The 21st Century Gurukulam ( 21CG) is a new educational program designed to provide enhanced opportunities for gifted rural youth of Andhra Pradesh. A 21CG is envisioned as a self-sustaining, self-governing, and self-supporting community, modeled after the ancient Gurukulam and the modern-day Kibbutz. Its primary purpose is to provide remedial education and IT training leading to a postgraduate degree in IT for the current top 1% of the rural youth. A secondary goal is to enable them to succeed in national entrance examinations, such as IIM and UPSC examinations. The program is expected to begin in October of 2006 on a pilot basis in 7 locations and will be expanded to cover additional locations in the districts of the AP state during 2007 and 2008.

The gifted rural graduates defined as the top 1% based on merit and another 1% based on social criteria are expected to be selected from each mandal. The entrance test is state wide but the selection is based among the best in each mandal. Any graduate from a recognized university, including holders of BA and BSc in the age group of 20 to 23 years (25 in case of SC/ST students), is eligible. The rural mandal residency will be determined based on the location of the high school graduation of the candidate.

The remedial pre-MSIT program is nominally expected to be of one year duration. However, given the widely different backgrounds of the entering class, the duration of the program will be variable. Upon completion of the remedial program and successfully completing the MSIT entrance test, students will be automatically enrolled in a post graduate program leading to MTech and/or MS degrees in IT at one of the Universities of AP. The MSIT postgraduate program already exists and has been established since 2001 under the APSCHE Consortium of Institutions of Higher Learning (CIHL) and is based on the curriculum at Carnegie Mellon University. The program uses the unique Learning-by-Doing paradigm of education using personalized mentors and Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) technology. The program also includes a broad curriculum of soft skills such as public speaking, writing and communication needed to succeed globally.

It is our hypothesis that, intelligence is not concentrated in the cities but is, in all probability, uniformly distributed throughout the entire population. If this hypothesis is correct, even partially, then we are leaving behind 80% of the gifted youth just because they happen to be born in rural environments to semi-literate parents. Given this serious and genuinely unfair disparity, the State of Andhra Pradesh is considering various alternatives to enable the gifted rural youth to achieve their full potential.