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Saturday 18 November 2017

IITs Have Not Failed India. India Has Failed the IITs.

Abstract

It has long been the fashion in India to take pot shots at the elite educational technical institutes founded by Pandit Nehru, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), and refer to them as “White Elephants”. The complaint often raised against the IITs is that, despite the huge investment by the government in educating the students of IITs, IITians either go abroad for greener pastures or leave engineering altogether to take up careers in business administration, software, or finance.

But the reality is that successive governments since Independence never provided the economic growth needed to create the opportunities that would tempt graduates from such institutes to remain in India and/or continue in engineering and contribute their skills to manufacturing projects that would benefit the nation.

I was impelled to write this post after reading an article titled “How IITs Turned from Nehru’s Vision of Technology to Catering Engineers for MNCs.” This article is yet another screed against the IITs and their perceived failures, written, incidentally, by two humanities professors at an IIT.

This article is wrong on so many counts that I don’t even know where to begin. But I am going to try. But before I get into details, a general comment. It appears the authors are leftist thinkers, who believe that a person should happily engage in a low-paying job “for the benefit of the country” even if they can get higher-paying jobs. Leftist thinking is fine in theory, but does not work in practice, because everyone wants a better life.

A disclosure before I begin listing the problems with this article and, more generally, with criticisms of the IITs: I studied for my B.Tech. in IIT Bombay, almost 30 years ago. I continue to work in engineering, and returned to India after many years in the USA.

List of Logical Flaws in This Article

What was the mandate of the IITs? To produce high-quality B.Tech. engineers. Did they fulfil that mandate? Absolutely. The fact that they are so highly sought after in India and abroad is testimony to the fact that IIT produces the best B.Tech. graduates in the world.

The title itself is flawed: “How IITs Turned from Nehru’s Vision of Technology to Catering Engineers for MNCs.”

I see nothing wrong in an engineering institute providing engineers for MNCs. The MNCs are located in India; they provide employment to Indians; they pay taxes and help the economy. What’s the problem here? Also, many MNCs work in technology. Does Nehru’s vision of technology not include technology for MNCs? Do we know? Did anyone ask him?
Saying that the IITs have failed in their mandate.

This is just plain wrong. The IITs have not failed in their mandate. What was the mandate of the IITs? To produce high-quality B.Tech. engineers. (Building dams, power plants, and industrial production units is what B.Tech. graduates, by and large, do. There is some role for MS and PhD graduates too, at the higher levels — innovating new products and processes — but the bulk of the basic work is done by B.Techs.) Did they fulfil that mandate? Absolutely. The fact that they are so highly sought after in India and abroad is testimony to the fact that IIT produces the best B.Tech. graduates in the world. Graduate study departments in the US don’t think twice before offering an admission and a scholarship to a student from IIT (unless there is a higher-ranked IITian competing with him/her). In India as well, companies love to hire IITs, whether in manufacturing or software. IIMs love to admit IITians into their management programs. So in practically every post-graduate opportunity you look at, IIT graduates are in high demand. This proves conclusively that IITs have not failed the country in their mandate of producing high-quality engineering graduates.

It is another matter that most of them are not engaged in the production of dams, power plants, and industrial production units. But the reasons for that are not the failures of the IIT system, but the failures of the government.

It is another matter that most of them are not engaged in the production of dams, power plants, and industrial production units. But the reasons for that are not the failures of the IIT system, but the failures of the government, as we shall see.
“IITs have not developed the scientific temper of the masses.”

Where did that come from? IITs have only one job: processing highly-qualified students into well-trained engineers. Where does the question of the “masses” come here? This is nonsense. It is absolutely not the job of the IITs to educate the masses on anything.
IITs do not impart adequate humanities training.

I can see where this is coming from. The authors are humanities professors in IIT. It is reasonable for them to want more humanities training — it shows that they love their subjects. I am all for humanities education and a more rounded education. But consider the humanities training that most Indian engineering colleges provide: zero. Relative to most of them, IITs impart a lot of humanities training. I studied at an IIT, and I remember at least 4 or 5 humanities classes. Very good ones. But it is not easy to increase the humanities offerings. IITs have a lot of subject material in engineering to teach, and I think this is all that is possible in 4 years. I would like to know how much they teach in Universities abroad for an engineering major.

Caste attitudes of students are not shaped solely by studying a few classes in a University. They are nurtured through 16 years at home listening to your parents telling you who you should socialize with and who you should not, and why we are superior to those other people.

“Failed to bring in structural changes to overcome the hurdles of a hierarchical society because of the marginalised position they have accorded their humanities and social science (HSS) departments”

Wow, can we load some more on the plate of the IITs??? Now the job of the Indian Institutes of Technology is also to fix the caste system in India? Really? 4000 graduates every year, by studying more humanities in IIT, are going to end up as highly enlightened human beings and will not be casteist?? I’m really sorry to say this, but what are we smoking here?

Caste attitudes of students are not shaped solely by studying a few classes in a University. They are nurtured through 16 years at home listening to your parents telling you who you should socialize with and who you should not, and why we are superior to those other people.

