STEM pretensions

The Digital Alarmist

According to the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), the top two universities in the country are IIT-Madras and the IISc. Why is it that neither of these two schools has ever made it to the list of 200 top-ranked schools worldwide, whereas tiny Singapore is represented by three universities?

‘Frogs in wells know nothing of the sea’, so goes the Chinese proverb.

While there are almost 9,000 technical universities and institutions in India approved by the All-India Council on Technical Education (AICTE), more than 90% of the students graduating every year with degrees in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields from these schools have no employable skills. Why?

Irrespective of their children’s aptitudes or academic desires, most Indian parents want their offspring to major in one of the STEM fields, simply because most job openings are in technology or engineering. And after obtaining their undergraduate degrees, a large number of engineering students obtain an MBA and opt for careers in management, which pay even more. Hardly any pursue careers in research or academia. No wonder there is a dearth of qualified faculty at most technical institutes, especially at the PG level.

Upon admission to a technical institute, students are confronted by a standard set of courses, the syllabi of which have been freely copied from websites of Western schools, mostly taught by faculty who barely understand the material they are teaching. Rote scribbling on the board by the instructor followed by rote memorisation by the student, with neither any wiser for it. Teaching for the exam passes for education, but who cares. You want critical thinking? Not a chance.

Though schools may use ‘outside’ examiners to create the final exams, it makes no difference since there is an archive of questions to be drawn from, and this archive is available to any examiner. Accessible to students too, for a price.

The “excellence” of an institute’s programmes is advertised based largely on the number of jobs its graduates are hired for by top companies, especially MNCs, and the size of the ‘pay packet’. US and EU companies are given top billing while Indian MNCs are ranked lower on the list. Just like the IITs, then the NITs, etc.

Postgraduate institutions promote themselves based on how many PhD degrees they have granted and how many research articles have been published. AICTE’s insistence on faculty publications for promotion has adversely impacted the research environment. Quite often, faculty publish their work in one or more of the several hundred bogus journals that have magically popped up to serve the need. The ‘publish or perish’ mantra has given way to ‘pay to publish’.

Likewise, hundreds of ‘international’ research conferences are hosted in India every year. Sadly, neither the editors nor the reviewers have the requisite credentials to justify their roles in this highly lucrative publishing game. In what is a reciprocal transaction, faculty ask other authors to cite their papers in order to boost their citation index.

In addition to capitation fees, tuition rates are quite steep at private institutions. While public universities are cheaper, corruption and politically motivated appointments are issues at these. If it takes a Rs 2-8 crore bribe to be appointed vice chancellor, to recoup the ‘investment’, the appointee will need to charge several lakhs for filling each vacant university position. There have been published reports of students having to pay significant sums of money to have their PhD theses approved. Ah, the evolving food chain!

The success of the IT industry in India can be solely attributed to finding enough bodies to fill jobs that have already been created for problems that have already been identified and solutions found.

Practical solutions with nation-wide applicability are yet to be found for uniquely Indian problems, such as the lack of clean drinking water, proper sanitation facilities, or continuous availability of electricity. IIT graduates, who are perceived as being smart, haven’t found any solutions to these problems because they are busy seeking answers on the web using Samsung or Apple smartphones that they did not design, with software that they certainly did not create. Meanwhile, Toyota SUVs and the Italian-designed autorickshaws choke the nation’s pothole-filled roadways.

Identifying a polluted lake using a few sensors and creating an app is a no-brainer. Cleaning up the lake and keeping it clean is the hard part.

You make your bed, you lie in it.