Technology institutes gear up for global competition

The prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, or IITs, have vowed to no longer sit in the wings but to promote themselves nationally and globally. This follows complaints by the government and academics that the institutions' excellence is not being recognised in international university rankings.

India has 16 IITs – seven established in the past five years – that are regarded as ‘institutions of national importance’. Although each is an autonomous institution, admission is via a ferociously competitive common entrance examination, which ensures that only top brains make it into the IITs.

Some 500,000 students sit the exams for 10,000 coveted IIT seats – up from around 4,000 seats 10 years ago. Many alumni are in leading positions in industry and business in India and abroad. But this is barely reflected in international rankings.

“The IITs are recognised globally for the quality of their graduates. But they haven’t focused on brand building. Now all IITs will devise a way to improve their brand equity,” said Education Minister Dr MM Pallam Raju

“Now that the government has decided to allow foreign institutions into the country through an executive order, the IITs have to pull up their socks and strengthen their brand if they are to compete, both nationally and globally,” a Human Resources Development Ministry official said.

The Indian government has been rallying IITs to take global rankings seriously after the latest Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) league table of the world’s top 200 universities did not feature a single Indian institution.

A separate list of the top 200 Asian institutions had 11 Indian institutions, with three in the top 50. IIT-Delhi was at 38, IIT-Bombay at 39 and IIT-Madras at 49.

Global competitiveness

The government wants IITs to engage with global ranking agencies to improve their standing, market the IIT brand in India and globally, and work with the National Board of Accreditation to build a case for India as a member of the Washington Accord – an international accreditation agreement that allows smooth student mobility between engineering institutes in member countries.

The accord also makes engineering degrees in signatory countries equivalent, helps institutions to foster ties in research, curricula and sharing of resources, and improves a country’s image in the higher education league tables.

The government believes that if IITs gave complete data, including details of their programmes, research and curricula, “their ranking can improve by 50%”, according to an education ministry official.

Professor Indranil Manna, director of IIT-Kanpur, admitted to local media that IITs had been complacent. “We never really took rankings seriously. We are doing so now. The government is urging us to be more proactive,” Manna said.

TV Mohandas Pai, chair of Manipal Global Education and former director on the board of IT giant Infosys, said IITs were much better than rankings suggested, but they were “too arrogant” to participate and give data.

Pai is also the honorary chair of the Indian Centre for Assessment and Accreditation, a private accreditation body that is now working on India-specific university rankings.

The IIT governing council – which includes all IIT directors and governors, some industrialists and the human resources minister – decided at a meeting on 16 September to form a committee of IIT administrators and alumni to engage with ranking agencies such as QS, and Times Higher Education in the United Kingdom.

Notably, IIT-Delhi has kicked into action and decided to put together a three-member committee to deal with all rankings-related matters. IIT-Bombay said it would collate information from various departments and send it to QS in the required form.

IIT expansion

The governing council also decided that IITs would increase student strength by 60%, despite criticism in the past that expansion of the IIT system had adversely affected the quality of teaching.

The decision to increase the number of students in various streams, from an average of 7,500 students per institution to 12,000 over a period of time, has been welcomed by students.

“For very long the IITs remained elite institutions with very limited intake. But as the aspirations of a young nation grow, so should the opportunities to access quality higher education,” said Ritesh Sabarwal, a final-year school pupil.

But expansion has already adversely affected the teacher-student ratio at IITs and alumni have said that quality has suffered due to rapid and unplanned growth.

The teacher-student ratio at IITs is around 1:15. It is worst at IIT-Roorkee at 1:20 and best at the newer institutes of IIT-Ropar and IIT-Mandi, where there is one teacher for every two students. The government stipulates that IITs must have a teacher-student ratio of 1:10.

The institutes are also suffering acute academic shortages. Of 6,522 sanctioned faculty positions nationwide, 2,618 are unfilled. Thus, across campuses there is an approximately 40% shortage of lecturers, caused mostly by the student intake growing by 54% since 2006, in the wake of a 27% affirmative action quota for students from lower castes.

“We have rapidly expanded our student intake. But it is not possible to recruit faculty at the same pace. We are recruiting faculty at a pace we can absorb. But we have no difficulty in finding the right people,” said IIT-Bombay Director Professor Devang Khakhar.