monopoly on management schools is weakening. Classrooms are experiencing an uptick in the numbers of economists, accountants, and students from commerce and humanities streams entering them. Their performance is increasing and approaching that of their engineering counterparts in top MBA courses.

The numbers are clear. At IIM-Indore, non-engineers now comprise 55% of the 2025–27 batch. IIM-Lucknow comes next with just below 53%, and IIM-Ahmedabad has moved to 50%, sharply up from 33% in a mere three years, the TNN reports indicate.

While figures paint the picture, the question is: What are the drivers that are rewriting history and breaking the monopoly of engineering domination?

The anatomy of change

The surge of non-engineers in India's top B-schools is no accident; it is a consequence of profound structural changes both in the applicant pipeline and in the needs of management education.

Corporate demand for new skill sets

The 21st-century corporate world is not merely demanding number-crunchers; it is demanding managers who are able to communicate, cooperate, and create. The recruiters find it more valuable to have critical thinking, emotional quotient, and creativity, skills in which the non-engineers, educated in economics, commerce, and the humanities, possess a natural advantage.

As the requirements of these skills gain momentum, the non-engineers are flocking to B-schools to complete the skill gap.

Intentional academic design by B-schools

It is no coincidence or accident. The best B-schools have deliberately and deliberately redesigned their admission architecture to cultivate and encourage diversity. At IIM-Ahmedabad, director Bharat Bhasker said, "The institute started introducing academic categories roughly a decade back to have diversity. More applications from non-engineers have resulted in a healthy mix of students in classes."

Rising ambitions of non-engineers

Management was the "natural next step" for long for engineers. But now, commerce, economics, and arts students are looking at B-schools as their own grounds, not other people's. In IIM-Lucknow, for example, 268 out of 507 students in the recent MBA batch belong to non-engineering streams. Director M.P. Gupta informed TNN, "Commerce-related courses have attracted the most students."

The increasing numbers of commerce graduates joining B-schools reflect a change in the generational perception of non-engineers about approaching management as a career booster.

Shifting nature of business problems

With the character of work, the issues that companies are dealing with are changing their face as well. It is not addressed by quantitative models only. Whatever it is — managing global supply chain disruption, navigating ESG mandates, or driving diverse teams — the call for soft skills, cultural literacy, and systems thinking is imperative. B-schools are, in fact, reflecting this reality in their recruiting processes.

A gender dimension

The ascent of non-engineers coincides with increasing female presence at B-schools. In IIM-Indore's 2025–27 batch, among the 270 non-engineers who have been admitted, 179 are females. Director at IIM Indore, Himanshu Rai told TNN that, "At IIM-Indore, representation of non-engineers has increased steadily over the last five years." Background diversity is, in most instances, also being converted into gender diversity. 

The end of an era, and the dawn of balance

This is not data representation or statistics, but it suggests towards serious structural reordering of India's B-schools. The engineering hegemony in management courses is crumbling. It is being replaced by a nearly-even split that introduces pluralism and intellectual diversity into classrooms.

The engineer can no longer be the default face of India's B-schools. The future is in a balanced blend, and that is the strength of the future generation of Indian management leaders.

When Harvard virology student Lindsey E. Adams opened her July 1 paycheck, she found something amiss. Her research stipend was no longer classified as a union stipend, and no union dues were deducted. But nothing else about her daily work had altered — not her hours, her boss, the lab, or the work she did.

Adams is among over 900 graduate students on stipends based on research who were taken out of the Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Automobile Workers' (HGSU-UAW) bargaining unit shortly after the union's second contract with the University ended in June, according to The Harvard Crimson. Without the union, these students are no longer entitled to contract protections like benefits, access to union funds, and the pay raises now being bargained in the union's third contract.

Comprehending the University's reasoning

The removals have raised issues regarding Harvard's standards for removing students from the class of those who the University deems not to be employees. Over a month since the change, the HGSU-UAW is still attempting to ascertain whether a way to appeal the decision exists, per coverage by The Harvard Crimson.

While unions would under other circumstances challenge such actions by filing an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the political makeup of the board makes things more difficult. Michael C. Harper, emeritus professor of labor law at Boston University, told The Harvard Crimson that under the Trump administration's forthcoming appointments to the NLRB, "a case involving student workers could be used to take away students' right to unionize. Such a decision would be a near certainty."

In the meantime, the union is following through on the grievance process in its contract. On July 21, officials grieved Harvard, and on July 30, they requested information, The Harvard Crimson reported. The grievance cites several provisions of the contract that were supposedly violated, such as the composition of the bargaining unit and classifications of workers. The removal also violates the union security clause, which allows for automatic deduction of dues from paychecks.

As per HGSU-UAW financial secretary Simon A. Warchol, a student of Computer Science Ph.D., the union stands a chance of losing "anywhere from 25 to 40% of the dues Harvard automatically takes out of workers' paychecks each month," he said in an interview with The Harvard Crimson.

A unilateral interpretation

HGSU-UAW vice president Sudipta Saha explained to The Harvard Crimson, "We think that this contravenes not only the unit definition we have in the contract, but the union definition that we have been working on since we've had the very first elections whose outcomes were certified by the NLRB. They quite clearly state that all research assistants are encompassed, irrespective of source of funding, and the University has just decided to sort of unilaterally alter their interpretation."

