Dilbert's Asok on IIT
The Guiding Light of the IIT JEE
While coaching is not a bad thing at all, but is engineering (education) only about cracking a particular exam like JEE and not about creating a sense of technology in the young ones? Thankfully IITs (JEE) have remained focused on getting brains since the beginning, but how do they evolve in future to get the best brains only and not the most prepared ones? Dealing with such a question requires one to look at things from higher social (and mental) pedestal. Something that our ministry of education is probably clueless about when it talks about only one examination for all engineering colleges.
On the flip side, the one-off exam and only few available seats build a lot of pressure – while an erudite prospect is supposed to easily handle such pressures, the non-qualifiers are thrown to trudge for years in absolute deprivation (or atleast that’s what we are led to believe). This is a very flawed approach to induct engineers and also something that needs an urgent fix. And our politicians think of killing coaching centers, like in Bihar recently, addressing the symptom instead of the inherent issue.
JEE is a great leveler
It doesn’t consider prior examinations or marks and knowledge of anything apart from Physics, Chemistry or Mathematics – the “core” science subjects. There is also no weightage assigned to 10+2 board exams (and all for good reason). However, is that all there should be for engineering? An exam?
A rampant struggle of JEE middle rankers who get into various streams of engineering like Chemical, Civil, Metallurgy, Mining etc. is another dilemma which even industry cannot resolve: Most students in these streams scored exactly the same marks in the JEE exam and just for the sake of ranking, randomization by means of computers algorithms is applied to give lucky ones mechanical engineering and the unlucky ones civil. And yet another irony of engineering in India is that even though only 10% of JEE qualifiers were Comp Sci graduates but a remarkable 70% of IIT graduates are in Computer Science industry i.e. coding related jobs – aka Google, MS, Infosys, Wipro & TCS types.
The Main Question
Most of the students at IIT (department notwithstanding) join a software job after IIT. Some others take the long flight to the US to do a PhD (and hopefully some research). This begs the question – Should Civil or Metallurgical engineering be put on the back-burner for the sake of software? Do the avenues to conduct real research exist in India (so that the researchers do not go abroad)? Lastly, inspite of their answers in MBA interviews, entrepreneurship is subconsciously inculcated but surprisingly not fostered at IITs. There has been a lot of change in this lately – however we are still way behind vis-a-vis colleges in the US. Read our post on how entrepreneurs are best young.
Barbarians at the Gates – Politicians and their interests
The stakeholder called Society:
Remember the old Bollywood movies where Dharmendra was more often than not a doctor? Every parent wished their child could be a doctor. Now that has changed. One can see there is a major fall in PMT applicants for medical courses. The Governments in past thirty years have screwed the medical infrastructure, quality of career, and charm of this highly accomplished service whereas the world is taking strides in genetic & medical research. Deliberate or not, is a different issue. This is going to happen to the field of engineering too if we continue to have decision making by the un-informed. Proactive analysis of the needs of our nation and planning for it are the need of the hour and NOT simply setting up more IITs (or AIIMS).
Khatte angooron ka kissa.
As in? :-)
hi its a nice post
Kitty babe – This site has more IITian authors than any other site in India.
angoor to lagta hai tumhare khatte hain :D
Might be, but the authors of this post aren’t from any IIT. Even the founder of this site is from University of Roorkee
the author is Arvind Nigam, B.Tech graduate from IIT Kharagpur Batch of 2002
kitty babe..
:P
Sorry to kill your flight Kitty – but I think I have earned my degree at IIT KGP and am very proud of it.
Univ of Roorkee is now IIT Roorkee. Have you been smoking illegal stuff? This is news which is atleast 4 years old.
Lastly – I dont respond to anonymous asses. Exception is made for you. Feel special.
A fact that people resist from giving the ‘IIT’ tag to ‘University of Roorkee’ itself is a living testimony to what our article premises on:
“An undesirable divide that this model of branding creates between kids who get into IIT and who do not”.
Awesome, it was satisfying writing this piece with Pratyush & Naman.
Cheers,
Arvind
Apart from our living infrastructure (halls and mess), I find the infrastructure is good here, at Kgp. Like Kgp has the most equipped library in Asia (state-of-the art library). The research stipend is not much, but 8k per month (to be increased to 10k) for a farzi fifth year M.Tech Project (dual degree) is I think good enough.
Also, because of JEE, IITs have the cream of the country. So, living with them 24X7 is not bad at all :)
IITs are soon to have a common entrance exam for all engineering colleges in India.
