There’s nothing wrong if a student gets better education outside IITs

V.G. Idichandy, former deputy director, IIT-Madras, feels that the IITs should be postgraduate institutions. In an interview to N. Arun Kumar, Dr Idichandy says that the current trend of seats being left vacant will not hurt the IITs too much.

 

Seats in excess of 300 may go vacant this academic year in the Indian Institutes of Technology. What do you think are the reasons for this phenomenon? 

 

Three hundred is an alarming number. This is the first time the number of vacant seats is so huge.

 

In the past, only 20-30 seats remained vacant. If you look at this issue positively and analyse the trend closely, you will see that students have become choosy. They have other options, of getting into better branch of study than what they may get at the IITs. 

 

There is nothing wrong if a student gets better education outside IITs. Students may now be looking seriously at the National Institute of Technology (NITs) or some other institute where they might get the course of their choice.

 

It is not so much the brand that they are looking at now as the course. This, too, is a positive development.

 

IIT-Madras will do another round of counselling to fill the seats as has been happening in the last two-three years. But if you do something to fill up these seats, the seats will go vacant somewhere else.

 

With more students reluctant to join IITs this year don’t you think IITs should re-look at its system more deeply?

 

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the system in the IITs. It’s a time-tested one. But I think students have more choice these days. All students who have joined IITs would either want to take computer science or electrical engineering, but not all can get seats in those branches.

 

IITs have their own limitations. As a result, they may get a different branch which they don’t aspire for. The student will then look at NITs or some private institutions. You have ample opp­ortunities nowadays. 

 

There used to be a time when you had to be in an IIT to get admission to a US institution. It is not so now. Times are changing and many students from private institutions are joining foreign universities. 

 

If this trend continues, do you think the government may review its funding for the IITs as students have started to move towards private institutions?

 

Ideally, I would like to see IITs to be postgraduate institutions and not undergraduate ones. Students should join as undergraduates, continue post-graduation and then leave.

 

Even if admissions are through Joint Entrance Examination, even then the students should study postgraduation. By doing that the quality of students passing out of the IITs will be far better.

 

I prefer that all students being admitted get a dual degree. We already have biotechnology and engineering design, a dual degree system working well. In other programmes, too, the number of dual degree students is slowly increasing.

 

This is a welcome trend because a fair number of students will study for an M.Tech degree in an IIT. The undergraduate system of education should be left to other institutions. Event­ually that may happen and today’s trend has started moving towards that. 

 

How do you evaluate this year’s admission procedure as IITs also took Class XII marks into consideration, resulting in some bright students not being able to enter IITs?

 

This system has been introduced to give due weightage to school education system as students all along neglected school exams.

 

In fact, I am happy that students who had not performed well in their schools were rejected. This will make students think and take school education seriously.

 

Even in Andhra Pradesh, where students join coaching institutions 8th standard onwards — but nowadays I believe they go from 6th standard itself — and neglect school education.

 

The admission process has been planned well to give importance to school education, and there is nothing wrong if some students are rejected because they are not in the top 20 percentile. 

 

By bringing school education marks into consi­deration for adm­ission into the IITs, don’t you think you are encouraging students to go for coaching for school exams too?

 

You cannot do away with coaching classes because you cannot legislate and stop such institutes. They will be there so long as you have competition among students to get into better institutions.

 

In Tamil Nadu, you don’t have entrance exams but students go for coaching classes for their school studies and the tuition is mainly meant for school education and examinations. 

 

Right now IIT admission is based on marks scored in maths, physics and chemistry. It should not be that way. 

 

One would like to see all subjects included. For example, a student should do well in English or a language of his choice (second language), and history and geography are equally important as they provide a basis for a student’s life. This will make school education much better.