I am all for teaching more humanities in IIT to improve the character of students, but let us have realistic expectations.

I graduated in 1990. My chemical engineering class was 55 strong. Of that, 38 decided to go abroad to do their MS. This was pre-liberalization. Some others went for management. The number that actually worked in India in chemical engineering was abysmally low. Maybe 10 or less. And you think 1990s liberalization was the problem.

“Economic policymaking since the 1990s became less methodological and more opportunistic. The policies were framed to facilitate the growing number of opportunities in the service sector, particularly IT and finance. As a result, the economy jumped from agriculture to services without strengthening commodity-producing sectors, including agriculture and manufacturing.”

The howlers don’t seem to end. So, the problem started only in the 1990s? Until then, we had plenty of manufacturing jobs for IIT graduates? They could make a fantastic living in India?

Let me tell you something. I graduated in 1990. My chemical engineering class was 55 strong. Of that, 38 decided to go abroad to do their MS. This was pre-liberalization. Some others went for management. The number that actually worked in India in chemical engineering was abysmally low. Maybe 10 or less. And you think 1990s liberalization was the problem.
“Economic policymaking chose to fall in line with the neoclassical framework based on utilitarian thought, which helped strengthen a dream of high-paying jobs and luxurious life in this sector.”

And what exactly is wrong with dreaming about high-paying jobs and a luxurious life — in any sector?

The media just reports. If an IIT graduate gets a one crore rupee job offer, is that not news? It is a news-worthy story, and so the media is reporting it.

“While it is true that the service sector contributes a large part of the GDP, it is also detrimental to the growth of agriculture and manufacturing.”

This is just plain wrong. The three sectors are independent of each other.
“Because of a long-term stagnation in agriculture and manufacturing, these students are unable to find any decent jobs there.”

Finally! One correct point. You know what you do in that case? You fix that stagnation. Do not, instead, tell students not to take up a well-paying service sector job because a stagnant manufacturing sector needs engineers.

Everyone in India wants one and only one thing: jobs with good money. Nobody studies engineering because they have a passion for science and engineering. They don’t even know what engineering is when they take that entrance examination. Not just IITs, but at any engineering college. Why do they apply for engineering colleges? Because in this miserable country, it is so hard to get a job, and so parents tell their kids, “if you don’t want to starve, get an engineering or a medicine degree.”

“Media outlets further the craze by reporting on the highest packages offered to graduating students on the front-page, putting the pressure back on students to pursue education according to what jobs they think they should hold.”

The howlers just keep adding. Now it is the media’s fault? The media just reports. If an IIT graduate gets a one crore rupee job offer, is that not news? It is a news-worthy story, and so the media is reporting it. Why are you shooting the messenger?
“This resulted in the IITs emerging as the ultimate destination for employment-seekers than for those who had a passion for science or engineering.”

My head is beginning to ache here at the lack of insight being displayed again and again. Okay, let’s get something clear. Everyone in India wants one and only one thing: jobs with good money. Nobody studies engineering because they have a passion for science and engineering. They don’t even know what engineering is when they take that entrance examination. Not just IITs, but at any engineering college. Why do they apply for engineering colleges? Because, in this miserable country, it is so hard to get a job, and so parents tell their kids, “if you don’t want to starve, get an engineering or a medicine degree.”

There is zero role for passion in choosing your major in IIT. And this has nothing to do with the neoliberal policies of India since 1992. It has always been that way.

And let me tell you one more thing about IITs, since “passion” is being mentioned. Do you know how students choose their fields of specialization in IIT? They look at what field they can get based on their rank in the entrance examination. They hear through the grapevine, through career magazines, etc., that some professions are more in demand in the job market than others, and so they go for that. They give their top three branch preferences based on how employable they will be in four years' time, and how much money they will make. Then they accept what they can get with their rank. There is zero role for passion in choosing your major in IIT. And this has nothing to do with the neoliberal policies of India since 1992. It has always been that way. It was that way when I entered IIT in 1986.

At this point, I really feel compelled to add something. I am amazed that these things are not obvious to professors who live and work in an IIT — that they still do not know what students are thinking, despite all that experience. It is reflective of the ivory-tower approach of these professors.

An IIT degree provides a good job. People want to go to a coaching class to improve their chances of getting in. There is a need, and someone steps in to supply that need. This is the market working. What’s the problem here?

“The menace of coaching classes.”

Oh. My. God. Here is another ignorant attempt at shooting the messenger. An IIT degree provides a good job. People want to go to a coaching class to improve their chances of getting in. There is a need, and someone steps in to supply that need. This is the market working. What’s the problem here? Of course, they will charge for their services. Let me guess what your problem is: poor people and marginalized people cannot afford to go to coaching classes. And therefore, nobody should go to coaching classes. Classic leftist thinking.
“The decision to hike the fee from Rs 90,000/year to Rs 2 lakh/year smacks of a design to further divide the society on the lines of caste, class and gender.”

My understanding of a white elephant is a useless, expensive thing. Well, if it is expensive, does it not stand to reason that its costs should be recovered?