Harvard, on the other hand, asserts that the excluded students are not contract-covered employees. The University has contended that stipended students' research is not employment since it aids their academic pursuit towards a degree and is not for doing something specific for pay.

Harvard Law School faculty members Sharon Block, Benjamin I. Sachs, and Laura M. Weinrib '00, in OnLabor, described this argument as "implausible" and pointed out that it "runs contrary to recent experience in the law and at Harvard." They cited a 2024 MIT ruling excluding stipended fellows from union coverage but contended that it does not necessarily validate Harvard's move. The professors summed up to The Harvard Crimson, "It would be surprising, that is, if no Harvard graduate student who receives a stipend does any work that is controlled by Harvard."

Navigating grievance procedures

The union also sat down with Harvard officials on August 4 under Step One of the grievance process. In his formal reply, Director of Labor and Employment Relations Brian Magner addressed the union that "the University finds no contractual violation has occurred and therefore the grievance is denied," as quoted by The Harvard Crimson.

In the event that the grievance goes to Step Two and Harvard rejects it once more, arbitration can be sought. The University is, however, expected to argue that the dispute is not arbitrable on grounds that the student removals happened after the union contract had expired on June 30. The union contends that since pay stubs on July 1 already showed changes in union representation, the case could well be arbitrable, The Harvard Crimson reports.

Disparate impact across schools

More than half of the affected students are part of Harvard Medical School’s Division of Medical Sciences. First- and second-year Ph.D. students, typically funded by the division or by National Institutes of Health grants, were heavily impacted. For third-year students and beyond, funding streams can be more complex, and removals are less uniform.

Laila B. Norford, a union steward and third-year Ph.D. candidate in biomedical informatics, said in an interview with The Harvard Crimson that "most students in hospital-based or hospital-affiliated labs have been removed, as have those fully funded on fellowships." Adams would probably have been excluded because her principal investigator, Daniel Lingwood, has a secondary appointment at Mass General Hospital's Ragon Institute.

Norford reported further confusion for students subsidized by more than one source: "Some employees have been partially extracted from the union — union fees have been automatically taken out of only their non-stipended income," she said to The Harvard Crimson.

Student concerns and uncertainty

Albert T. Chen, a fourth-year Ph.D. student and HGSU-UAW bargaining committee member, called the process "very arbitrary" to The Harvard Crimson: "There's some workers that are doing the same work, in the same labs, in the same program. Some are being carved out, some aren't."

The University has kept students in the loop via emails but clarity is only scant. DMS executive director Samantha Reed restated July 2 updates to students in a July 25 email, explaining that unionized students would get paid every other week without salary increases from last year because negotiations are still underway, The Harvard Crimson reports. Pay periods have also been used by students to determine if they are still part of the union.

Norford summarized the broader impact of the uncertainty: “It’s just kicking the scientists while we’re down. We’re already suffering and struggling so much because of what the federal government is doing, but also because of how Harvard’s responding to it. And now what they’re doing in this moment is trying to make it harder for all of us,” as she told The Harvard Crimson.

The path ahead

While the grievance proceedings are ongoing, students and union officials are demanding transparency from the University as to how the University reached its classification decisions. The case questions what academic institutions mean by employment and what protections graduate student workers deserve.

For Adams and her contemporaries, the stakes are direct. Unionization dictates wages, benefits, and job security, and Harvard's action represents a dramatic change in the way the University defines research-based graduate student work.

State govt will convert a Sanskrit school in each of the 38 districts of Bihar into a model school, additional chief secretary (ACS) S Siddharth announced at a function on Sanskrit Diwas on Tuesday.

Speaking after inaugurating a new website and portal for the Bihar Sanskrit Shiksha Board (BSSB), in the presence of health minister Mangal Pandey, the ACS stated that these model Sanskrit schools will possess state-of-the-art facilities such as computers, laboratories, and libraries. He also stated that a meeting would be convened soon with the BSSB chairman to discuss the demands brought up by principals of Sanskrit schools before a policy decision would be taken.

BSSB chairman Mritunjay Jha informed this newspaper that he had already given a list of 45 schools recommended for upgrading. He also informed that the BSSB had sanctioned a revised syllabus after 27 years. "The new syllabus features the Ramcharitmanas and the Bhagavad Gita for instilling moral values in students. We have sent the revised syllabus to the ACS for government approval," he said.

Jha further stated that the new portal and website would help principals and teachers by making online services and information easily accessible to them. He added that ACS had listened attentively to complaints and demands raised by principals and teachers at the event. These were pay revision, pension, modernisation of existing buildings, construction of new infrastructure, inclusion of Sanskrit in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Class XII Sanskrit toppers' scholarship, and introduction of uniform, textbooks, and midday meal schemes in all Sanskrit schools.

Deputy CM Samrat Choudhary and BJP state president Dilip Jaiswal were also present on the occasion.

Samrat accepted that Sanskrit had not been encouraged as strongly as it ought to have been. Referring to the language as "completely mathematical", he added, "As far as getting marks in the examination is concerned, students can get more marks in Sanskrit than in Hindi or English. The state government will do everything to encourage Sanskrit in Bihar."

Jaiswal promised the assembly that the BJP would leave no stone unturned for the growth of Sanskrit education and schools. "If required, it will also be placed in the election manifesto," he further added.

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