Ask any engineering student from any college in India. What do you want to do after you graduate? The answer is generally prompt and more often than not has nothing to do with engineering. Most of us want to do an MBA or an MBA after 2 years of a job, join a financial institution, and some want to become a chartered accountant. Can you remember the last time an engineering student told you that he wants be an innovator or a very good engineer in his field?
I did not study in the best engineering colleges of India. Somehow, my expectation form the students there were also not very high (the fault here lies with me and nobody else. Anyways, moving on) My lament is on the state of premier engineering colleges in India. In this blog, I have spoken about by experiences at IIT Bombay which is undoubtedly a very prestigious engineering college in India. I am actually hesitant to generalize my observation to other premier colleges, but there is a good chance that this is true for many other institutions as well.
First, some context. I am a gradute student. Last year, I had the wonderful opportunity to stay and work at IIT Bombay for 5 months. I like almost every Indian child interested in engineering wanted to go to the IITs. In my childhood, I was surrounded by IITians (including my father) who I looked up to and aspired to be an IITian one day. That day never came. It is the biggest lament of my entire life. Something which I think will take a lifetime to overcome.
However, the IIT that I had imagined and the IIT that I saw was completely different. I had imagined the best brains in India (and indeed the world) striving to become the best engineers in the world. Most of the people wanted to get the best financial jobs or into the IIMs or CAs and the likes after they graduated. Nothing related to their 4 years of training as an engineer! What a waste of 4 years of training of the best minds of India!!!
I had expected an IIT campus to be full of innovators. Unfortunately, what I saw was nothing but the ubiquitious rat race which is present in any other engineering college in India. Albeit, the goals were higher. But without exception, I did not speak to a single student who wanted to become the ultimate engineer in his field. In fact if I ever brought up the topic, I would immediately get long faces. And what about giving back to the country which spends so much for their education. I only got huhs- and huhs. I might be wrong here but from my personal experience, the amount of engineering innovations coming out of the IITs for the betterment of poor and the needy is seriously questionable. I follow many blogs on grass-root innovation in India. Very rarely do I read anything from the premier institutes.
My professor also noticed this. He is an endowed chair at IIT Bombay. His opinion on this was: "Double-triple the intake of IITs. After one year, have a placement round with all the financial companies. All those students who want to go into the companies should do so. The rest should be trained for the remaining three years. The placement round after going through the three extra years should have no financial institutions. This is a win-win situation for everybody. Students who want the highest pay packages in the country need not waste 3 years, earn hefty salaries instead. Industry also doesn't need to wait. And the country truly gets to train the students who want to be engineers".
I am sure that the quality of education provided in the IITs is world class. However, the management of IITs should seriously consider how the IITians should be oriented. Should it stay the provider of a shining badge which is a stepping stone to everything but engineering. The placement cell should not boast of what is the highest salary or average salary of every student. It should rather publish figures as: The highest and average pay that an engineer from X field got while staying in the X field. Or should it become the gurukul which produces excellent engineers and innovators who by and large stay true to the profession that they were trained for. The goal of IITs as I undertand is not of a placement agency. It is the ultimate gurukul where one goes to in order to become the ultimate engineer. I hope in days to come IITs get known for that tab and that tab alone and not the most difficult institute to get into from where you get the highest paying jobs.
P.S. I understand, for this to be viable we need industry to absorb this engineers as engineers. But remember, I started this blog by saying that this is just a lament because I respected IITs very highly and the present state which I saw saddened me greatly.
I did not study in the best engineering colleges of India. Somehow, my expectation form the students there were also not very high (the fault here lies with me and nobody else. Anyways, moving on) My lament is on the state of premier engineering colleges in India. In this blog, I have spoken about by experiences at IIT Bombay which is undoubtedly a very prestigious engineering college in India. I am actually hesitant to generalize my observation to other premier colleges, but there is a good chance that this is true for many other institutions as well.
First, some context. I am a gradute student. Last year, I had the wonderful opportunity to stay and work at IIT Bombay for 5 months. I like almost every Indian child interested in engineering wanted to go to the IITs. In my childhood, I was surrounded by IITians (including my father) who I looked up to and aspired to be an IITian one day. That day never came. It is the biggest lament of my entire life. Something which I think will take a lifetime to overcome.
However, the IIT that I had imagined and the IIT that I saw was completely different. I had imagined the best brains in India (and indeed the world) striving to become the best engineers in the world. Most of the people wanted to get the best financial jobs or into the IIMs or CAs and the likes after they graduated. Nothing related to their 4 years of training as an engineer! What a waste of 4 years of training of the best minds of India!!!
I had expected an IIT campus to be full of innovators. Unfortunately, what I saw was nothing but the ubiquitious rat race which is present in any other engineering college in India. Albeit, the goals were higher. But without exception, I did not speak to a single student who wanted to become the ultimate engineer in his field. In fact if I ever brought up the topic, I would immediately get long faces. And what about giving back to the country which spends so much for their education. I only got huhs- and huhs. I might be wrong here but from my personal experience, the amount of engineering innovations coming out of the IITs for the betterment of poor and the needy is seriously questionable. I follow many blogs on grass-root innovation in India. Very rarely do I read anything from the premier institutes.
My professor also noticed this. He is an endowed chair at IIT Bombay. His opinion on this was: "Double-triple the intake of IITs. After one year, have a placement round with all the financial companies. All those students who want to go into the companies should do so. The rest should be trained for the remaining three years. The placement round after going through the three extra years should have no financial institutions. This is a win-win situation for everybody. Students who want the highest pay packages in the country need not waste 3 years, earn hefty salaries instead. Industry also doesn't need to wait. And the country truly gets to train the students who want to be engineers".
I am sure that the quality of education provided in the IITs is world class. However, the management of IITs should seriously consider how the IITians should be oriented. Should it stay the provider of a shining badge which is a stepping stone to everything but engineering. The placement cell should not boast of what is the highest salary or average salary of every student. It should rather publish figures as: The highest and average pay that an engineer from X field got while staying in the X field. Or should it become the gurukul which produces excellent engineers and innovators who by and large stay true to the profession that they were trained for. The goal of IITs as I undertand is not of a placement agency. It is the ultimate gurukul where one goes to in order to become the ultimate engineer. I hope in days to come IITs get known for that tab and that tab alone and not the most difficult institute to get into from where you get the highest paying jobs.
P.S. I understand, for this to be viable we need industry to absorb this engineers as engineers. But remember, I started this blog by saying that this is just a lament because I respected IITs very highly and the present state which I saw saddened me greatly.
