Applying to ACJ?

Its that time of the year again...

As (Indian) grad school application season begins, I get flooded with inquiries about the J-School that I attended, thanks largely to this piece which apparently pops up in online searches. In fact I get so much mail, I've made a block-reply for aspirants - I might as well share it here so that it can show up on the interweb!

Dear XYZ,

Every year, at around this time, I get flooded with enquiries about the ACJ thanks to an article I wrote ages ago on JAM magazine about the college. Apparently the article appears pretty high up on a Google search and my email ID is visibly displayed on it which explains the deluge of mail. However, I'm more than happy to help out aspiring journos and have thus decided it's easiest to make a single block-type reply.

The exam consists of two papers - English and GK. Preparation for this kind of an exam is more or less futile. If you have fairly good written and spoken English, then the first paper shouldn't be too much of a problem - at the most I can advise you to brush up on some basic grammar. The GK paper in my year was rather hard and has got harder in successive years. However, remember that it's all relative and others will find it equally hard. The best way to tackle this is to start reading at least one national daily as of TODAY and keep reading it page to page. Whichever articles have references to issues or people you aren't familiar with, Google / Wikipedia them and have some idea. There's no point mugging up the Manorama Yearbook, but going through the last few issues of Competition Success will be moderately helpful.

As for the college itself, make no mistake - its very good. Brochures usually lie and there are a lot of fraud mass comm courses doing the rounds these days. However the ACJ scores for many reasons. It's backed by extremely credible people, has outstanding faculty and excellent facilities and infrastructure. The downsides are that its expensive and the campus is not residential though they do arrange for fairly swanky accommodation at ridiculously low rates (compared to Mumbai at least) where the atmosphere is almost like a hostel.

One word of caution. This is not a hotchpotch Mass Comm course which teaches you everything from public relations to corporate communications, advertising and marketing, puppetry and Ekta Kapoor style television. It's a hard core journalism school and you have to be pretty motivated about your career choice. I know a fair number of people who were disappointed because they weren't quite sure about the course and couldn't handle the intense curriculum and workload. Others were unhappy about "return on investment" i.e fees versus the salaries they eventually got. Its good to keep in mind that media pays fairly low in the early stages though the hikes and rises are for more rapid than traditional industry. ACJ is a long-term gamble - good contacts and networking for life, excellent grounding in the basics and ethics of the job and very good brand equity that's been built in a very short time and will only get better as Indian media expands. However, definitely NOT a place to "do timepass for a year" after graduating. Be sure that you're in it for the long haul!

IIT-JEE Diary

First published in JAM: Just Another Magazine

The recent IIT-JEE media blitzkrieg brought back some bittersweet memories. Bitter because I regret taking the year off to study for the JEE (and failing) and sweet because the intellectual challenge and academic input of that one year was more than the 2 years at high school and three years at undergrad put together.

The event also allowed me to touch base with the guy who ran the coaching class I attended. No he wasn’t a scheming conman as members of the coaching class community are made out to be but a young, fun-loving and brilliant entrepreneur who kindled my love for physics. He was genuinely upset when I didn’t make it and refunded my entire fee. He even gave me some seed money in those crazy dot-com days to “fund” my own start-up! Little wonder that when my colleagues at CNBC TV18, who were putting together a show that would debate the new format, asked me to invite a panelist, I gave him a tinkle. It was great catching up with Praveen Tyagi after many years.

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Obviously the people who’ve thought up this hair-brained new exam scheme have got it all wrong. Far from putting the coaching classes out of contention, an objective-only exam will widen their market like never before. It was only very focused and motivated junta who would put their hearts into the exam and go for special coaching. Most others were content to concentrate on their boards and get into the second rung tech schools. An objective-type exam suddenly gets everybody who’s taken science in +2 to think. “Hey! Maybe I can do this too!” So instead of a few classes offering JEE coaching, now everyone will be offering coaching and students who otherwise wouldn’t have prepared for the JEE will be cajoled into it by parents and peer pressure.

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On a more fundamental note, the new format opens up a small crack in the once watertight process. The JEE ensured that no one undeserving would ever get in although many deserving students would be left out (yes, yes that’s what I keep telling my sorry self!). Unless you cheated, it was impossible to fib your way through those subjective problems. Now, there is a significant probability that many people will get in using the ol’ heads/tails guesswork. Yes, the proportion will be small, but the probability of some “tukkha” candidates getting in is still high. That would indeed be a shame for however much you got coached in the earlier system, you still had to have aptitude and slog to clear the exam – Kota or no Kota!

