Chennai: Even as the administration at IIT-Madras struggle to catch up with other IITs to get the top slot in ranking, alumni and students have raised concerns about the lack of community connect and poor research output in the institute.
“On my recent visit to IIT-Madras, it was sad to see the lack of input from the institute on community service. When government seeks IITian help for solutions to engineering problems in the locality, they find it difficult to present feasible ones and students don’t come up with solutions for local issues,” said R. Sri Kumar, former director general of police, Delhi, who feels that IITians extended a helping hand to all community related issues four decades ago when he was a student at the institute.
“You can’t find today’s students giving back to society, and this affects the brand image in a larger way,” he said. While students play an important role in enhancing the reputation of the institute, the selection process comes first in determining their eligibility, experts say.
“There is no parameter to measure the interest of students who get into IITs, including Madras, as it does not measure their intelligence. It has become a rat race getting into the IITs, given the frenzy to compete to get a seat alone in the institute, not assessing their purpose,” said Balaji Sampath, an alumnus of IIT-Madras, as he recollected a blank school graduate who wanted suggestions for a light engineering course in IIT-M, just to graduate from the brand.
He also added that universities abroad offer a diversity of courses for students to choose in their majors, while in IIT-M one cannot find this. “Students get into courses without any clear thought process, hardly knowing about it, due to which they do not progress later on.
Factors like these hamper the growth of IIT-M, which pulls the institute down in world university ranking. Research students at IIT-M too feel that curriculum needs an urgent revamp by which students from interdisciplinary courses can be allowed to experiment and analyse different fields.
While foreign universities offer niche courses, it was not clear what prevents IIT-Madras from offering these courses in the institute. “More interactive sessions via video conferencing during class hours will give us a better exposure to world class teaching,” said Ayyapan Das, a Ph.D student of IIT-M, who does research on fluid mechanics and aspires to venture into other subjects too.
Sourav Chandra, another research scholar in medical robotics, opines that infrastructure and courses need to expanded to stay on par with older IITs.
IIT Kharagpur that ranks first among all IITs has diverse courses like agricultural engineering and has a strong faculty base for these courses, which IIT-M lacks, says Sourav.
“Our library needs to be upgraded to match research activities that we do to cater to our needs. We need more research centres for all the courses so that space and facilities are sufficient for research,” he added.