Really? I thought that somewhere early in this article, it was mentioned that the IITs were “white elephants.” Well, my understanding of a white elephant is a useless, expensive thing. Well, if it is expensive, does it not stand to reason that its costs should be recovered?

For decades, the complaint I have heard from most people is that IITians are getting a free ride, that they pay such low tuition for a world-class education, and then leave India to work in the USA, or join management schools, where they do not use their engineering training, etc. Now, finally, the IITs respond to these complaints and raise the tuition rates so that IITians do not get a free ride — and you are still not happy!

Industry is notoriously tight-fisted with their money for long-term R&D at Universities, whether in the US or in India.

“Indian business houses — unlike their counterparts from around the world — rarely funded research and development at the IITs or, for that matter, at any institutes of higher learning.”

Not just Indian business houses. Industry anywhere in the world. I have worked in US academia and US MNCs, and I can tell you, this conclusion is wrong. Industry is notoriously tight-fisted with their money for long-term R&D at Universities, whether in the US or in India — though Indian industry is indeed worse. I would never gamble a PhD student’s thesis on an industry-driven project if I were a professor in the US. Too risky. The main reason is that industry has extremely short-term vision; they will generally not fund long-term projects (and I know this from personal experience working at one of the top R&D companies in the world, with an annual R&D budget of $1.7 billion). They are also paranoid about retaining intellectual property, and would not want the student or the professor to publish the results (exceptions do exist, but this is the rule) — which makes it problematic for a student's thesis work, which must be public. The biggest source of research funding in the US for Universities is the government – NSF (National Science Foundation), DOE (Department of Energy), NIH (National Institutes of Health), DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), DOD (Department of Defense), etc. Not industry.

Is it the authors’ contention that IIT graduates should only work for PSUs?

“The appointment of business tycoons into the governing council of the institutes further indicates the wider influence of the neoliberal corporate influence on research and academics at the IITs.”

Uhh...I thought the idea was for IIT graduates to help in “building huge dams, power plants and industrial production units – and so spearhead the technological force of the nation.” So why is it wrong to have people who are engaged in these activities on the board of the IITs? Or is it the authors’ contention that IIT graduates should only work for PSUs? Or that huge dams, power plants, and industry should only be operated by the government?

You cannot force IIT graduates to build roads in Somalia.

“Thus, it is evident that the institutes were primarily meant to produce quality engineers who would have a greater role to play in building not just a new India but also developing nations in Asia and Africa – as they were direly needed technical personnel to lead their societies.”

This is a clear case of the authors freely extrapolating from what Nehru actually said to suit their political philosophies. From what they have quoted of Nehru, the late PM never said that the purpose of the IITs was to serve other countries in Asia or Africa. But maybe these professors think of India being a Cuba — just as Cuba used to send its doctors to other countries to help out, maybe they have visions of India sending its engineers to other countries to help out. One difference: the doctors in Cuba have no choice. It is a totalitarian country. India is a free country, and you cannot force IIT graduates to build roads in Somalia. In any case, this is just plain distortion of Nehru's thoughts.

If IT is the rage of the day, it makes no sense to offer incentives to manufacture steel. A good economic policy needs to be opportunistic and driven by global trends.

From their own article, all that Nehru is supposed to have said is this: “We take all the trouble to put up this expensive Institute and train up people here, and then, if we do not utilise the services of those people, then there is something wrong about the governmental apparatus or Planning Commission or whoever is supposed to deal with this matter.” So Nehru wanted India to utilize the engineers properly. He never said we should export them.

Forget about sending Indian engineers to under-developed countries. Let us figure out how to use them properly in India.
“Economic policymaking since the 1990s became less methodological and more opportunistic.”

And this is a bad thing because …?? An alternative word for “opportunism” is “dynamism.” If IT is the rage of the day, it makes no sense to offer incentives to manufacture steel. A good economic policy needs to be opportunistic and driven by global trends.

Until 1992, a factory owner could not aspire to increase his output even by 5% without the approval of the government. He could not create a new product without approvals that would need 20 different signatures.

“These institutes were established with an express concern to advance the bubbling aspirations of post-Independence India’s historic tryst with the project of modernity.”

Wonderful words, I must say. But what aspirations? Until 1992, a factory owner could not aspire to increase his output even by 5% without the approval of the government. He could not create a new product without approvals that would need 20 different signatures. It has taken decades to undo these harmful rules, and they still have not been all undone. What’s a person to aspire for?

Under any circumstances, expecting IIT students (or students of any college or institute or University) to work without commensurate reward for the betterment of society, naively or otherwise, is insensitive and cruel.

And, finally, the authors end with this gem: “Under such market-driven education policies and adverse circumstances, naively expecting IIT students to work for the betterment of society would not just be insensitive but also cruel.”

Not just under market-driven policies. Under any circumstances, expecting IIT students (or students of any college or institute or University) to work without commensurate reward for the betterment of society, naively or otherwise, is insensitive and cruel.