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Now here’s some advice to those of you who would just like the IIT ‘chhaap’ but have no particular interest in any engineering stream. Don’t drop a year if you don’t clear the JEE. Opt for a three-year BSc at a decent college instead. In your third year sit for the two-year MSc exam. This is the best-kept IIT secret – it’s the only non-common entrance exam for the IITs. Every IIT administers its own exam for the four to five different MSc courses that it offers. Very often it’s barely a case of 150 odd students competing for 30 odd seats! Out of these about half have not seriously prepared. Way better than 2 lakh serious JEE aspirants for 2000 seats. Assuming you dropped a year and then got in, it would take you four more years for a BTech. This way it takes you 3+2 for a MASTERS degree from an IIT. True, you may not be as well tuned to the IIT system as the BTechers who you will share some courses with – but hey! You want the chhaap and the job don’t you? And if you genuinely get enthu about your subject in those 2 years, you have a Master’s degree in your pocket from an IIT – Grad School USA, here I come!!

Asian College of Journalism

First printed in JAM: Just Another Magazine

There aren’t too many true-blue journalism schools in the country. While there are tons of so-called “media schools”, only a handful of institutes offer quality post-graduate programs. However all these courses are broad based - embracing Corporate Communication, Public Relations, Advertising, Media Management, Film, Television and Mass media in general.

History
The B.D. Goenka Foundation, backed by the Indian Express Group had set up the Asian College of Journalism in Bangalore but was struggling to keep the institute going. At about the same time, the Media Development Foundation (MDF) was looking to start a full time journalism school in Chennai. The ACJ in Bangalore had already built up a reputation of sorts and thus in order to keep the brand name, the MDF took over the school. The first batch of students of the one-year post graduate program passed out in 2001.

The Columbia Connection
For those of you who aren't in the know, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism is the Mecca of journalism education. The school awards the Pulitzer Prizes every year, has produced America's greatest journalists and is by far the world's most prestigious place to learn the ropes of reporting. One of its alumni, N. Ram (now editor of The Hindu) thought it would be a good idea to set up a school on similar lines but tailored to Asian conditions in general and Indian conditions in particular. The one-year course is modeled on Columbia’s Masters program. While you won’t get a degree from Columbia, you will be taught by faculty of the school thanks to a MoU between the two institutes

Academics:
Three PG Diploma courses of ten month duration are offered by ACJ:
1) Print journalism – 40 seats
2) New Media – 20 seats
3) Broadcast Journalism – 30 seats

The curriculum of the ACJ is far superior to any institute in the country. Highlights include a compulsory course called 'Covering Deprivation' – an attempt at making third world journalists conscious of the social issues surrounding them. After a rigorous lecture series, students go on a week-long tour of a remote part of South India to get a feel of the issues in the ‘real India.’

The first trimester is common for students of all streams. Courses include Media Law, Media history, Key Issues in Journalism, Tools of the Modern Journalist and the cracker of a course, Reporting-Writing-Editing. If you thought your English was good, this course will bring you down to earth pretty quickly. Students get a basic grounding in all three streams.

The next two trimesters are dedicated to “stream work” and electives. The broadcast journalism students take a 12-week course taught by a qualified BBC journalist cum instructor. They then go on to producing full fledged daily news bulletins with reports from around the city, often scooping the mainstream media. They also go through a documentary making workshop and make short films. The Print students learn the basics of layout and publishing and run a weekly newspaper which is circulated to a wide audience in the city. New Media students learn to navigate cyberspace and run a 24-hour website called Digantik. In the final trimester, students have to submit an investigative project as well as a 10,000 word dissertation.

The most fun part of the course for many however is ‘Electives’. Students can chose 4 electives out of a long list that includes Arts & Culture, Business, Politics, Sports, Science, Environment, International Affairs, Photojournalism, Gender etc. Students often sit in for classes from electives that they have not opted for.

Infrastructure and Faculty
The Infrastructure is outstanding. The college is fully air-conditioned, which is half the battle won in sultry Chennai! The broadcast studio in the sprawling basement is fully equipped with a production control room, sound booth and editing facilities (linear and non-linear). Camera equipment is plentiful and the facility is excellently maintained. The college is one of the few places that can actually boast a computer for every student (An entire floor is dedicated just to computer labs!) and nearly all lectures are taken with audio-visual support. There is a well-equipped library and an auditorium that can seat more than a hundred people. The canteen is on the sprawling terrace, where underarm cricket is the official sport.

