JOIN USNew IITs, IIMs: Boon or bane?
We had five IITs for a very long time. But in recent times, a large number of new IITs have been started.
After the Guwahati IIT in the 1990s, the government started eight new IITs after 2000, and has now announced its intention of opening five more soon, with the goal of having an IIT in every state in the next few years.
I wonder if the expansion will stop there. Surely, someone will point out that Uttar Pradesh has two IITs and hence all large states should have two each!
If you look at the problem dispassionately, India needs high quality technical education in larger numbers. We could possibly improve the existing institutions, or we could set up new ones. If we set up new ones, we could name them IITs or we could name them differently.
One should, of course, try to improve the existing institutions, invest more resources, improve their governance structure, and provide them with the right leadership, and so on. However, we do not have many examples of institutions who have improved their quality substantially over a period of time after it was given proper inputs. Indeed, it is often said that an institution in India has a small shelf life of a few decades after which the quality decays.
Hence, the clamour for new institutions. When it comes to new ones, the track record of state governments is abysmal. There is no state government engineering college anywhere in the country with a reputation of being world class. So, everyone is looking towards the Central government to set up an increasing number of quality institutes.
But the most important question is whether those new institutions should be named IITs. Couldn’t they be named differently? Those who want more IITs, point to the brand value of IIT system and suggest that this brand value would help the new institutes attract faculty and other resources, and quickly build its own reputation and quality. Those who oppose new IITs point to the brand value of IIT system and suggest that any rapid expansion would mean that the new institutes would not be able to attract faculty quickly, and consequently have poorer quality of education. This would compromise the brand value of the IIT system.
Brand value
The truth is, as always, somewhere in between. I do not believe that just naming an institute would ensure quality and naming anything else would ensure mediocrity. IITs are world class for a large number of reasons, with liberal funding being just one of them. The governance structure is such that it ensures autonomy which is an important ingredient to quality. The leadership, particularly in the initial years, was chosen without any political consideration. And, there are examples in recent years where a completely new name but with provisions of funding, autonomy and leadership have resulted in a quality institutions, comparable to IITs. The Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) are one such example. Yes, branding helps, but not so much as those demanding IITs seem to believe in.
On the other hand, doubling the number of IITs in the last six years does not seem to have impacted the brand value of IIT system in any serious way. If it has impacted in a small way, surely the promoters of the IIT system have at least this much right on the brand that they can leverage it to bootstrap new engineering colleges. In any case, it is high time individual IITs start building their own brands, rather than remaining dependent on the mother ship.
I am not convinced of the brand-value argument either in favour of more IITs, or in opposition to more IITs. We need to put our heads together and figure out how to expand high quality education, how do we attract faculty, how we encourage more of youth to go for PhD and academic careers, and how we take advantage of technology to offer quality education to larger numbers.
Some expansion of IIT system is inevitable. However, any expansion should be well planned at least in terms of financial inputs and infrastructure. Before a new IIT is announced, it should be ensured that the land has already been allotted for it. Most new IITs had to delay their construction work for years because land was not available. A full time director should be recruited at least a year before the first admissions take place.
We may incentivise a few mid-level professors from existing IITs to move to new IITs to help build them. And given that there is limited bandwidth for mentoring a new IIT, it might be a good idea to spread the opening of new IITs to perhaps one or two per year.
(The writer is professor, Computer Science, IIT-Kanpur)
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