From the very beginning we are told that IITs are the best engineering colleges. Well that's true but it is till India only. IITs doesn't come under even top 100 rank in the whole world.
Let me explain why is it so,
first of all the quality of an institution is judged through various things like quality of professors, researches going on, researches completed, etc. Here if we compare our IITs with the colleges outside. India we will find that they are teaching at a mediocre level. It is the people and students through which they look as they are. I am not trying to hurt the feeling of patriotism of anyone but whatever is right it is.
What exactly is wrong with the education offered at the IITs? Firstly, most students are not interested in the discipline that they choose. They aren’t really interested in even being engineers – they are just there because their parents, peers and society told them to take a shot at IIT, because if you are good at academics, then how is that you haven’t proven it by taking the IIT-JEE exam?
Top ranking MIT has helped transform the world because of some of the biggest inventions of the last 50 years. Photo: Reuters
As a result, we begin our scientific education by the most unthinking, unscientific approach towards choosing careers. The brightest minds who are supposed to think independently make a beginning by following the herd.
Secondly, the curriculum is overloaded with obscure theory. Too many courses are crammed within a semester. Other than choosing the stream, students do not have much freedom in choosing the subjects.
The IITs are supposed to train students for a professional career, yet other than a perfunctory psychology or an economics course, there is hardly any well-thought out curriculum to develop the soft-skills of students.
At the point of entry, IITs are burdened with the weight of Kota-trained students with low social-skills and zero social awareness who study physics, chemistry and maths from 6th standard, at the exclusion of every other skill – and the four-year stint at IIT does not really improve that.
After IIT, most people choose one of the three paths – an MS abroad, a stint as a software engineer, or an MBA degree in India. Most of those paths do not require any knowledge of electrical engineering or metallurgical engineering or whatever else they specialised in.
They do require reading skills and thinking skills (GRE, CAT and software company aptitude tests), and people skills (interviews and getting letters of recommendations) – so the IITians now start frenziedly learning the skills that they hitherto neglected. But that learning does not happen inside the classrooms, and IITs themselves can claim little credit for it. However, being talented individuals, most students do master those skills too, over time.
I can go on. The conditions of the hostels do not behove a world class institute. The projects that the students do are hardly original. Classes are mostly uninspiring and do not break any new ground in pedagogy. The tradition of ragging – well, it is sad to see people at the premier scientific institutions believing in tradition, that too something as silly as that.
More reasons why there are not in top 100
1) Money - Funding does matter. Consider schools like MIT and UCAL, Berkeley, they have state-of-the-art labs and work places. The infrastructure is really strong thus giving each and every one an opportunity to work on whatever they could possibly think of. Also, researchers need funding to survive as they can't just depend on their parents after graduation. Depending on parents is very common in India till the student graduates.
2) Drive - Most of the students just join the premier institutes because their parents told them to do so. Hence, they have to very less to almost zero drive when they enter college for research and learning. A lot of students slack off and just try to some how clear the courses. Even the academically inclined students, don't actually go for research.
3) Lack of good researchers - This is important as an academic institute's worth is often counted in terms of the research work it produces. Students usually have no where to look for guidance and they are often lost on how to proceed in a certain area. Examples like AKS primality testing do not count as they are very few in number.
After IIT, most people choose one of the three paths – an MS abroad, a stint as a software engineer, or an MBA degree in India. Most of those paths do not require any knowledge of electrical engineering or metallurgical engineering or whatever else they specialised in.
They do require reading skills and thinking skills (GRE, CAT and software company aptitude tests), and people skills (interviews and getting letters of recommendations) – so the IITians now start frenziedly learning the skills that they hitherto neglected. But that learning does not happen inside the classrooms, and IITs themselves can claim little credit for it. However, being talented individuals, most students do master those skills too, over time.
I can go on. The conditions of the hostels do not behove a world class institute. The projects that the students do are hardly original. Classes are mostly uninspiring and do not break any new ground in pedagogy. The tradition of ragging – well, it is sad to see people at the premier scientific institutions believing in tradition, that too something as silly as that.
More reasons why there are not in top 100
1) Money - Funding does matter. Consider schools like MIT and UCAL, Berkeley, they have state-of-the-art labs and work places. The infrastructure is really strong thus giving each and every one an opportunity to work on whatever they could possibly think of. Also, researchers need funding to survive as they can't just depend on their parents after graduation. Depending on parents is very common in India till the student graduates.
2) Drive - Most of the students just join the premier institutes because their parents told them to do so. Hence, they have to very less to almost zero drive when they enter college for research and learning. A lot of students slack off and just try to some how clear the courses. Even the academically inclined students, don't actually go for research.
3) Lack of good researchers - This is important as an academic institute's worth is often counted in terms of the research work it produces. Students usually have no where to look for guidance and they are often lost on how to proceed in a certain area. Examples like AKS primality testing do not count as they are very few in number.
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