I feel introducing new IITs by the govt is a good idea. For a short term, it seems it will dilute the brand IIT, but if we think of long term, it is only going to produce more engineers, entrepreneurs. Like in US, u find there are atleast two world class universities (named “university of … ” and ” … state university”). So, bringing more IITs and IIMs is not a bad idea at all. But, this should also be complemented with introducing new world class medical colleges throughout the country.
The state of the art library is used by love birds for coochie cooing in between aisles of the journal section.
IIT i think is an overrated concept – serving to produce sycophants and crooks of “high caliber”. Rarely you find engineers using their “engineering” education. Rather it generates hordes of half baked candidates for the IIMs. And they all (well almost all) will ditch their country for good – the same country that paid for the JEE and their education.
As for living with the best 24×7 … wake up … you are in a dream my friend. There is a whole bunch intelligent people out their who do not give a rats as* about what happens inside the “hallowed” IITs.
The whole rigmarole called JEE should be tanked for good. It produces uni-dimensional socially challenged retards, who just believe that they are a gift unto the world (I am speaking from experience here – even I was once like that).
I feel we need a much better approach to higher education than what IIT delivers. Infact IITs fu** the concept of higher education and research in the worst possible manner – by generating disinterest in the education itself among its prized JEE products.
I agree with point no.1 :-) Love Birds is another social issue completely, which let us not get into. And I hear that now Central Library (CL) of Ujjwal’s college has CCTV cameras. So love-bird elsewhere! :-)
I disagree with point no. 02 (I have not seen any Indian Engineer ditching India ever – IIT or no-IIT – even after leaving for USA or staying back. That’s purely your personal acid, and you should try to wash it away.
Point no. 3 You mean Branding model of IIT just like cricket, right? I agree. And I agree that there are a lot of extremely brilliant people outside of IIT as well. Kudos to your thoughts.
Point no. 4 JEE is one of the best things about model IITs. That’s exactly what our country needs in a more elaborate fashion. What we need to fix instead is the IN-or-OUT model of Branding IIT’s…that means bring other colleges into ambit of quality that JEE serves. So that in the long run, people are not saying like “you not an IITian, uh oh.”
Point no. 5 is symptoms that your talking about, and some of your language really needs more accommodation.
Cheers,
Arvind
The way forward…u donno the news…15-more IITs are coming….along with some 20-foreign university campuses!!!
All the problems SOLVED in on stroke by MHRD :-)
BTW…the following the punch-line of the post.
” only 10% of JEE qualifiers were Comp Sci graduates but a remarkable 70% of IIT graduates are in Computer Science industry i.e. coding related jobs”
Well you are way off mark buddy. If you check the stats with regards first 5 IITS ( IIT-K,D,B,M,KGP) you will find presently 60-65% are placed in core engineering jobs while software corners not more than 20% as far as undergraduate recruitment is concerned. another 10-15% is taken by finance, consulting and general management.
I would suggest you get your facts right.
60-65 % OR 60-65 graduates :-)
R u talking about the years when software companies did not hire?? even then … 60-65%…ha…ha… you are killing me man…Many Profs in IIT would be happy to hear that.
BTW, what is this facts facts you are jumping about… I would love to get that stats from you.
What you mean by core-engineering job…mechanical engineer sitting in JackWelch center doing mechanical simulation is a core engineering job? OR chemical engineer siting DuPont simulating chemical structure is a core engineering job? OR A computer engineer sitting in InfoSys coding for a online-reservation is a core engineering job?
A very good point made by you. Great work.
as far as the responsibility of govt is concerns, I think most of the action they take is based n the political advantages..
Again the authors show their foolishness. “Why change it if it ain’t broken”: Dear asshat authors, They are changing it because it IS broken. Hordes of students joining some kota coaching institute, skipping school and joining IITs is exactly the thing that would kill IITs. IITs prosper on generalists and people who excel in whatever they do and not on maggus mugging up bucket full of formulas.
Take my advice, close this blog down. Your quality sucks!
Why anonymous Mr. Foobar…:) IITs are the only thing working in India. Rest of you morons and bucketheads should think of nothing but fixing yourselves.
Rakshit Panigrahi
Coaching institutes of Kota are the best in India. It’s not that they have some set formulae for selection into JEE. The whole system has been evolved in such a way that the actual competition of JEE is simulated day in and day out. Best brains prepare themselves for this competitions much before the students from anywhere else. I don’t there is anything wrong in that.
Just glance through the marks in school exams of these students and you will come to know why they are skipping schools. The quality of education in coaching is such that school exams don’t stand anywhere.
Another point, how come you think IITians are supposed to be generalist and excel in whatever they do. Are you nuts or what?
