The Importance of Preserving IITs

Pankaj Jalote

Professor

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

IIT Kanpur 208016

Scene 1: Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in Thailand, which is an Institute for graduate studies for students from all over Asia. Study their brochure and you notice that the top 4 countries in terms of student population in AIT does not include India! Indian students, who can be found all over the world, do not form one of the largest four groups in AIT! You wonder if this can be true and think about it. And then the explanation strikes you. Indian students are not flocking to AIT for their higher studies because India has IITs. Then you look at the countries listed as top four, and you find countries like Pakistan, which do not really have institutes from where one can do a Ph.D. in areas like Computer Science. This is in contrast to India, which has institutes like IITs and IISc, which have Ph.D. programs that are as rigorous as some of the best in the world. You then meet an Indian student and chat with him. Soon he explains to you that for higher studies, Indian students first prefer to go to the US, failing which they would like to go to IITs, failing which they would go anywhere (including AIT). You probe further and find that the student was not able to get admission to the M.Tech. program of any IIT.

Scene 2: In a conference in Delhi a famous researcher from the US gives the keynote speech. After the talk, he is surrounded by various people who are admiringly talking to him and asking questions, which the researcher was magnanimously answering. In comes a Professor from an IIT and started talking about some research problems and some researchers known to both of them. Almost immediately, the interaction between them became that of peers.

These two scenes demonstrate, in a small way, the importance of IITs to higher education and national pride. There is no doubt that over the years IITs have established themselves as centers of excellence in education and R&D. IIT graduates are respected throughout the world, and as Dr. Manmohan Singh once mentioned, IIT is perhaps the best International brand name that India has created. This brand name has been created in the last 3 to 4 decades largely by the effort put in by these institutions in education and R&D and by the support provided by the government.

However, the situation has changed considerably over the last few years. The government, in its effort to bring market forces in education sector, has started financially squeezing the IITs. It is ironic that earlier when there was not much real need for engineers in India as markets were protected and industry not very advanced, the country supported technical education fully. Now when there is a real need for engineering graduates and the software industry is crying hoarse about the shortage of engineers to support its growth, instead of further funding and supporting engineering education, the country is cutting back its support. What is perhaps the best brand name in India is likely to erode as continued indifference will soon start affecting the high quality, which is the hallmark of the IIT brand name.

Though lack of proper support and short-sightedness on part of the policy makers is a major factor that will contribute to the decline of these institutions, IITs themselves are also contributing in no small measure to this decline by not adapting to the changing needs of the nation. To make IITs (and other engineering institutions) more important in the current context two important changes have to be brought about. These are to make them and their graduates more industry oriented, and increasing the outputs of these Institutes.

Globally, the social and political agenda is now increasingly being driven by the business needs of a country. In the current scheme of things, business factors are becoming far more important than any other factor and success of a country is being measured by the success of its businesses. In such a scenario, it is in our national interest that the engineering education become more applied and industry oriented, and more importantly, enterpreneurship oriented. Enterpreneurship is the order of the day - new companies championing new technologies or products are really driving economies today. In response, many universities in the US are reorienting their education such that more and more graduates become entrepreneurs, either through in-curriculum programs or through some indirect ways. In CMU, for example, about 20% of the computer science graduates start their own companies.

If graduates from places like IITs are oriented towards enterpreneurship and if a few of them start companies of their own, the impact on technology business and development in the country can be quite substantial as, given their background and education, most of these graduates are likely to start technology based companies. These are the people who may develop or commercialize new technologies and may create a new Microsoft or Apple. This will also be extremely useful for IITs, as it makes them more relevant to the current needs by mothering growth of the technology business. Furthermore, in the long run, having such alumni is also in their interest as rich alumni can mobilize and contribute resources for their alma mater, as is the case with many of the well known Universities in the US.

There is no real reason for not being able to make this change, as it does not require many additional resources. Implementation of this basically requires a change in the mind-set followed by suitable modifications to the education program. Many of the successful entrepreneurs are likely to encourage and support such an initiative.

Now let us look at the second aspect - increasing the output of IITs. The two basic types of activities these institutes engage in are R&D and teaching. Though R&D output increase of these places is also very important, here we will discuss the teaching output, which is of immediate interest to the industry, particularly the software industry. An earlier study has shown that the student faculty ratio at IITs is far lower than many of the best universities in the US and the student intake can be easily by up to a factor of 4, without substantially increasing the faculty, which is the most scarce resource in technical education today. However, any such intake increase will require additional educational infrastructure (like library, laboratories, etc.), and additional municipal infrastructure required to house the larger number of students. The increase in municipal infrastructure is particularly expensive as for increasing the intake by one student, extra accommodation for four more students is required (for the 4 year B.Tech. program), and is a major stumbling block in increasing the intake.

The recent synergy group on IITs, and many others, have suggested that the cost of the municipal infrastructure increase can be avoided by making these institutes non-residential, that is, allowing students to live outside the campus. This approach will have a major impact on the character and academic programs of these IITs as they implicitly assume presence of students on campus (e.g. frequently classes are held in nights).

However, there is an approach that can preserve the fully-residential nature of these institutes without requiring too much extra municipal infrastructure. Most IITs have a lot of housing on campus for faculty and staff (an IIT may have over 1000 houses, accommodating 4000 to 5000 people). To preserve the residential nature of these institutes, it is necessary to have faculty reside on the campus with students (besides, without housing, recruiting competent faculty, which is already very difficult due to salary differences that exist compared to the industry, will become impossible). Earlier when the IITs were started, there was a need to provide housing to other staff members also, as the campuses were frequently outside the cities with little development around them. This situation has now changed and there is no pressing need to continue to provide residences to other employees. If some of this housing on the campus can be converted into student accommodation, then the need for additional municipal infrastructure can be reduced substantially.

However, this has to be implemented carefully and with sensitivity towards the staff members of these institutes. First, no one should be forced to leave his quarter. Rather, as people retire, the freed quarters can be converted into student accommodation. It is projected that in the next 5 years or so about 50% of the staff in some of the IITs will retire. This gradual increase in accommodation will work well as the growth of student intake will have to be done gradually anyway. In future, instead of providing accommodation, the staff should be provided with free transport to-and-from work, and with soft housing loans (as is done in industry). This will also be in the long term interests of the staff who, unlike the faculty, are far more likely to settle in the city in which the institute is situated.

The main difficulty in implementing this approach of utilizing existing municipal infrastructure to support a larger intake is having the administrative and political will needed to implement this.

Though the fund requirement for increasing the output from IITs can be reduced by optimally utilizing the current municipal & faculty resources, substantial funds will still be required to support this growth. And, as the industry is not likely to support education, the required funds must come, directly or indirectly, from the government. Indeed, in most parts of the world, education is the responsibility of the government. Even in the US, where there are a lot of private universities, the major sources of funds for a university are the student tuition and government grants. Most of the R&D grants to the universities come mostly from government agencies, and overall, a good university gets only a few percentage of its needs from the private industry, that too frequently in the form of equipment. In India, where there are no giant R&D institutions like IBM, AT&T, HP, etc. in the private sector, it is even more unlikely that the industry will contribute to maintaining the IITs. Hence, if the nation wants to preserve the IIT brand name and desires that these institutions adapt to the changing needs, the government must provide the funds needed to affect these changes.

Note: The author is a Vice President at Infosys, on Sabbatical from IIT Kanpur. The opinions expressed in this article are that of the author and do not represent the opinions of Infosys or IITK.