How many Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) should India have, and what should these institutes try to achieve? In their article, Too many IITs, unrealistic expectations(The Hindu , February 20), Philip G. Altbach and Eldho Mathews suggest that there should be between 10 to 12 IITs, that these institutes ought to be situated in big urban areas, and that they should focus on being “crown jewels”.
Excellence in education depends on the quality of mentorship; not on the size or location of campuses. To improve, faculties should be made bigger, and recruitment yardsticks should focus on quality and not quantity.
Core functions
The core functions of an engineering school are to: guide students along as they inquire and discover their interests in science and engineering; engage students with the interactions between technology, society, economics and the environment; prepare students for working careers as designers and gadget-makers, but also as entrepreneurs; invent new gadgets and discover new science, and enmesh all of these activities with local developmental needs. Overall, education at the higher secondary and college levels is really a nourishment that society produces to meet and bless the intense energies of young adults.
A lack of language and study skills causes some students to falter. Anecdotally, about a quarter of the incoming undergraduates need extra training and confidence-building measures in using the English language. Because the admission system is a testocracy, almost all the incoming students need to be dissuaded away from a mindset that focuses on strategic maximisation of points on multiple choice questions, and instead need to be goaded toward free inquiry and whole-problem tackling. A key problem in most engineering colleges is that the students should not only become skilled engineers but should also train to speak and write clearly.
Helping the new
The solution at many IITs has been to set aside time and resources towards initiating incoming students into college level education. At IIT Mandi in Himachal Pradesh for example, a five-week induction programme gently welcomes them into the academic setting and helps them feel at home. This phase also breaks the ice between students and faculty, making it easy for the students to get in touch with their teachers. This useful programme requires time and mentorship effort from faculty members.
The curriculum at IIT Mandi includes courses from a design and innovation stream, which includes a mandatory socio-technical practicum . This particular course has seen significant enrolment of visiting international students.
A substantial final year project can be nourishing and fulfilling for anyone completing an academic degree, because it presents an opportunity for focused work bringing together different strands of knowledge and skills on a concrete problem. Sadly, at many IITs, including the “crown jewels”, this final project is no longer mandatory. One of the key reasons for this regression is that the student strength has been increased without an accompanying, proportionate increase in faculty strength.
For all these reasons, and because our faculty salaries are lower than the international norms, it makes sense to hire many more faculty members than we do now. In a labour-surplus country like India, just as Arun Maira has suggested for the economy at large, we should readily use all the skilled labour that we can muster.
Recruitment and retention
Prof. Altbach and Prof. Mathews claim that faculty recruitment is such a big problem; that only around a dozen IITs can be comfortably staffed with world-class faculty. If faculty recruitment was indeed such a big problem, then why would sensible organisations dare to invest in private institutions such as Jio University, Mahindra Ecole Centrale, Shiv Nadar University, Krea University, and SRM University to name a few?
There are two existing problems with recruiting and retaining faculty members; both are self-made, and both can be solved.
The first problem is that not enough faculty members are hired, and that those hired are burdened with additional tasks such as running the canteen, etc. If there is indeed a scarcity of qualified faculty applicants, then would it be reasonable to burden the hired researchers with non-academic responsibilities such as: running the canteen, managing the placement cell, and managing tenders for various campus building works?
The second problem is that of inconsistency and group think in the hiring committees. Typically, recruitment has two stages: shortlisting by the hiring institute, and an interview in front on a panel that consists of mostly professors from outside the hiring institute.
If at the first stage, the shortlisting is done mechanically, then good and sometimes even excellent candidates can be weeded out. In specific, if shortlisting is done on the basis of the number of papers, size of grants won and the like, then those hired may be mediocre, paper-manufacturing mills. A better alternative is possible by reversing the existing two stages in recruitment, and explicitly flagging quality as a merit.
First, the external experts should prepare a short shortlist, and then the local hiring committees should attempt hiring from within this shortlist. The applicants should be required to submit information demonstrating the best aspects of their work. Each applicant should be asked to provide, in addition to their full curriculum vitae, their two best research publications, and their two best pedagogic materials such as a homework assignment or examination. At the first stage, the external professors could prepare a shortlist based solely on the two best publications and sample pedagogic materials. The statistics of outcomes of the external expert assessments can also supply clearer indications, of whether or not there is really a shortage of qualified applicants.
A waning fantasy is that only large companies and organisations can invent new technologies. This belief has been demolished by so many start-ups in the past few decades, that nowadays, even Prime Ministers preach the virtues of a start-up culture. So, why would anyone have low expectations from the smaller IITs, or from small but well-funded private colleges?
According to the Times Higher Education ranking for the last year, the IITs at Ropar (Punjab) and Indore (Madhya Pradesh) are within the top 100 young universities of the world. But even ignoring such superficial rankings, the details are promising — the growth of IIT Mandi for example. This IIT has as international a resident faculty body as any other IIT. In the last year, this IIT was seventh in the Atal innovativeness ranking ; an IIT Mandi project that developed a landslide warning system won the SKOCH award .
Examples abroad
Remoteness is not a hindrance to excellence. Cornell University is located in the heart of rural New England, and has been excellent from even before the Internet age. And Cornell has a thriving start-up scene, even though the campus is not surrounded by industries. Japan’s newest world class University, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, is in the most remote corner within its territory, Okinawa island. In the coming post-COVID-19 future, remoteness that is hand-in-hand with connectedness may even attract start-ups.
Maben Rabi is a Professor at the Østfold University College, Norway. He received a B.Tech. degree from IIT Madras, and has worked as an Assistant Professor at IIT Mandi