Working for the betterment of society, like patriotism, love for the country, or standing up for the national anthem, should come from within and not be forced. These things should not be expected. As Shakespeare says in The Merchant of Venice, “the quality of mercy is not strained.” Not just mercy. Loyalty, patriotism, love for country, etc. — none of these can be forced, and no government should attempt to coerce them out of its people, because such an attempt is futile.

The Real Diagnosis and Real Solutions

Now that I have said what’s wrong with this diagnosis of the IIT professors in their article, let me fill in the rest of the puzzle – what is the real diagnosis? What, if anything, is wrong with the IIT system? If something is wrong, what is the solution?

Seeking a better life is not a crime.

The real crime is that successive governments in India did not create better opportunities in India.

Why have IITians being going abroad for ever? Simple. Because they could. Because they were so well-trained, they were in demand everywhere in the world. And you can get a better quality of life abroad than you can here. Seeking a better life is not a crime.

The real crime is that successive governments in India did not create better opportunities in India.

Everyone wants a better life. It’s not just IITians, by the way. People from NITs. People from private colleges. People from no-name colleges. People without engineering degrees. People with arts degrees. People with medicine degrees. Hawkers on the street. Everyone wants a better life. You get a better life in the USA. Almost everyone in India would love to leave India and go to the USA.

What’s the solution? Fix India. Fix the Indian economy.

Pandit Nehru had a great vision for creating institutes of higher learning – IITs, IIMs, etc., and institutions to serve the country – DRDO labs, HAL, etc. He also understood the need for Indians to cultivate a scientific temper, and did much to advance science in the new republic. But he failed to see the crucial missing piece. A good standard of living. It is folly to expect that people should want to live in misery for the good of the country. But Nehru suffered from this folly. After all, he was the man who told JRD Tata that he thought profit was a dirty word.

It is not only IITians who rush abroad given a chance. When I was doing my MS and PhD in the US, there were plenty of students from colleges other than IITs there. None of them had any intention of going back to India. They are all happily working in the US today. This is not a problem with IITs. It is a problem with India.

Pandit Nehru had a great vision for creating institutes of higher learning – IITs, IIMs, etc., and institutions to serve the country – DRDO labs, HAL, etc. He also understood the need for Indians to cultivate a scientific temper, and did much to advance science in the new republic. But he failed to see the crucial missing piece. A good standard of living. It is folly to expect that people should want to live in misery for the good of the country.

But Nehru suffered from this folly. After all, he was the man who told JRD Tata that he thought profit was a dirty word.

It started because of the command economy that started with Nehru but went out of control under Indira Gandhi. If you are producing 2000 top-class engineers each year, but they have to work in mind-numbing jobs in India because the government has chained all the companies to only produce those things that are covered in the five-year plan, do you really expect them to stay in India and just sign the muster every day with nothing to do?

Do you know what the effect of those policies has been? No Indian company today knows anything about R&D. I’ve seen it in Indian manufacturing, so I know. Even today, 25 years since liberalization, Indian companies are finding it hard to compete against MNCs, because those companies come with established R&D operations, whereas Indian companies are finding R&D a huge challenge. For most of them, R&D only means a tax write-off. Even when they hire young engineers in their brand-new product design and analysis teams, the managers of those teams are paper-pushers with no experience in handling an R&D team. I have met young engineers who quit those jobs out of boredom and happily took up jobs in MNC R&D departments when they could get them. How do you expect to get IITians to work in Indian manufacturing when this is the state of things?

What would the authors rather have the government do? Discourage the jobs in IT and finance? Disincentivize the only sectors in India that provide a decent wage and encourage people to live and work in India?

It is interesting that one of the authors teaches economics, but fails to understand simple economics when he blames government policies facilitating the growing number of jobs in the service sector, particularly in IT and finance. What would the authors rather have the government do? Discourage the jobs in IT and finance? Disincentivize the only sectors in India that provide a decent wage and encourage people to live and work in India? If governments have encouraged the service sector since 1992, it is because they have understood (in a welcome break from the past) that, with the advent of computerization and economic liberalization, jobs were going to rapidly expand in IT and finance. I would congratulate the governments that were responsible in bringing in policies to benefit these sunshine sectors.

If you want more IIT graduates to work in manufacturing, make it more profitable.

If you want more IIT graduates to work in manufacturing, make it more profitable. Make companies pay better salaries to IIT graduates so that they will be tempted to drop those IT and finance jobs and work in engineering. How do you do that? By providing incentives to manufacturing, both local and global. By creating more high paying jobs in engineering by making India a destination for high-tech manufacturing. Not, as the authors seem to suggest, by discouraging the sectors that are booming.

70 years since independence, we should not have a shortage of educational institutions at all, from the primary level to a doctoral degree. Anyone wanting to study anything should be able to. Central governments have expanded the number of IITs, but they need to man them with quality faculty. Teaching standards should be greatly improved and constantly modified. Faculty improvement programs should be continuous. And communication training must be provided to faculty members to teach better.

