Are Our IITs World-Class Anymore?
By Binu Paul, SiliconIndia   |   Friday, 17 June 2011, 04:12 IST   |    58 Comments
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Are Our IITs World-Class Anymore?
Bangalore: India is at a very critical phase now where it needs to produce a large number of quality engineers to keep the competitive edge it has in technology. However, a NASSCOM survey revealed that only 25 percent of Indian engineering college graduates are immediately employable in the IT industry. It's here the importance of the iconic Indian Institutes of Technology comes to play. India's top rated institutes have been come under serious criticisms recently both from politicians as well as academics. There were mixed reactions to Jairam Ramesh who slammed the faculty of the prestigious IITs and IIMs, saying these educational institutions are "not world class" but are "excellent" because of the quality of students. The Union Environment Minister who himself is an alumni of IIT-Mumbai said, "There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs. The faculty in the IIT is not world class. It is the students in IITs who are world class. So the IITs and IIMs are excellent because of the quality of students not because of quality of research or faculty." However, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal chose to differ with Ramesh and said the faculties of these institutions are world class. Many feel that the ITTs and IIMs seem to have an unjustified aura around them. They involve in very less research work when compared to similar institutions in U.S. and UK and they do appear to be a production house of engineers tailor-made for software companies. In the top 200 QS Asian university rankings, IIT-Bombay again had a poor show by slipping two positions down to be ranked at 38. While IIT-B kept it downward spiral for the third consecutive year, IIT Guwahati fell from 66 to 82 this year. The ranking, based on the assessment of many aspects such as research and teaching qualities, graduate employability and internationalization, had no Indian institute in the top 35. The seven institutes that churn out hundreds of engineers who are considered to be among the best ones in the world, has been in news for being criticized for its faculty. Critics often term the students as brilliant but the institutes not world-class. The research and post-graduate studies in ITTs are way behind in quality when compared to the standards of some of the foreign institutes like MIT. The Anil Kakodkar committee set up for providing a roadmap for autonomy and future of IITs revealed that the seven institutes hand about 1,000 PhDs a year suggested that the present strength of faculty which is around 4,000 be raised to 16,000 in the next 10 years. It's high time that the government take adequate measures to facilitate quality research and development initiatives. According to Kapil Sibal, India spends $8 billion annually on research while U.S. spends $250 billion and China $60 billion. Kakodkar Committee finding goes well with this fact that while India produces only about 1,000 PhDs in engineering and technology every year, U.S. and China generate more than 8000-9000 PhDs annually. Finally and most importantly, the committee strongly suggested the government to design a plan to bring out at least 10,000 quality engineers annually. According to the analysis, each IIT faculty member on an average publishes one research paper a year as compared with 6 per faculty member at MIT. The number of PhDs produced by IITs a year is about 1/7th of top Chinese institutions. While Chinese institutions published 15,404 papers on business, management and accounting between 1996-2007, India's prestigious management schools have produced only 5,590. What we need is a reframed policy on the functioning of these prestigious institutes with the government providing its strong support by adequate investments to develop world class faculty and infrastructure.

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