A few IITs have not invited them to participate in placements this year. But coaching institutions offer attractive salaries to IITians to join them as faculty.
It’s an issue that has been a thorn in their side for long. Now, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have decided it’s time to take action. Aimed at breaking the myth that IIT aspirants need coaching, some IITs have purposefully kept coaching institutes away from the campus this placements season.
IIT Kharagpur, for instance, has not invited coaching institutes to participate in its final placements. B K Mathur, dean – planning and coordination, IIT Kharagpur, says: “For a long time it seemed as if getting into an IIT is governed by coaching institutes. We want to reduce the dependence on coaching institutes.”
Many coaching institutions hire from IITs and immediately start advertising it. Advertisements typically read: “…join xyz coaching class in association with IIT professors”. “It’s as if getting into an IIT is all about which coaching institute a student is going to,” rues Mathur.
P K Jain, placements in-charge at IIT-Roorkee harbours a similar feeling. “We have not invited coaching institutes for campus placements. But if they contact and recruit students outside the campus, there is nothing we can do.”
IIT Bombay is also against coaching institutes participating in placements. A professor of IIT Bombay on condition of anonymity, says: “Placements and salaries at all IITs are improving and we want our engineers to join companies of their choice. We do not wish to depend on coaching institutes.”
IITs, however, cannot wish away the problem with ease since coaching institutes counter with salaries that can far exceed (at times, even by three to four times) that drawn by IIT faculty members.
R K Verma, managing director, Resonance, a coaching institute, says, “We have 200 faculty members right now of which 70 people were picked up from IITs and the ratio of IITians joining us is only going to increase. We offer a salary of Rs 40,000 per month to fresh graduates and the highest salary offered to promising faculty is Rs 40 lakh per annum. With coaching institutes, growth is fast.”
IITian’s Pace, a Mumbai-based coaching institute, spends close to Rs 60-80 lakh per annum for some its highest-paid teachers. And while FIIT-JEE, another IIT coaching class, would not reveal its compensation figures, sources said that the industry decides on its pay scales based on FIIT-JEE salaries. These institutions maintain that good faculty is the only reason for their survival and are therefore willing to pay to retain their staff.
ARKS Srinivas, director, Time Mumbai, another coaching institute, says: “During recession, IITs did not have a problem if their students joined coaching institutes as faculty because there was a dearth of jobs. Now, they have changed their mind.”
“We hire around 2or 3 people every year from IITs. Currently, of a total of 45 faculty, around four are from IITs. We pay Rs 6 lakh per annum to a fresh IIT graduate and Rs 8-9 lakh per annum to fresh IIM graduate. We pay as much as Rs 12 lakh per annum to good teachers,” adds Srinivas.
Joint entrance exam will not end coaching debate
The IITs believe that the human resource development (HRD) ministry’s decision to simplify the joint entrance examination (JEE) will finally do away with students’ dependence on coaching institutes. “We are happy that the joint entrance exam, too, would make things simpler soon,” says Mathur of IIT Kharagpur.
Coaching, however, is not just for the joint entrance examination (JEE), counter coaching institutes. Only about 2 lakh students come for IIT coaching, while the number is manifold for those coming for class X, XII and AIEEE preparations, they point out. For instance, while 3.8 lakh students applied for the IITs in 2009, the number of students who took the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) was over 10 lakh and over 6.27 lakh students appeared for the CBSE Class XII in 2009.
Most students come for coaching because they do not get adequate guidance in schools, argue coaching centres. ARKS Srinivas of TIME Mumbai says the maximum money spent on coaching in India is for supplementing regular school education rather than on competitive exams.
“Students need coaching institutes because what they learn in school is not adequate. So even if the government and IITs focus more on school-leaving examination and make the joint entrance tests simpler, coaching institutes would survive as long as school education is not sufficient for the child to excel,” says Srinivas.
Verma of Resonance believes that creating a common admission agenda for all competitive exams and a single entrance-test to all boards would only increase competition because students would then have only once chance to prove their point. “As far as IITs are concerned, there are approximately 3.5 lakh students appearing for only 15,000 seats. So as long as demand is more than supply, and school education is not qualitative enough, students will keep looking for additional coaching,” he adds.