Increasing numbers of jobs in the service sector are only detrimental to the manufacturing sector if your manufacturing sector is stagnant. Make it more robust. The solution is not to fight over the size of your slice in the pie, but to make the pie bigger.
The solution to coaching classes is that you should not have a shortage of good engineering institutions in the first place. 70 years since independence, we should not have a shortage of educational institutions at all, from the primary level to a doctoral degree. Anyone wanting to study anything should be able to. Once the shortage goes away, coaching classes will not be such a lucrative business and will not cost so much money. In any case, there will always be some engineering college one can get admitted to, even if not an IIT. Even when I graduated from IIT in 1990, IIT was not the only institute producing quality engineering graduates — I have been very impressed by many friends who never studied at an IIT.

The number of IITs has also gone up significantly in recent years. But the government need to man them with quality faculty. Teaching standards should be greatly improved. Faculty improvement programs should be continuous. And communication training must be provided to faculty members to teach better. A lot of them are terrible teachers and terrible communicators. And by that I do mean English. The medium of education in an IIT, after all, is still English. So everyone teaching there should speak perfect and flawless English, so that language does not become an impediment in teaching and in communicating ideas. And they should teach the students to speak and write flawless English. We need to understand that the language of technology is English. Poor English comprehension among students from a vernacular or disadvantaged background unnecessarily sets them back because often they cannot follow what the professor is saying in class. Now that’s a job for the humanities faculty in IIT to do, if they really want to play a positive role and not carp from ivory towers.

IITs are now focusing a lot on increasing research output. I personally believe this is misguided. We do not need more output in research. Our industry in India is timid and will not use any research ideas even if they are invented in IITs.

Poor rankings in international lists of Universities. This is an absolutely worthless statistic. Our rankings among world Universities are low because our research output is low. As a consequence, IITs are now focusing a lot on increasing research output. I personally believe this is misguided. We do not need more output in research. Our industry in India is timid and will not use any research ideas even if they are invented in IITs. Research innovations will only benefit forward-thinking foreign companies, not Indian companies which have not even figured out how to spell R&D.

I am not saying IIT professors should not spend time on R&D. By all means let the faculty do R&D if they can think of good ideas. All I am saying is that we should not obsess over them and should not obsess over these meaningless rankings, especially if it might mean a dilution of teaching standards or a loss of focus on our star products - the B.Tech. graduates.
If we are talking about what India needs urgently, it is well-qualified graduates. IITs do a great job of it. They should create even more good B.Tech. students. The expansion of the IITs that has been happening for the last 10+ years in India is a good thing. And not just IITs. NITs and other colleges should also be expanded.

But it is not about quantity alone. Most of our graduates, especially from the lower-level institutes in India, are unemployable. The real crisis in our educational system is not that we are not producing enough research papers each year, but that so many of our Bachelors degree holders are simply unemployable. We need to fix this.

Create more quality engineering schools. Supply and demand will work, and fees will go down. That will also solve the problem for girl students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Currently there are too many restrictions on creating engineering schools.

The problem of high fees acting as a barrier for poor students and girls. Create more quality engineering schools. Supply and demand will work, and fees will go down. That will also solve the problem for girl students and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Currently there are too many restrictions on creating engineering schools. The system to create new Universities should be left completely free of permissions, etc., except for stringent quality checks and certification, so that demand and supply can fully equilibrate.
But none of these will have any impact until there is a boom in manufacturing jobs; until governments start giving incentives to high-tech manufacturing in India so that there will be a market for the skills of all these well-trained graduates. The marketplace needs to be completely open to the world, forcing Indian manufacturing to adopt world-class standards in engineering. A combination of international and domestic engineering companies in stiff competition to produce world-class products, with business-friendly economic policies, will create the right atmosphere to retain the talent, not only of the IITs, but of all engineering colleges in India.

Concluding Thoughts

The “White Elephants” debate has been going on as long as I have been alive. It is a completely misguided debate, because it focuses on the wrong piece of the puzzle. The IITs have consistently delivered on the mandate of Pandit Nehru in their 66-year history by producing world-class Bachelors degree holders in different specializations of engineering and science. The reason these graduates have not ended up building the India of Nehru's dreams is encapsulated perfectly in Panditji's own speech at the first convocation of IIT Kharagpur, as quoted by the authors of this article. I have already quoted this, but it is worth re-reading:

“We take all the trouble to put up this expensive Institute and train up people here, and then, if we do not utilise the services of those people, then there is something wrong about the governmental apparatus or Planning Commission or whoever is supposed to deal with this matter. Such state of affairs can only be described as fantastically stupid because one trains people for certain ends and then wastes them, not even for a moment thinking in terms of the individual’s employment and his living, etc.”

— Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

For 70 years, Indian governments, including Pandijti's own governments, have failed to fully create the circumstances needed to utilize the services of the graduates that the IITs have produced. They have failed to think “in terms of the individual's employment and his living, etc.,” to use Pandit Nehru's own words. The solution has been staring us in the face in the form of Panditji's own words, but we have not listened to them: “if we do not utilise the services of those people, then there is something wrong with the governmental apparatus…” Instead of focusing on better utilization, everyone has been focusing on whether the training of the graduates has been correct, and whether something is wrong with the IITs. Things have definitely improved since the liberalization of the economy in 1991-92, but much remains to be done. Until we become a prosperous country, we cannot reverse the brain drain.

