IITs must expand too

To raise the annual fees to the IITs was the easy part. The need for pro-affirmative action with regard to tribals and SC/ST students has also been well met in the blanket concessions ordered, but more must be done with regard to helping the economically weaker students of merit gain access to interest-free bank loans. In doubling the scholastic fees, the institutes may realise a higher proportion of their actual costs. However, so much more needs to be done.

First, the teacher-student ratio must be raised nearer to the ideal 10:1 in undergraduate courses and 1:1 in PG-UG ratios, as recommended by the Kakodkar Committee. Second, the best teaching talent must feel encouraged to join these elite institutions so that the quality of IIT’s 6,000 engineers who graduate annually from among the half a million engineers produced nationwide remains the highest.

While India produces just so many elite engineers a year from IITs, leading global institutions produce two-and-a-half times that, besides hosting eight to 10 times as many scholars in research. No sea change can be brought about in this in the short term. What is, however, most needed is a thrust towards higher quality in all technical education as it is often the industry’s grouse that most graduate engineers are hardly employable. There is a national need to raise the quality of technical education to keep the wheels of production moving.