BTW it is FOOBAR or FOOLBAR
Nikhil Gupta
“… the actual competition of JEE is simulated day in and day out …”
Which is precisely the problem. We are talking of 18-year olds who need to have more going on in their lives than just memorizing the top ten ways of integrating expressions by parts. How many times have you proved something while studying for the JEE? And yet, most students who enter IIT have surprisingly little grasp on the “method of proof”, and falter on being asked to evaluate the soundness of a proof. Don’t you think it would be better to actually make students sit down, and play a game of “Proof” with each other, rather than asking them to by-heart the proofs of some propositional they’ll probably never need/remember/use for the rest of their lives? (That said, there is little in the JEE maths syllabus that any candidate should ever forget.)
If the lure of IIT were removed, how many students would continue attending coaching classes (either in Kota or elsewhere)? Students here are not really studying because they want to, and hence not really learning much. By forcing them to learn, nobody’s really achieving much (apart from creating a lot of pressure everybody could live without.).
But again, there’s really no system that undeniably better than the JEE. I guess that’s one of the problems of living in a world of a few billion people.
I studied at the most well known coaching institute of Kota. As far as I remember, not a single formulae was ever taught without giving a detailed proof. If someone has memorised top ten ways of integrating by parts without understanding the connection between all of them, or without drilling down to the basic concepts, then it is his fault. These kind of things are never forced on children but “some” end up memorising things to make it fast and easy.
Completely agree that playing the game of “proof” would be the best preparation ever for JEE, be it Maths or Physics.
That is what I meant – people know how to prove that a differentiable-everywhere function has to be continuous, but still don’t know which of the “method of converse”, and “method of contrapositive” is actually a valid method of proof. And here I don’t mean that the candidate know these technical names – “converse”, “inverse”, “contrapositive” – which can be safely postponed to a later treatment of mathematical logic, but that he be able to use “common sense” to distinguish between the two.
Ask your friends the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition, and you’ll see my point.
Not having been brought up in India and not having given the IIT JEE exam, I will not comment much on this.
I understand that most IITians join some software related career regardless if they were civil, mechanical etc. most likely because it pays the most amount of money … fair enough.
But a recent event put some questions in my mind that I want to share.
Recently a giant bridge being built near Kota, Rajasthan collapsed, and it was shown in news etc. From that I came to know that most of the engineers working on the bridge were from overseas.
So I jokingly asked my relatives, why would a country with more engineers than any other nation all want to work in software? Perhaps if the civil engineers stuck to civil, they would be earning the same amount doing something meaningful in their own field. Especially given the level of funding western countries want to put in to the infrastructure boom.
And maybe that bridge would still be progressing on time :P
Is this a generalisation or a reality? What do you think?
In india there are limited lucrative opportunities as far branches like civil or metallurgy is concerned as not a lot of RnD happens in these fields in India. In IITs jobs in such core engineering fields are available no doubt. However compared to jobs for people majoring in Electronics or computer sc. its still very less. Even still 60-65% of an undergraduate batch is placed in core engineering.
So you mean other than civil & metal, there is R&D in other fields in India?
60-65% is like total junta who takes up work immediately upon graduation from IITs. Rest go for Phds, MBA and everything else.
Stop throwing just random unless u have some supporting research which can be viewed online, socially…:)
random? Dude, I was the Public relation core for the placement team of one of the top IITs. Dont argue with me on facts. Less than 20% of people from my IIT go for PHDs. This figure used to 75% back iin the 80s. Kindly check your background and sources before arguing
My Background:
Arvind – IIT Kgp, Pratyush – IIT, 2000… You are seriously limiting yourself to placement statistics of IIT at the point of graduation.
Open your eyes. Do not count Comp-Sci & Electronics grads who join comp sci jobs coz that’s the perfect use-case. Minus that from 60-65%.
And then do the calculations of remaining branches again. You will find the stats amazing :) Not more than 30 % finally settle in the verticals of their own engineering.
I do not wish to argue with you at point of time when you are already heated up. But seriously look beyond up-to 3 years after graduation (coz that’s when careers of freshers normally start solidifying).
Cheers,
Arvind
Random? Dude I was the public relations Core for one the the top IITs placement team. Dont argue with me on facts. I have far more accurate sources than you can imagine.
hmmm, so u hail from IIT Chennai, do you?
I am surprised with your defenses now, coz Chennai happens to fare as one with highest out-sending rate of BTechs to US
:-)
Cheers,
Arvind
“Most other factors like research initiatives compared to similar universities in the US, …”
You only hear about research initiatives at top US universities – once or twice about MIT, once or twice about Berkeley, a couple of times about Stanford. You then only remember the six or seven times you heard about research in the US. Yes, the level of research in IITs can be improved, but they’re not something to be ashamed about.