India is a free country. If you are a graduate from an IIT, nobody can stop you from choosing to do management as your next step in your career; or to go abroad to the US to do a MS or a PhD if you can get admission to a University there; or to write the IAS exam and become a government collector, join the IAS, IPS, or IFS; join a software company; become an author or a musician; or even start a sweet shop. We in India cannot force people to do things against their will, as is possible in totalitarian states like Cuba. So, if the current situation bothers you, there are only three paths:

Improve economic and business conditions in India to tempt those students to work in engineering in India.
Raise the fees so that, even if they leave India or do not continue in engineering, you have not subsidized their education. This has already been done.
Close down the IITs.

Most people would agree that option 3 is not very good. It is equivalent to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And option 2 has already been implemented. As I have already argued elsewhere, the level of Rs. 90,000 per annum is already at par with what excellent private colleges like SASTRA provide at that rate. That only leaves us with one viable option to address the situation: option 1, improving the economic and business conditions in India. Until that happens, people should stop constantly moaning about the state of the IITs. The state of the IITs is good. In fact, if we had utilized the services of the IIT graduates for the last 66 years, nobody would have even minded the subsidized education.

For 66 years, we have been barking up the wrong tree.

As a final aside, if the kind of illogical thinking that characterizes the article written by these two IIT humanities professors creates educational and economic policy in this country, this is a cause for serious concern. It only highlights the need for common working people from all walks of life to enter the political and policy-making process, rather than vacate that space so that it can be occupied by career politicians and academics (as it is now), neither of whom knows what it is like to hold a real job or face real challenges of ordinary people.

Monday 13 July 2015

The Great Pointless IIT Debate

The Great Pointless IIT Debate

Written by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, 13 July, 2015

For other articles by Dr. Seshadri Kumar, please visit http://www.leftbrainwave.com

Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean the opinions of any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated otherwise in the article.

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Introduction

Ever since I was in my teens, old enough to know what IIT (the Indian Institutes of Technology) was, I have heard one endless debate: “Are the IITs a White Elephant?”

The issue, for those who have no background on this issue, is this: The IITs are institutes of national importance, and admission to the IITs is extremely hard, because there is a competitive exam and only the best students who can pass this very difficult exam (the top 5000 students annually out of some 500,000 who take the exam, or some such statistic) can get into this prestigious institution. The institution provides arguably the best undergraduate education in engineering in India. The cost of the education is subsidized by the Central Government relative to its quality, though the magnitude of the subsidy has been changing.

The institutions were created so that India would have top-class engineering talent who could contribute to building the nation. Instead, most IITians (as graduates from the IITs are known) either leave the country after 4 years of undergraduate education and settle in the USA to get a better life and better professional opportunities, or get a management degree from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIM), another educational institute of excellence, in this case to provide the best managers for a growing India, and become top managers in the private sector, making huge salaries. Some others move to IT because of the excellent salaries in that sector, and a small remainder work in core engineering in India as engineers. Hardly anyone joins the government. A small percentage returns to India after higher studies in the USA or elsewhere and becomes faculty in the same IITs.

It is in this context that I saw an article being widely circulated on social media that talked about “subsidies” being given to “those who don’t deserve it.” The article also alleges that the cost of the IITs runs to about Rs. 988.5 crores annually, and mentions that the budget for the IITs for the current year is Rs. 1700 crores. The article goes on to argue that since, between 1986 and 2006, not a single IITian joined the army; that since less than 2% of the technical staff at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) are IIT graduates; that since IITians do not join DRDO labs, IITs are a waste of taxpayers’ money and so IITians should receive no subsidies from the government and should be made to pay for the full cost of their education.

The article further argues that since most engineers from IIT actually do not continue with engineering, this makes the subsidy of their education even more appalling. The author cites Chetan Bhagat as an example of a person who studied mechanical engineering at an IIT, only to abandon it for management studies at an IIM, and subsequently become an author, and makes a snide comment, “Best-selling fiction is not known to help farmers.”

Responding to this kind of criticism, the Union government has even considered and approved proposals to make IIT students pay back the cost of their education in instalments after they graduate. The argument used is that the IIT students represent a huge drain on the country, and since they are well-compensated after they graduate, there is no need to subsidize their education.

THIS IS AN EXTREMELY SHORT-SIGHTED AND STUPID LINE OF THINKING.

It reveals a myopic viewpoint that doesn’t even try to understand larger issues such as the links between infrastructure, education, and progress.

Let me explain why.

How Subsidized ARE the IITs?

At the outset, before even getting into the broader picture, let us examine the claims of spending on IITs a bit more rigorously. The most important question to analyse is whether the IITs are, in fact, being hugely subsidized. Let us examine this question a little.

In the early days, the IITs were indeed highly subsidized institutions. For example, in 1986, when I joined IIT, the tuition per semester was something like Rs. 250, which was a pittance, considering that anywhere else in India, an engineering education would cost orders of magnitude more.

