INDIAN TECH INSTITUTES: ELITIST, HARSH--OR LAUDABLE?
Hi Satish:
You read the article I posted here on IITians in Business Week (Intl Edition)? If so here is how some of the readers reacted.
BTW:You are right the 'Tourist Hustler' story would make a nice movie, may be Ismail Merchant can make an 'art' movie out of it.I am not kidding either as I think the story has a certain endearing charm to it.
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(From Business Week-Dec.30 98 edition)
Too often, paucity of resources is used to cover up dismal results in local colleges. IIT has shattered that excuse (''Whiz kids,'' Asian Cover Story, Dec. 7). However, you imply surprise at Indian acceptance of brain drain. The lack of desire to stop the outflow of talented Indians stems from a deep belief that Indian interests are best served when sons of the soil mix freely with Western techno-political systems.
You also missed the complete picture by not mentioning the management powerhouse, Indian Institute of Management at Ahmadabad, and its contribution to U.S. companies and corporate philosophy. Finally, the reverence for strong, albeit eccentric, professors by Indian graduates contrasts sharply with typical U.S. graduates' reminiscences about their university's social life.
Ramiz Allawala
Karachi, Pakistan
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I read with tremendous interest your story on the magic of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). The IIT saga has several untold aspects. The system is competitive at best, elitist at worst. From a selection process that is undoubtedly the toughest in the world to the grueling years at the campus, the system precludes the possibility of a large section of the society ever dreaming of using the phenomenal facilities provided. This makes the IIT campuses islands of prosperity amid an ocean of despondency and mediocrity. Good education available to large numbers simply does not figure in with our policy makers. An exception is a nationwide learning program launched in collaboration with IIT-Kharagpur called El-net 3L.
A cursory look at the composition of the student [body] will tell you what has gone wrong with the society. Women are an almost negligible percentage of the student community, and for most of the males, the IIT qualification is the ultimate passport to security and to a higher dowry in theIndian marriage market. The parental pressure on these grads to leave India (i.e., go to the States) also remains high.
The IIMs (the management counterparts of the IIT) are stuffed with IIT grads. Ultimately, most of the IIT-IIM grads form the creme de la creme of society and industry. No doubt, they are the best and the hottest of India's exports. If only these institutions could serve the society better by broad-basing the assets and making sure they don't remain an exclusively male domain, Nehru's vision would be redeemed.
Sandeep Manudhane
Indore, India
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When I read about the IIT, the first thing that came to my mind was that this was not a school I would like to attend, in spite of the grand salaries its degrees almost guarantee. The experience you call ''akin to boot camp'' is, in my view, not appropriate for an educational institution. Having experienced both the Asian style of education (albeit in Singapore, where things are a little less harsh than in Japan) and the U.S. style (I attended the University of Pennsylvania), I am personally convinced that the latter taught me how to think, whereas the former merely infused me with knowledge. I am reminded of my experience in the military, where raw recruits grumbled about the harsh treatment they received, only to develop the same mean streaks once they got their own stripes. While a case can be made for such training methods in an army, to use them in a school takes the notion of ''Business is War'' too far. More importantly, it makes one wonder if IIT's graduates are not infected with the harshness of their institution and its professors.
Thus, while IIT may produce some of the most brilliant minds, I am not convinced I would want to work with any one of them. And I would be sorely disappointed if educational institutions in the U.S. or any place else should decide to emulate IIT's draconian methods.
Derek Zhu
Singapore
businessweek.com
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