Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh, an IITian himself, may have found India’s premier institutes hardly world-class, but the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) do not beg to differ much.
“He (Jairam Ramesh) is completely off the mark,” said Prakesh Apte, former director, IIM-Bangalore. He, however, agreed: “No one is claiming that the IIM faculty is comparable to its Ivy League counterparts, but it would be worthwhile to remember that the IIMs produce graduates who are no less than their peers in any part of the world.”
Going by the input-output function, one could safely deduce that the faculty members were doing a good job, he added.
IIT-Kharagpur Professor B K Mathur said: “IIT-Kharagpur and IISc are two institutes that have been selected in the Shanghai rankings. Given that these rankings are based on statistics and facts, this is significant. And, given that both have made to the rankings meant for world universities despite being technological institutes, it is a big deal.”
A senior professor of IISc, an ex-IITian himself, said: “Not all the research done at the IITs and IISc would be world-class.”
IISc was conceived as a ‘research institute’ or ‘university of research’ by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata in the twilight years of the 19th century. Today, it has come to be the premier institution with regard to research in the sciences in India.
“In IITs, about 15-20 per cent of the faculty and the research done would be world-class. In the case of IISc, you could add five percent more,” the professor added.
| WHAT'S THE GOOD WORD |
| * World-class: As good as the best in the world |
| * Excellent: Extremely good. Two of the synonyms are ‘outstanding’, which means extremely good; and ‘exceptional’, which means unusually good |
| Source: Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary |
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“IIM-Ahmedabad rejects a student with a grade point average and he ultimately finds acceptance in Harvard Business School. Globally, research and development is growing at 5 per cent. It is growing at 9 per cent in India and 15 per cent in China. In research terms, India is currently 41st in the world, but will become fourth by 2020. Also, testament to this merit is the fact that most IITs and IIMs are now hunting grounds for foreign universities that have entered into partnerships for research, because the next wave of research will come from the developing world,” said Arup Datta, managing consultant, PricewaterhouseCoopers.
A senior representative from IIT-Madras, without wanting to be identified, said: “I think this (Ramesh’s comment) is an off-the-cuff remark that media is blowing up. The minister has not mentioned any benchmark on the basis of which he is comparing the IITs and their faculty.”
He argued that focus on research in India started only 15 years ago, unlike in the West, and the results have only started to come now.
“A full-fledged serious research needs adequate infrastructure, but the funds to set up this were not adequate for a long time. Things are changing now. Much bigger support from the government started flowing in recently. But that is grossly inadequate to create the kind of infrastructure we require for more research.”
K Krishnaiah, dean (academic research), IIT-Madras, said: “We cannot compare IITs with institutions like MIT. They get $250 billion, whereas we are getting only $8 billion. Research is an expensive process. It needs sophisticated equipment to reach from hypothesis to a result through experiments. That is missing. Though the government has started pumping in money into research, it is not comparable to what Harvard or MIT gets. Moreover, compared to an institution like MIT, which was established almost 150 years back, our research culture is late. IITs started only 50 years back.”
IIM-Bangalore’s Apte said the compensation an IIM faculty member received was nowhere near what his peers in the West got. With new IIMs being set up, the administrators are faced with the challenge of offering the social infrastructure that the youth is demanding to take up teaching jobs.
“Apart from good pay scale, they ask for good education for their children, good career opportunities for their spouses, also well-qualified in most cases. Hence, the government should also focus on creating world-class social infrastructure for the next generation of faculty in these new IIMs.”
“In all foreign universities, there is a compulsory requirement that each faculty member come up with some research every day. In India, there are many faculty members who do not do research at all!” said M J Xavier, director, IIM-Ranchi.
Nasscom chief Som Mittal, an IIT and IIM alumni, said: “We have created some very good institutions here and the fact that even multinationals come and hire from here is a tribute to what these institutions are doing. The constraint today is we need more faculty members. So, the issue is what we don’t have – the question is what more we want to have.”
When IIT-Madras alumni and Infosys CEO & MD S Gopalakrishnan was asked how he would compare an IIT with global institutes, he said: “The system is different because the same faculty abroad in a different system will behave differently – so you can’t actually compare. And the same people (faculty), when they go abroad, do very well. So, I would not make the comparison. The systems are very different.”
He, however, added: “Since IITs are the premier institutions in India, their faculties are the best. And, IITs have a system of research-based education which is also very unique in India. It requires good faculty.
(Inputs from Kalyan Ramanathan, Praveen Bose, Bibhu Ranjan Mishra, Swati Garg & T E Narasimhan)