However, over the years, the tuition costs at IITs have risen significantly, and in 2014 the fees at IIT Bombay ran to about Rs. 25000 a semester, or Rs. 50,000 for the full year. But the government has decided to nearly double this to Rs. 90,000 per year.

The current fees charged by the IITs are comparable to those charged by many private engineering colleges. For example, an article in the media mentions the annual cost of attending an engineering college in Hyderabad to be between Rs. 51,800 and Rs. 1,05,000. Another data point for comparison is the fee structure of a college in Jalandhar, which comes to Rs. 95, 650 for the first year and Rs. 54,150 for the second year. Similarly, the well-known Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA) charges Rs. 45,000 per semester for a total of Rs. 90,000 per year as tuition fees.

So clearly, in today’s world, the IITs are not outrageously subsidized; however, one could argue that these tuition rates do not take into account the fact that the quality of education an undergraduate gets in the IITs is vastly superior to that he would get in most other undergraduate institutions, and hence the tuition in IITs should be higher than that of any private college in India. Be that as it may, at least it should be clear to the reader that the IITs are not outrageously subsidized by current standards.

Next, let us examine what are the budget figures of the Union Government and how much it really spends on IITs as a fraction of its total budget.

According to the 2015 budget, the total education budget for 2014-15 is Rs. 68,728 crores (Rs. 687 billion or about $11 billion). Of these, the budget for IITs alone is somewhere in the region of Rs. 1800 crores, or about $300 million. It is instructive to examine the finances of an individual IIT, such as IIT Bombay.

IIT Bombay’s annual budget is around Rs. 250 crores ($40 million). Of this, they receive Rs. 200 crores from the government and recover the remaining Rs. 50 crores from tuition fees and other charges from students. Around 50% of the students at an IIT avail of free (SC/ST) or subsidized (poor students) tuition. If the new proposal to make all students pay back the cost of their tuition after they get jobs is implemented, then at most IIT Bombay will get another Rs. 50 crores annually, or another 20% of the total budget, and reduce the burden on the government by the same amount. Keep in mind that this is at the current tuition rate of Rs. 90,000 per year.

So, even as students at IIT pay above market rate for their engineering seats, and even if no subsidies are given even to poor students, IIT Bombay will still need Rs. 150 crores every year from the Central government. If the government would like IIT not to impose any burden on the exchequer, the annual fees for IITians need to go up to Rs. 2,25,000 a year, and the corresponding cost of a four-year education will rise to Rs, 9,00,000.

This, coupled with the proposal to charge full tuition costs for EVERYONE and make them pay the tuition back after graduating, in instalments (perhaps even with interest?) will solve the problem of the IITs being a drain on the country’s finances.

But will that solve our education woes? WILL IT ADDRESS INDIA’S NEEDS AS CONCERNS ENGINEERS?

Is the Purpose of the IITs Being Met?

According to the Wikipedia article on the “History of the IITs,”

After the end of the Second World War and before India got independence, Sir Ardeshir Dalal from the Viceroy's Executive Council foresaw that the future prosperity of India would depend not so much on capital as on technology. He, therefore, proposed the setting up of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. To man those laboratories, he persuaded the US government to offer hundreds of doctoral fellowships under the Technology Cooperation Mission (TCM) program. However realizing that such steps cannot help in the long run for the development of India after it gains independence, he conceptualized institutes that would train such work forces in the country itself. This is believed to be the first conceptualization of IITs.

So the mission of the IITs was to train engineers in order to develop technology in India indigenously. It is important to keep this in mind, as this is the larger issue India must confront – to see whether this mission is being achieved.

IIT Bombay was started in 1958, and is today 57 years old. I entered this hallowed institution in 1986, and graduated in 1990, and so you could say that our batch entered at the midpoint of the institution’s history. This year is also the 25^th anniversary of our batch, and we are celebrating the silver jubilee of our graduation this year. So this year, and this batch, is as good as any to take stock of how well IIT Bombay (and by extension, the IIT system) has performed in achieving this mission.

We had a class of 314 students, and from the records we are getting so far (270 out of 314, or 86% of the total batch strength), we were able to determine statistics. Of the 270 who we had data on (and whom we could assume to be a representative sample of the total population), 115 are today working in India. That is 43%, and tells us that the long-standing accusation of a “brain drain,” i.e., that most IITians end up going abroad, is simply not true. It still tells us that a majority of IITians (57%) go abroad, but it is not an overwhelming majority.

What is more revealing than the statistic on the brain drain is knowing what people are currently doing after graduating from IIT Bombay. We were able to (at the time of writing) get an approximate idea on 200 of the 270 former students on what they currently do for a living. We found out that of the 200 on whom we had data, only 23 were engaged in engineering (including yours truly). That’s just 11.5% of the total number of graduates (assuming these numbers hold for the full population of 314) who have chosen to stick on in engineering. A further 23 of the ex-students are continuing in academics and science domains other than engineering (another 11.5%), and the rest are in diverse domains such as Enterpreneurship (25), Government Service (10), Finance (27), Business (31), Consulting (8), IT/Tech (49), and Others (4).

