Shitij Kapur on why India offers opportunities in educational partnerships

'Drink' with BS: Meet Shitij Kapur, president & principal of King's College London

Just before Covid-19 hustled countries into slamming their borders shut, Britain formalised a symbolic “self-isolation” in January 2020 through Brexit. But while economic shocks to the United Kingdom were anticipated from both the virus and the nation’s withdrawal from the European Union, it has paradoxically attracted more overseas students to its shores during a pandemic.

For Shitij Kapur, president and principal of King’s College London, it is an exciting phase of building partnerships for the university in his country of birth. I am meeting Kapur, who is amiably attired in white shirt and black trousers, with a maroon pocket square neatly tucked into his off-white half-jacket, late afternoon at the Imperial Hotel on Janpath, New Delhi.

We prefer to sit at the quieter, brighter verandah of the 1911 Restaurant, and given the hour and the extreme heat, we opt for a glass each of fresh lime soda.

Behind the rimless specs, Kapur’s eyes gleam with hope as he talks about academia including ongoing changes in Indian university education. As a renowned clinical scientist whose research has made significant contributions to psychiatry and neuroscience, his journey is a lesson in seizing opportunities and mastering disciplines.

And opportunities to overseas students is what King’s promises, projecting itself as a truly international university. Kapur goes back to the past to explain that after Oxford and Cambridge, for half a millennium there were no new universities in England, even though in 1800 London had a population of one million. “It was the world’s biggest city, one of the biggest places for commerce and yet had no university. That would be inconceivable today,” he says.

At a time when universities were largely viewed as places of scholarship and a breeding ground of the next generation of Church leaders in the Western world, King’s was founded in 1829 as a new kind of university that would cater to a broader audience, he adds.

More than a third of its students are foreigners. Covid-19 put a halt to the solid institutional person-to-person engagement as people lacked the bandwidth immediately after the pandemic, but it also made the institution more global as the exchanges moved to the virtual world. “In many ways we are all exploring what this would mean for students, researchers and also for industry-university collaboration,” he says.

In India for a week, Kapur says his aim is to experience and learn with granularity what the post-Covid India would look like with the ambition of a post-Brexit UK. “The UK’s settled position in the world has been somewhat upended by Brexit. So, we feel that as a nation we need to redefine our relationships and find new synergies,” he says.

When I ask about his Indian plans, Kapur says he wants to buttress ongoing ties with universities such as Ashoka and O P Jindal for student partnerships and research projects and explore emerging opportunities. He says he will also visit Hyderabad, where a pharma city is coming up, and Bengaluru.

India offers a rich talent pool, and according to Kapur there is a perception — not backed by reality — that in terms of logistics it’s easier to work with some private universities. Also, the Institute of Eminence status accorded to some universities has riveted the world’s attention on them as a spin-off from branding. While it may take a year or two before there is greater clarity in terms of prospects, “the announcement of the National Education Policy, the designation of Institute of Eminence, the signalling that it would be easier to form partnerships and more flexible ones certainly make India very attractive,” says Kapur.

The number of Indian students coming to the UK nearly doubled last year, despite Covid. Kapur identifies three factors behind this. First, the UK managed to keep colleges more accessible to students than some other places. Secondly, the UK’s hallmark of quality education withstood the test of Covid. “There is a widespread reassurance in India that the quality was not sacrificed,” he observes. And the third reason is relaxations in postgraduate work visa rules. Another reason for optimism is the announcement by the UK government of a significant increase in spending on research budget, he adds. Besides, King’s has an India institute as well in London that furthers its interest in the country for partnerships.

He shares interesting insights from a London-wide study King’s is conducting on the return to work. He points out that hospitality and leisure places in central London are finding more than 100 per cent jump in occupancy from pre-Covid levels. However, office occupancy is between 40 and 50 per cent.

The earlier Friday tendency to socialise in pubs after office hours has moved to Thursday evening, as people now prefer to work from home on Fridays through Mondays. It also means that the peak office days are Tuesday and Wednesday. “A very important question in a city like London, where real estate is so costly in central areas, is how to defend a seven-day space that gets used only for three days,” Kapur says, adding that it would take a year or two to figure out how the new model works out.

“I think a lot of workplaces managed to do well through Covid because they utilised the social capital that had been built up earlier. So, I think we have to be careful not to throw away the value of social capital that accumulates only with time and interaction. You can’t rush it,” he stresses.

He welcomes the recent decision to introduce a common entrance exam for admissions to central universities in India. While it will ensure a level of standardised assessment, there are issues at either ends of the spectrum, he says. “To admit someone because they got 99.9 versus someone who got 99.8 is relatively meaningless. I think ideally you’d combine a centralised, standardised score as one part of the assessment. At the bottom end, the problem is that people who've not had the opportunities would be unfairly downmarked and may be underappreciated. One should apply a contextual correction in that case.”

He also believes the dual undergraduate degree is an attractive proposition, because increasingly the world needs people who belong to more than one discipline. “The question is, how to do it in an efficient manner? It is possible, but requires a huge amount of logistical engineering.”

Kapur, who grew up in Chandigarh, is a product of private as well as public education systems and is appreciative of both. He went to St John’s School in Chandigarh, and graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in 1988. He went on to study psychiatry and neuroscience in the US and Canada, and has worked with universities abroad since, including in University of Melbourne, Australia.

We have spoken for nearly an hour when he gets a phone call and realises he has to rush for another meeting. I realise I had many questions about his earlier role as a researcher that will remain unasked.

For decades after leaving AIIMS, Kapur worked on understanding schizophrenia and how to help patients better. His research involved imaging to fathom how medication works in the brain. “That has been my life’s work and it remains something that excites me a lot, though I have to admit that once you become the VC of a university you don’t have that much time,” he says.

Mental health is viewed with ever greater importance in a post-pandemic world. When I ask him about whether diagnosis of schizophrenia remains a grey area, he smiles and says, “When I joined the business, I thought I’d be able to solve it in 10 years. Thirty years later, I’m actually not confident anymore that it can be done in the next 10 years.”

On a positive note, he admits that he contributed to a movement towards far better understanding of it, lowering of doses and lesser side effects for patients.