IIT- ‘THE’ INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY – The pride of India. Once you step into any of the IITs you will definitely get to know why I am saying this and once you get into it and experience it you will agree with me that this is one of the brilliant establishments of Indian government after independence. Here Research happens with all the great minds at work while preparing the future great minds (No matter they stay in India or not) and never to mention about the abundant funds. But with the 8 new IITs, I am really sad for India and the future IITians. I completely agree with the fact with growing population and literacy rate, we need more IITs to accommodate our pool of knowledge. But, it should not be such where the quality deteriorates and even one day it will deteriorate the brand called ‘IIT’.
When we talk of quality let’s get some basic things that any one will expect from a top most college in India. Good faculty who has enough time to guide the students, Well equipped labs with all the powers to meet the demands of new equipment to be in par with the latest technologies, Abundant resources like a great library, computer center and a club house, Well furnished hostels with hygienic food, good space for all the extra curricular activities and sports. As I told these are only some. If you go to any of the existing IITs – (IIT Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Roorkee ) you can match all the above expectations with the existing infrastructure. Our government has decided to start all the 8 new IITS (Indore, AP, Orissa, Gujarat, Punjab, Bihar, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh)first and then finish the infrastructure at these IITs. How sad is this? Then what will happen to the students of these IITs? Until the new IITs are up and running, the existing IITs shared their resources with the new ones. As I knew, IIT Kanpur was hosting IIT Rajasthan students. I was just about to come out of IIT Kanpur and happened to see the brochure released that says the students of IIT Rajasthan will share the common facilities like Library, Computer centre, Gymkhana, Auditorium e.t.c and even the existing faculty with some newly hired faculty will be shared. The hostels are good enough to see in the brochure but in reality I could sense how they are going to be. Come on, you are going to share the college and faculty of 2000 students with 4000 students!!!!! A professor who was guiding 4 students earlier should now guide 8 students!!! Where will you get the quality from?
Even after these students are moved to their respective IITs I don’t think they will come out same as the ones from the existing IITs. Because it takes lot more to make an IIT or IIM than the basic expectations we discussed above. Take the case of IIT Guwahati established in 1994. It is one of the well equipped colleges but still it is struggling to match with those IITs started 60 years ago. (It’s not in the offence of anyone from Guwahati but I think majority agree with me – If you don’t agree think it as my own perception). As I already told I strongly agree with the idea that we need new IITS but I disagree that we need 8 new IITS (!!!!!!!) and all starting fresh. Instead of these new ones we can turn some of the existing prestigious institutes into IITs by adding new infrastructure and providing more funds to them just like the IIT Roorkee.
When someone says you that they are from ‘Oxford University’ you will immediately tune your mind that they are good at what they have done (Of course, an exclamation of wowwwww first crosses our mind) without any further questions and then talk to them. I think a student from India is considered to be a similar ‘Woww student’ if he/she is from IITs or IIMs. Now 4 years down the lane when you get graduates from our prestigious 15 IITs you have one more question to ask before you say “wowww” when a student says that he/she is from IIT – “Which IIT are you from?”
PS: I know that the decision to start 8 new IITs and 7 new IIMs was taken in 2008 and it’s too late to post it here, but I just want to air my ideas
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Is it like a designer label gone pret, accessible to all but special to none? Many academicians and alumni are convinced that is the fate in store if institutes with inadequate infrastructure and lack of quality teachers sprout up across the country.
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ReplyDeleteyeah... you are right...
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your premise as well as your conclusions.
ReplyDeleteInfrastructure and faculty quality play a very small part in the quality of education and quality of the graduates.
IIT's in India are special only in the sense that they have direct share in the central govt budget whereas every other college/U has to go through UGC.
IIT is a brand created very deliberately. The major contributor to "quality" of the IIT graduates is the institutional environment - a student is surrounded by high achievers all the time. The expectations remain high throughout. This is one main difference that I saw between IIT life and life in other tech colleges.
Since you are from one of the original "prestigious" IITs, you want to be distinguished from these "new upstarts". At least, that's what it sounds like.
Also, when a new institute is born, it is very common to share resources - that is how institutions grow. When Warangal REC (now NIT) started in the 50's, it shared machine labs and faculty with the local polytechnic college. Is there any question where NIT stands now in relation to the same polytechnic college?