Issues present in IITs
Context:
- The gems in the crown of India’s higher education system are widely acknowledged to be the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). In fact, they are frequently the only Indian universities with a global reputation. Both in India and elsewhere, they have produced leaders in high tech and related sectors. It’s possible that the IITs are the hardest universities in the world to get into. However, as part of India’s soft power initiatives, some of the IITs are constructing campuses overseas at the same time that the IIT system is facing severe difficulties. To comprehend an impending crisis, it is important to examine the realities as they exist right now.
Travel adventures:
- An IIT-Madras branch campus just opened in Zanzibar, and in 2024, IIT Delhi will begin offering courses out of its Abu Dhabi site.
- In addition to Tanzania, some of the screening test locations made available to prospective candidates were situated in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, and the United Arab Emirates (a country with a sizable Indian diaspora).
Expansion too much at home:
- Four more IITs were founded in ten years after the first one, which was founded in 1950 at Kharagpur, West Bengal.
- To begin started, the majority of these teamed up with prestigious international technological colleges in the US, the USSR, the UK, and Germany. They soon attained distinction and stellar reputations.
- They employed Indians who had attended the top foreign universities and were keen to advance the country.
- Following 2015, the government added to the IIT system by establishing seven new campuses over the next ten years, the majority of which were situated outside of large cities.
- The lofty expectations of the established institutes have been difficult for these new IITs to meet.
Faculty obstacles and chances for the future:
- The teachers are the backbone of any academic institution. It’s getting harder and harder to draw in the finest and the brightest.
- Pay is far less than what is expected internationally.
- Indians with foreign training are typically hesitant to go back to unattractive pay, subpar workplaces, and increased academic red tape.
- Top Indian talent is being drawn to new biotech, the rapidly growing IT business, and allied disciplines, rather than to higher education, both domestically and internationally.
- The IITs are in crisis, and to state as much would not be hyperbole.
- Establishing quality at the new IITs is a big task, and if it isn’t done in the long run, the system’s reputation will decline.
- It is a critical effort to maintain the calibre of the staff and to draw in fresh professors who are dedicated to the IIT concept and the advancement of India.
Path ahead:
- Growing the system nationally might not have been a good idea, and establishing branch schools abroad is quite difficult. While it is debatable whether expanding internationally is a smart idea in general, it seems especially misguided in light of the internal issues the system is currently suffering.
