I.I.T.s, the Mother of all exams and Manu Joseph

In the 1980s and ’90s, the migration of Indian scientific talent to the United States, deplored here as a “brain drain,” became a subject of intense debates in schools and colleges. Once, during the convocation ceremony at I.I.T.-Madras, the chief speaker received a standing ovation when he declared, “Brain drain is better than brain in the drain.” His words traveled with the speed of a rumor across Madras, also known as Chennai, through homes and schools, evoking laughter and applause, and delivering a bleak reminder to young boys that their lives depended on passing the J.E.E.

The glamour of the I.I.T.’s has always inspired parents to force their children to take the J.E.E. Increasingly, those parents are from modest educational and financial backgrounds. A few years ago, in Mumbai, I walked into a J.E.E. coaching class that conducted its own entrance exam to filter out 9 out of 10 applicants. An orientation program for parents was under way. A man who could not read English was sitting with brochures and study materials. He was disturbed that I was carrying a red book while he had not been given any such book. I told him that the book I was holding was a novel called “Love in the Time of Cholera.”

For a long time, the IITians were from urban, literate middle-class families, and it was inevitable that their success would inspire small-town Indians to prepare for the mother of all entrance exams.

I.I.T. professors and alumni have been mourning the falling quality of the students. Last October, Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys and an I.I.T. alumnus, told an audience in New York that the new IITians were substandard. “They somehow get through the Joint Entrance Examination. But their performance in I.I.T.’s, at jobs or when they come for higher education in institutes in the U.S. is not as good as it used to be.” It is improbable that the I.I.T.’s will ever regain their old glory. The circumstances of the nation have changed, and the smartest Indians do not need an engineering degree to find a place in the world or to make a decent living. Also, the government has not invested enough in the I.I.T.’s, and the most talented scientific minds have the option to enroll in genuinely outstanding centers of learning in the West instead of being stuck in a place that has derived its prestige largely from the fact that only one in 50 cracks its entrance exam
Manu Joseph in The New York Times. More Here.

Note: Manu Joseph failed to note the caste dimension. Earlier all the IITians used to be Brahmins. Now aspiring students from other lower castes and dalits have succeeded in cracking the test. The number of Brahmins have started dwindling. Suddenly IITs have lost their glory. (Note by T. Azeez Luthfullah)

Whither IITs and IIMs? UPA govt is set to destroy them!

The UPA government has set the stage. It has decided to open the education market to the foreign players. With such a supporting govt at the hustings foreigners and their agents will swallow the education market in no time. It is high time that the patriots rise to the occasion and stop this advent of neo-east India companies.

R. Jaganathan of DNA has shed light into this subject:

 
Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal is about to destroy an important national legacy: the IITs and IIMs that have made Indians world beaters in tech and management. His foreign universities bill, if passed in its present form without reforming the Indian system of governance, will lead to the ruin of not only the technology and management institutes, but all government-run academic institutions of repute.
Let’s first make a digression here before we come to the specifics.

Five years ago, BSNL was India’s biggest and most valuable telecom company. Today, it is an also-ran and will soon become an artefact of history.

Five years ago, Air India and Indian Airlines ruled the skies. Today, the sky has fallen on their heads. As a merged entity, they have become the government’s biggest basket case.

Ten years ago, ONGC and Indian Oil were India’s oil kings. Reliance was nowhere. Today, ONGC has been robbed of profits and Indian Oil is a pale shadow of its former self. The latter survives on government handouts and subsidies.

Where is the connect with Sibal’s foreign universities bill?

Here it is: opening up without giving equal autonomy to domestic institutions is a recipe for disaster. The private sector will use the Indian system of bribing ministers to hold back the domestic companies or institutions while they themselves grow in size and stature. Nobody will bat for the public sector, and soon enough, they will live up to the image of inefficiency and sloth.

What happened to the BSNLs, Air Indias and Indian Oils will now happen to the IITs and IIMs. Consider what’s wrong with Sibal’s bill. The entry norms specify a minimum corpus of Rs 50 crore, regulation (but no ceiling) of fees by the UGC, non-remittance of profits from educational activities, and a possible exemption from SC/ST quotas.

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