What makes IITs tick
There is good reason for citizens to be concerned. Every year, the
government loses countless crores of rupees to bribery and embezzlement.
Related to the lost money are the lost man-hours. Worker absenteeism,
defined as the practice of staying away from work without good reason,
is another huge problem.
A recent study conducted by Harvard and Princeton economists revealed
that 25 per cent of public primary school teachers and 40 per cent of
government healthcare workers are absent from their jobs on any given
day.
Unfortunately, introducing new mechanisms of accountability can be a
daunting prospect. It is apparent that certain institutions and
accountability procedures, when copied from other (typically Western)
societies, have fizzled out when introduced to the sub-continent.
Monitoring issues
Also, many forms of accountability are prohibitively costly for a
developing country like India. Consider the problem of teacher
absenteeism.
Typical top-down recommendations would involve the principal (in this
case, the government) redefining its relationship with the agent (the
teacher) either by incentivising good behaviour, punishing bad
behaviour, or through some combination of the two. Providing such
incentives and punishments would require close monitoring; the
government would need to know which teachers are doing their jobs and
which are not.
Closely monitoring such behaviour becomes a formidable challenge when
one considers that there are almost 2.5 million primary school teachers
spread across the country, from the urban centres to the rural fringes.
And even if the costs of monitoring were negligible, the costs borne
from providing incentives or from imposing penalties would be quite
substantial.
However, while much of the state requires serious reform, it is worth
stressing that not all government institutions in India are riddled by
corruption and absenteeism. Indeed, there are several agencies within
the government where accountability is monitored and enforced.
One such government agency which is known to execute its mission well are the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).
IITS STAND OUT
The IITs are India’s premier engineering and science universities. Each
year, many of their undergraduates matriculate to the top graduate
programmes in the world; several others enter India’s corporate ranks.
Top-quality research is produced at each of the sixteen campuses. Most
impressive of all is that such excellence comes from what would be
considered a shoestring budget compared to other major engineering
universities.
At the heart of any university is the faculty, and the IITs are no
exception. Professors design and conduct an entirely meritocratic
entrance exam, a remarkable process given that entrances can be bought
at so many other universities and government agencies.
Taking money for grades, another common feature in the Indian
educational system, never happens. And most strikingly, IIT faculty show
up to teach their classes; faculty absenteeism is virtually
non-existent.
Additionally, many professors complement their teaching loads with
extensive student mentoring, to say nothing of the long hours spent
running labs and conducting research.
Such high-level performance is all the more remarkable when one
considers that IIT faculty are employees of the central government. Like
other bureaucrats in India, protections make it difficult for them to
be fired.
Indeed, as the IITs are deemed to be Institutions of National
Importance, politicians and outside ministries face serious restrictions
in even reprimanding delinquent faculty. Also, like other bureaucrats,
faculty pay automatically increases over time, with pay grades mirroring
those of other government officials.
Put simply, IIT faculty are not subject to the typical principal-agent
mechanisms that we would expect of such a well-functioning and
accountable organisation.
In order to understand the motivations and to identify accountability
mechanisms driving the performance of IIT faculty, I conducted an
in-depth study of IITs during the 2011-12 academic year. In addition to
interviewing professors at several different campuses across India, I
designed and executed a survey across the entire IIT faculty. I received
1,141 completed responses, representing a 30 per cent response rate
across the sixteen campuses.
INCENTIVE SYSTEM
The results suggest that the high performance of IIT faculty is not due
to top-down mechanisms of accountability, but instead, due to lateral
accountability across the faculty.
Specifically, the faculty possess a strong sense of obligation to their
local departments and to their broader scholarly communities. These
broader communities extend across different universities and even across
countries and continents.
During semi-structured interviews, when professors were asked why they
show up to teach their classes, they did not mention the fear of
punishment from their bosses, nor did they mention any monetary
incentives. Instead, they cited motivations of professional standing:
respondents want to be regarded as good teachers, or, at least, they do
not want to be known by students and other professors as the faculty
member who shirks his or her teaching duties.
Likewise, when faculty were asked about their research motivations,
respondents described their desires for recognition in their fields of
expertise. IIT professors strive to attain professional accolades from
their scholarly networks, as they want to be regarded as important
researchers. More than anything else, the faculty of IITs are motivated
to do their jobs because they crave recognition from their scholarly
peers.
It should be noted that in this regard, IIT professors are not unlike
professors at many other universities. Many tenured faculty in the
United States (who also do not face the threat of being fired) also
state that they continue to pursue professional excellence because they
want to improve their reputation among their scholarly peers.
Lateral accountability
What can we learn from the IITs? First, without such lateral
accountability, the IITs probably would suffer from the accountability
issues afflicting other parts of the Indian state, with professors
shirking their duties while taking their pay.
While this argument for lateral accountability can be applied to other
government officials such as teachers, healthcare workers, judges, and
soldiers, it should be immediately applied to other universities in
India.
Profound shifts are taking place across the higher education landscape
in India, from dramatic demand-driven expansion to the government
removing itself from accrediting and licensing universities. Fostering
this culture of lateral accountability amongst the faculty of other
Indian universities will become even more important in creating positive
outcomes.
Second, such a form of lateral accountability is incredibly effective
and we know that it already works in India. It can also be very cheap.
Motivations like being a referee for an academic journal carry no
financial benefit, and yet professors take on this responsibility to
display their commitment to scholarly service. Similarly, a
department-determined title promotion from assistant to associate
professor may come with no salary increase, but it is highly prized
nonetheless.
Developing and applying similar mechanisms of lateral accountability to
other agencies and institutions may prove to be a viable and economic
approach for improving accountability across the Indian state.
Comments