Dr. Lalit Kanodia is the IIT-Bombay and MIT, USA-educated founder-chairman of the Datamatics Group It is the dream of most students in India to get admission into the country’s seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) with nine in the offing, and 11 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) with two in the pipeline. Every year, over 750,000 school-leavers and graduates write the joint entrance exams of the IITs and IIMs, of whom only the top 98 percentile — 12,000 students — are admitted. This annual rush is understandable because IIT degrees or IIM diplomas are passports to excellent career pathways and economic prosperity. But although India’s IITs/IIMs have huge domestic reputations and offer globally benchmarked education, they are not in the same league as the world’s best higher education institutions. IIT Bombay (187) was the sole ‘university’ ranked among the top 200 global institutions in the QS World University Rankings of 2010. Worse, while some IITs were included in the league tables of THE (Times Higher Education) until 2009, none are listed in the 2010 top 200 ranking or any of its sub-rankings, despite the faculty-student ratio at IITs/IIMs averaging 1:8-1:9, comparing well with Harvard (1:7) and MIT (1:8). Therefore the question needs to be posed — and answered — why are the country’s showpiece IITs and IIMs which dominate the league tables of Indian business magazines and pink papers bottom-ranked also-rans in global league tables? One answer is their relative track records. MIT has produced 77 Nobel laureates who have either studied or taught at MIT, including four in economics. Columbia University has produced 112 Nobel laureates. Harvard Nobel winners aggregate 107; Oxford 51 and Cambridge 88. Moreover, eight US presidents were Harvard alumni, and 26 British prime ministers graduated from Oxford and 15 from Cambridge, including eight prime ministers and heads of state (Pandit Nehru and Lee Kuan Yew). Against this, not even one IIT/IIM has produced a Nobel laureate or head of state. Therefore it’s imperative to examine ways and means to nurture and improve our IITs/IIMs to bring them into the Top 10 league tables of international rating and ranking agencies such as QS, THE and the Financial Times. In my opinion, this requires: Faculty activity focus. In the world’s best universities, faculty go beyond teaching into publishing, consulting, and research. This is particularly true of schools of engineering and management, where faculty and professors cannot impart up-to-date knowledge without engaging in all these four activities. Though the faculty of IITs/IIMs do engage in these activities, their primary focus is teaching. An IIM Review Committee (September 2008) report of the Union HRD ministry, strongly criticised their faculty stating “the quality and quantity of research papers from IIMs have not been commensurate with the status of IIMs and have not enabled IIMs to become thought leaders”. Ph D intake. As most IIT/IIM review committees have stressed, these institutions need to sharply enhance their annual intake of Ph D students. This will not only create and construct new knowledge and case…
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Towards world-class IITs and IIMs
Dr. Lalit Kanodia is the IIT-Bombay and MIT, USA-educated founder-chairman of the Datamatics Group It is the dream of most students in India to get admission into the country’s seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) with nine in the offing, and 11 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) with two in the pipeline. Every year, over 750,000 school-leavers and graduates write the joint entrance exams of the IITs and IIMs, of whom only the top 98 percentile — 12,000 students — are admitted. This annual rush is understandable because IIT degrees or IIM diplomas are passports to excellent career pathways and economic prosperity. But although India’s IITs/IIMs have huge domestic reputations and offer globally benchmarked education, they are not in the same league as the world’s best higher education institutions. IIT Bombay (187) was the sole ‘university’ ranked among the top 200 global institutions in the QS World University Rankings of 2010. Worse, while some IITs were included in the league tables of THE (Times Higher Education) until 2009, none are listed in the 2010 top 200 ranking or any of its sub-rankings, despite the faculty-student ratio at IITs/IIMs averaging 1:8-1:9, comparing well with Harvard (1:7) and MIT (1:8). Therefore the question needs to be posed — and answered — why are the country’s showpiece IITs and IIMs which dominate the league tables of Indian business magazines and pink papers bottom-ranked also-rans in global league tables? One answer is their relative track records. MIT has produced 77 Nobel laureates who have either studied or taught at MIT, including four in economics. Columbia University has produced 112 Nobel laureates. Harvard Nobel winners aggregate 107; Oxford 51 and Cambridge 88. Moreover, eight US presidents were Harvard alumni, and 26 British prime ministers graduated from Oxford and 15 from Cambridge, including eight prime ministers and heads of state (Pandit Nehru and Lee Kuan Yew). Against this, not even one IIT/IIM has produced a Nobel laureate or head of state. Therefore it’s imperative to examine ways and means to nurture and improve our IITs/IIMs to bring them into the Top 10 league tables of international rating and ranking agencies such as QS, THE and the Financial Times. In my opinion, this requires: Faculty activity focus. In the world’s best universities, faculty go beyond teaching into publishing, consulting, and research. This is particularly true of schools of engineering and management, where faculty and professors cannot impart up-to-date knowledge without engaging in all these four activities. Though the faculty of IITs/IIMs do engage in these activities, their primary focus is teaching. An IIM Review Committee (September 2008) report of the Union HRD ministry, strongly criticised their faculty stating “the quality and quantity of research papers from IIMs have not been commensurate with the status of IIMs and have not enabled IIMs to become thought leaders”. Ph D intake. As most IIT/IIM review committees have stressed, these institutions need to sharply enhance their annual intake of Ph D students. This will not only create and construct new knowledge and case…