More IITs and IIMs?

As one continues to assimilate and understand the impact of the Budget announced yesterday, what does stay in mind is Jaitley’s plan to bring in some more new IITs and IIMs.  As per the proposal, 5 new IITs are planned to come up in Jammu, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Goa. And 5 new IIMs will come up in Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar and Orissa.

Obviously the aim is to ensure that more brilliant students get admission into one of the best colleges of India. But then the big question is – do they have the faculty? The ‘old’ IITs and IIMs are what they are today because of the fantastic set of faculty members but when there is a dearth of professors and lecturers, how can these reputed institutes rise to the standards of the old. The very fact that the previous newer breed of IITs still do not have good placement companies is a pointer to the very same fact. In 2012, a standing committee report by the ministry of human resource development indicated that in the IITs, the faculty deficit was as high as 60%. 

This year itself, some 750 students of the 18,000 who had cracked the IIT JEE opted out. While some might not have got the stream which they wanted or some could have gone abroad, there are many who have gone to BITs or NITs, which many say are better than the new IITs. The new IITs based in Ropar, Mandi, Jodhpur, Hyderabad, Patna, Bhubaneshwar, Indore and Gandhinagar are rated below BITs and NIT, operating out of rented campuses, with poor infrastructure and poor quality teachers. Their placement and salary packages are average, sometimes lower than that given in BITs and NIT.

Thus instead of getting into this rush of opening more new IIMs and IITs, which in the long run could end up diluting the very reputation of these excellent institutes, more emphasis should have been given to upgrading the existing ones. India today faces a massive shortage of good teachers which is why none of these institutes every figure out even in the bottom global list in terms of research facilities and international staff.

Why can’t we instead have a quality institute like IIT for teachers – a place which nurtures high quality teachers?