In last 20 years, IITs have lost their charm: Narayana Murthy
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 20 July 2011, 22:53 IST   |    29 Comments
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In last 20 years, IITs have lost their charm: Narayana Murthy
AHMEDABAD: Have our Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) lost its earlier charm? Speaking at IIT-Gandhinagar, Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy said, the IIT's today in the country are no longer the quality institutions which use to be 60s and 70s. This raised a lot of question on the present educational systems of our IIT. Murthy stressed that only a few world-class researches have come out of IITs and IIMs in India during the last decade compared to other countries. He further added that in 2004, China produced 2,652 PhDs in computer science and in that year India produced only 24. "In the last 15 to 20 years, IITs have lost all the sheen that they had once upon a time. In 1967, at the electrical engineering department of IIT-Kanpur there were about 60 to 70 students registered for PhD. But today, at the same department if there are five PhD students joining in a year, that is considered fantastic," said Murthy. He said that even gold medalists from IITs were at a loss when they pursue researches in institutes like MIT and Harvard. According to him the primary difference lies in the system of education in India and other countries, mostly U.S. Over there, the focus is on problem solving and relating theories to reality around them. Hence focus on researches needs an urgent attention instead of students preparing hard for a year solving sample questions for IIT-JEE. Murthy speech involved lessons on how to become strategic learners and the benefits of it. He imparted great lessons on qualities of independent thinking, connecting what is learnt in the classrooms with what is happening in the outside world and finding appropriate solutions to problems around.

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