Dipping Student Quality at IITs: Who is to be blamed?
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 20 October 2011, 03:06 IST   |    47 Comments
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Recently Narayan Murthy voiced his displeasure in regard to the dripping quality among the IIT students. The former Infosys Chairman said there is an urgent necessity to revamp the assortment criteria for students in quest of admission to the esteemed technology institutions. Addressing a crowd of former IITians at a "Pan IIT" summit, he said the students fare poorly at jobs at bulk and global institutions of higher education. He received a thunderous applause from the audience for his remark, "Thanks to the coaching classes today, the quality of students entering IITs has gone lower and lower." Getting an IIT brand is a dream goal for students and their parents. Therefore, earning an IIT degree automatically enables the students to get a money-spinning job of their choice. Basing their choices primarily on financial benefits pushes students into management sectors after graduation. Students are not sure of what they want out of their careers. Most of the students struggle as handicaps throughout their programs.
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It's the single dimensional character of modern engineers that is often quoted as the reason for hands drenched among corporate chieftains and policy wonks. Students study unremittingly for two to three years to crack the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) and the one who do reach their destination at the IITs are exhausted and fatigued, with slight enthusiasm for the learning process itself. Majority is traumatized, who go through the grind and pay through their nose for coaching. Reducing the question paper to a multiple-choice, objective test, imperfections have crept in, which the coaching institutions have exploited the reduction in the question paper to a multiple-choice, objective test. Therefore, judging the brilliance through JEE has become impossible. Undoubtedly the admission process demands a lot of improvement in order to factor students' performance through single test. There are many dimensions for bringing in such improvements. IIT institutes are facing acute shortage of qualified faculty. Recently, IIT-D has cut their faculty count by 10 percent making the situation worst. Till now IIT's has been maintaining the healthy teacher-student ratio of 9:1 to 10:1. Necessary appointments are not made yet, this ratio is going to increase, and that will adversely affect the quality of education.

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