So, of 200 ex-students, only 23, or 11.5% of all the engineering graduates have continued in engineering 25 years since their B.Tech. Assuming that the country-wide percentages hold across all these professions, one can estimate that only about 6% of the engineers who were trained in IIT Bombay and who graduated from the institute in 1990 still practice engineering in India!!!

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if this is what is happening generally across all batches, the mission of the IITs, as elucidated earlier – “to train engineers in India to develop technology indigenously” – is not being met when only 6% of those who are trained to be top engineers in India actually stay in India and work in engineering. It is also clear that the exacerbating factor is not the fact that these engineers do not stay in India – for 43% of them do live in India – but that only 11.5% of them stay in engineering.

What Can the Government Do To Change Things?

The real question that the Indian government should examine, if it is serious about achieving the mission of the IITs, is not to create more IITs – as both the previous and the present government are trying to compete in doing – but to figure out why, in spite of having these world-class institutions of undergraduate engineering teaching, less than 12% of these trained engineers continue in this profession.

The answer to this is not complicated: supply and demand. The going rate for engineers as opposed to people in finance or software or other fields is simply not attractive enough. Add to this the possibility that engineering jobs are not exciting enough compared to many other alternatives. A third reason is that many young kids who actually take up engineering as a subject do not know anything about it and lose interest in it by the time they graduate. In other words, they were never enamoured of it, and they left it because it did not resonate with them. The last fact points to a crying need for better counselling in India and for better career planning. Discussing this in detail is beyond the scope of this article and would require a separate treatise. I will therefore stick to the first reason in what follows.

How does one boost the attractiveness and the pay of engineering jobs? Simply by getting more players in the field; by creating more opportunities for young engineers; by creating more jobs; by liberalizing the economy; by allowing more foreign companies to set up subsidiaries in India; by reducing the barriers for technology companies to be formed and to operate in India; by encouraging innovation for small businesses that might be started by young IIT graduates; by providing loans on easy terms; and by doing all this, raising the level of technology in India.

Instead of this, proposals such as increasing the number of IITs will not in any way solve the problem of shortage of high-quality engineering talent in India. Students today see IIT not as a way to become great engineers and practice world-class engineering; they see it as a vehicle, a stamp to get recognition and be known as a person of high intelligence, and then move on to more lucrative jobs in domains with better opportunities. Create more IITs, and you will find more engineers move into other professions with the same stamp. Not to mention the inevitable diluting of quality.

If India wants our youngsters to stay in engineering, it needs to not just create IITs – it needs to create an entire ecosystem that is favourable for engineering to flourish. In fact, the fundamental mistake of the IITs from day one is that these institutions were created without any thought as to where the students would go once they graduated from these institutions. That is the fundamental flaw that must be fixed.

Expecting students to continue doing engineering in India out of a sense of “loyalty”or “patriotism” is foolish. People will only do what gives them an advantage in life and what they enjoy doing. Sometimes you have students in IIT who actually wanted to study and work in electrical engineering but only got a rank that allowed them to study civil engineering. Expecting that this person should spend his life as a civil engineer because the country invested four years in him is silly. If four years of civil engineering gave him a love for the subject, that might happen. Otherwise, chances are that he or she will jump at the first chance and move to marketing or finance or whatever else captures his or her fancy and pays well. These changes and decisions are dynamic and should be expected. The question to answer is whether there are reasonable opportunities for those who want to continue in what they are trained.

Making students return the full cost of their education misses the mark by far – and the contribution to the exchequer is so minimal as not to matter at all – after all, a matter of about Rs. 1800 crores in an education budget of close to Rs. 70,000 crores is less than 3% of our annual education budget. The inordinate focus on this amount, rather than the real and crucial issues facing our nation in the matter of shortage of real engineering talent, simply highlights the venality of the political class and the stupidity of the masses in focusing on irrelevant details and missing the forest for the trees. The man on the street can get some petty satisfaction for making the “Richie-rich” IIT graduates “pay for their education,” but beyond this juvenile satisfaction, nothing concrete would have been achieved. It might even exacerbate the brain drain – for, after all, the IIT student who has paid for his degree through his nose will not even feel the little sense of loyalty he might feel now. You will have completed the transformation of the student into the consummate mercenary. At least, in our batch, 43% of IITians decided to come back to India. Make students today pay Rs. 9 lakhs for their education and that percentage could be down to 5 or 10%. The fact is that there is no value to this education – and by making Rs. 9 lakhs the price, you are setting a value on it and telling the students that once that is paid for, they owe nothing to the country.

Yes, you could call the IITs a white elephant – but the people responsible for it becoming a white elephant are not the students who graduate from these institutions. The responsible people are the people who have rushed to create engineering institutions without thinking of the entire ecosystem that students graduating from such institutions need.

And if the IITs are indeed a white elephant, what sense is there in making the elephant even bigger?

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Anu Narasimhan (B. Tech., IIT Bombay, 1990) for providing me with the figures relating to the break-up of the IIT Class of 90 batch by current location and profession.

Saturday 18 November 2017

IITs Have Not Failed India. India Has Failed the IITs.

Monday 13 July 2015

The Great Pointless IIT Debate

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