The Chairman of the college is the formed head of PTI News and later founder of AsiaNet, Sashi Kumar. He occasionally gives lectures, conducts workshops in anchoring and provides feedback on bulletins. The core faculty of half a dozen comprises full-time professors while a large part of the faculty serves in an adjunct capacity. Many of the electives are taken by practicing journalists from The Hindu group of publications. The endless stream of visiting speakers will expose you to a range of ideas that will totally blow you away. To be honest, the real strength of the institute is the sheer spectrum of experts that it can assemble to speak to the students during the span of a single year.

The downsides:
Fees (gulp!) are very high. 1.5 lakh for print and new media and a whopping 2 lakhs for broadcast. There is no hostel facility either since it isn’t a residential campus. The college does however make arrangements for students to stay together. If you factor in rental and living expense it is an expensive affair for one year! Also, a lot of people especially from the North have a mental block about studying in Chennai even though the language problem is rather overplayed. Those of you with strong right wing/neo-conservative or free-market capitalism ideologies beware! This is hardcore liberal, left-wing and often commie territory.

Admissions
Look out for newspaper ads in the month of May and keep checking the website http://www.asianmedia.org . The written exam is held in all the metros in mid-June and consists of an English paper and an extremely difficult Current Affairs and General Knowledge paper. The interviews are held only in Chennai. There are 90 seats in all though 12 are set aside for overseas Fellows.

Financial Aid:
There are a number of partial and full scholarships offered on a merit-means basis. The college also administers the SAF Madanjeet Singh Fellowships to one girl and one boy from each of the seven SAARC countries and Afghanistan. All fees are waived and fellows are paid a stipend as well. Due to political reasons, Pakistani students haven’t yet been able to make it even after receiving the fellowships though the guys and gals from Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Afghanistan more than make up for it. The foreigners are usually experienced journalists, so all you America bashers watch out! These guys will give you more than a mouthful on how India is as much of a bully in the region…

Futurescope:
All the major news outlets in the country have ACJ grads working for them and the alumni network is beginning to kick in as well. Lots of people tend to go the NGO / Independent Media way as well. Those who are interested in academics usually apply for PhD programs in the US and UK and their ACJ year is accepted in most big places as a Masters equivalent year of study.

Verdict
ACJ has within a couple of years established itself as an outstanding institution with one foot in the hi-tech future. However it's not the kind of time-pass course one should do just because you can't figure out what you want to do after graduation. This is a full time highly intensive course which can be tackled only by extremely motivated junta.The intellectual atmosphere on campus according to students is electrifying and says Yamini Narayan, 2002 print journalism student, "People in the South have already nicknamed it the NLS of Journalism." Not a bad comparison, for NLSIU was virtually unheard of when it came about and within a decade it established itself as a world class law institution without peer in the country. Incidentally the guy who topped my batch is a lawyer who happened to be Rank 1 in the all India entrance for NLS.

Lectures For Sale

First printed in The Daily Raag and reproduced in JAM: Just Another Magazine

Recently, the University of Mumbai introduced the revolutionary concept of hiring teachers on a contractual basis and paying them per lecture. Ah! Bliss! Wouldn’t it be great to have a whole new breed of lecturers who could come and take half-hour lectures in every college on a rotational basis?

This move has been welcomed with such enthusiasm across the Board, that we students propose the following new rules for University employees based on this theory:

* Heads of Department to be paid per 20 students majoring in that subject. This would encourage HODs to aggressively advertise their departments, making them attractive to students by luring them with ‘academic’ facilities such as air conditioned classrooms, cushioned chairs and free coffee.

* Laboratory attendants to be paid per test tube of stock solution prepared for use in experiments. The lab attendants’ union however is campaigning for payment per ounce of glassware broken by students, which would put their salaries at par with MNC CEOs

* University sports coaches to be paid per match won. This would make them far more competitive and aggressive, thus giving Mumbai Univ’s sports the professional edge that we see on WWF pro-wrestling.

* Examination moderators to be paid per student caught cheating. This would transform the usually nonchalant moderators into hawks and thus assure fairness to all students of the University. It’s a minor matter that this will only add further to the tension of the students (who will think twice even before twitching for fear of being accused).gupta classes

* Clerical and office staff to be paid per form filled by the students. This ‘master strategy’ will ensure that the clerks and other office staff will be more efficient. Who cares if they purposely double the amount of paperwork and red tape just to make more money? As long as the government is paying for it, “sab kuch chalta hai.”

Who knows! This argument might catch on in other professions too. Wouldn’t it be a refreshing paradigm shift to have civil engineers paid per brick laid, irrespective of the construction being completed? Or surgeons being paid per stitch, regardless of the patients’ survival? Maybe our armed forces could be given emoluments per bullet fired (at the enemy or otherwise).

The possibilities seem limitless. Aren’t we bursting with pride to be part of the University system - at the very forefront of education desecration?

-Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan