27 May,2011 09:40 AM IST | | Arindam Chaudhuri
So what is wrong with India's most guarded and hyped institutions of higher education, the IITs and the IIMs? Well, if you ask me, it's difficult to find what is right!
The first question we must ask is what makes a great institution? A straight answer to this is a good course content and great faculty. While course content is copyable and quite standardised ufffd at least amongst the world's finest institutions,u00a0 it is faculty that becomes the most important distinguishing factor. Different streams of education require different kinds of faculty expertise.
Management education requires faculty members to have great communication skills and industry interface, and of course, regular research and writing. Similarly, undertaking research is a key aspect for the faculty at engineering colleges too. And this is where the IITs and the IIMs have a massive problem. There is a shortage of faculty at IITs that have about 900 posts vacant (as per University of Pennsylvania's 2008 document) and according to the All India Council for Technical Education, almost a third of faculty positions in academia are unfilled. If we talk of the new IIMs, then things get more shocking! Classes in IIM Rohtak, Ranchi and Raipur are conducted primarily by visiting faculties.
Last year, the Lok Sabha questioned our Minister of State for HRD, D Purandeswari, on this issue and he accepted the horrible faculty crunch. And what happens when there is a shortage of faculty is that the existing faculty are heavily burdened with taking more and more classes; worse still, doing more and more of administrative work and less of research! Hence, the faculty at IITs and IIMs need to do a reality check instead of trying to hide behind the illusion of superiority! They need to innovate, teach new things, question their own processes ufffd from their entrance exams to their course contents ufffd and take this criticism of Jairam Ramesh as a wake up call.
According to the National Knowledge Commission, "The number of researchers in 2002 in India was 112 per million inhabitants compared to 633 in China and 4,374 in the USA. The growth in the number of doctorates has been only a modest 20 per cent in India during 1991-2001 compared to 85 per cent in China during the same period."
It really is time for Indians to realiseu00a0 that Jairam Ramesh has said a brutal truth. There is too much lacking in premier institutes; and it's time they wake up to this reality instead of giving defensive arguments and trying to cover it up with the help of PR plugs. It will only harm them in the long run! Didn't I always say it's time to dare to think beyond the IIMs and the IITs? This time I have Jairam Ramesh saying that too for a change!