” infrastructure (even the mess food sucks), connection of syllabus to industry, …”
Yes, we don’t have Wi-Fi on our campuses, but you really don’t need Wi-Fi to build a great institution. The Manhattan project and Bletchley Park were not really known for their air-conditioned rooms. And the idea that what one studies in college is solely meant to prepare him for the industry (as opposed to prepare him to think, or to prepare him for a life) is something that is more at home in vocational schools (ITI, diploma, etc.) than in a university. Several universities have done that abroad, and believe me, they’re not the ones you hear about. If you doubt me, consider how much work / money the total industry (and not just M$, Google, …) invest in research. The industry does not (generally) do research. And if you still don’t believe me, you can hear Dijkstra himself: http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/vl/notes/dijkstra.html
The IITs are among the institutes that are the least afflicted with this problem, currently in India.
“… the work that engineers finally land with, and the other choices in career that are at disposal of a young engineer i.e. MBA, USA or Services Industries are nothing to write home about.”
Again, the IITs have much better placements than most other institutes can hope for. Other career options – there are more MBA admits in an average IIT than in any other average college. And IITs have generally smaller batch sizes.
My point? Don’t criticize the IITs for being below par. The JEE has done its job. Its certainly not the best at its job – the tension it causes young students is certainly something we can all live without, but hey – all systems cause tension. If you think coaching exists only in India, then you are mistaken. Please read about how the Grand Ecoles in France do their admits. And we don’t hear so much about exams in Amreeka because the average American is more trusting than the average Indian – university admits are left to the good sense of the university’s holistic admission criterion than to the number returned by some exam. Again, the exam that does count – SAT – please read about how much tension parents+students go through during this time. In general, no system we know of is indisputably better than the rest.
Yes,
1. there are too few people going into streams other than computer science and electrical engineering,
2. the syllabus could be made better (more freedom, etc.),
3. more people could be attracted to take up faculty positions,
4. and most graduates eventually write software or join finance companies (as opposed to core jobs – in a chemical factory or powerplant) (but that’s the case with most universities, even abroad),
but please don’t unfairly blame the IITs.
Long rant, I know, and you might think that I am in love with the IIT system. I might be, but not unjustifiably so. My only regret – the government shows enormous lack of creativity by creating 15 institutes with the same name. Why not have something more like a grant – an Institute of National Importance Grant, conferred on select universities, giving them the same funding, prestige, and admistrative freedom that are enjoyed by an IIT?
Superman meant Dijkstra on the Strengths of the Academic Enterprise. Sorry for the mislink.
http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD1175.html
I loved your tenacity & genuine comment. JEE rocks!
Think is this way: “… seeking assistance from Govt. will come along with its egoism. It’d be like man I paid 7 million dollars to your campus – now let me decide the policies of your campus ; let me choose the director of this IIT etc etc etc”…
That is the game that politics can easily do. Least involvement from poltics is highly recommended.
Very well said indeed. I loved this line
‘While coaching is not a bad thing at all, but is engineering (education) only about cracking a particular exam like JEE and not about creating a sense of technology in the young ones?’
Tx Rajat!
Pretty good to see such an article which dabbles with the subject of engineering and brings branding as the core issue out. However, I do believe that JEE getting extended to every engineering college in india is an excellent approach. Provided the format of JEE is kept subjective type of questions and not CAT style objective questions which is a test of complete duffers. Now is that possible?
I have joined one of the reputed IITs as a non-teaching staff. I am not from engineering or science background but during SSC & HSC saw the hype about IIT-JEE among my school mates. I was under the impression they are real smart dudes. Now after reading most of the funny & immatured comments and various other posts on Pagalguy.com and similar other sites, my idea about IITians has depriciated.
Like every institution across the globe it has its pros and cons. As for the students running to softwares or USA for well-paid jobs, what is the point blaming the system when such intelligent kids are only motivated to earn money? Whether they go to IIT or any other school they will remain money-minded.But unfortunately other institutes do not undergo such negative branding when pass-outs from such institutes go abroad just to make money.
However, it does not demean the reputation of IIT as it has created many entrepreneurs as well. Now we cant expect every IITian to be a supernova.
Since you have only joined the reputed IIT now, you are NOT in a position to evaluate the cons. You will ascertain only the pros.
IITians are far less money minded than you understand. The system sucks not because of little money, it sucks because of little merit. The systems, industry, labs and research centers are full of bullshit and politics.
Well you’d understand only when you land in the shoes of IITians.
Why is it that every IITian in California is a supernova and almost every other IITian in India is a prick in the system? Do you have an answer? And just-to-make-money comment itself is sad approach to understand this subject. Why do you expect charity from talent to prove point? Money IS important for you, isn’t it? Grow up Devyani.
Is there any iit for commerce students….