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A word of advice for the IITs.....

A wor d of advice for the IITs.....

Shoba Narayan

The IITs need to take what they do up to the next level. They need to turn into true academic institutions, not just colleges for engineers

In every IIT batch is a Daad, a person of uncommon comprehension who practical ly teaches the teachers. For the clas s of 198 5 of IIT Bombay, that person was Pandurang

Nayak, who topped the IIT-JEE when entering, got the highest grades throughout and exited as a gold medallist. Nayak currently works at Google in the search area. He was at

IIT Bombays campus a few weeks ago for his 25th reunion, a s lim bespectacled man with grey-flecked hai r and an easy s mile.

A simil ar l egend from IIT Madras was Joy Thomas, als o a topper, who currently works at a Sili con Vall ey start-up. These are the men who are never forgotten and always held

up as the gold s tandard of i ntell igence, unsurpass ed during entire careers spent on Wall Street, Sili con Vall ey and other moneyed professi ons. Ask an IITian where he met the

brightest people in his career and he will most often answer, IIT.

Engineering is not intuitive. It demands an intellectual rigourthat doesnt come naturally, even to those blessed with logical thinking and a facil ity for numbers. Every guy

(and they are still mostly guys) in IIT topped his class in school and was lauded for his brains. The first time many of these brash young men experience the bitter taste of

humility is after they enter IIT. There, they learn what it is like to be average, indeed mediocre. Naturally, most IITians end up libertarians, entirely self-made, self-possessed,

and until recently, travelling a broad to make their fortunes. Today, according to I IT Bombay, only 10% of the graduating clas s goes abroad, unli ke 90% of the 1985 batch.

Over the years, these men give back handsomely to the institution which made them men. According to IT-BHU Chronicle, the monthly online news magazine published by IT-

BHUs a lumni as socia tion, the class of 1985 pledged R4.5 crore to support technology and sustainabl e development Vinod Gupta gave IIT Khara gpur $2 mill ion (around

R9 crore now) over a decade ago to establi sh a management school i n his name. Vinod Khosla gave IIT Delhi $5 milli on to establish a n IT school. Romesh Wadhwani gave IIT

Bombay $5 million to fund a centre for biosciences. IIT Madras has about five websites dedicated to alumni, which is confusing. Featured donors include Krishna Kolluri,

Sunil W adhwani, and others. Among Indian educational i nstitutions, the IITs are fundrai sing s tars. Yet, what interests me is not how much the IIT alumni give, but how little

they give, relative not just to their net worth but also their desire.

My friend, Vatsa (not real name), an alumnus of IIT Madras, answers it this way: Desh (Deshpande) and Kris (Gopalakrishnan) have thrown a lot of money at IIT. But the

government, the college, the faculty, all want a piece of it. Is the money used well? Im not sure. Then why give?

I have s poken to several other IITians about why they dont give as much as they could or want to. Those settled abroad s ay that they usually s tart with a nice round sum,

say $100,000, which s omehow gets whittled down to a few lakhs a fter a round of peer appra isa ls.

Why does this happen? The IITs, relative to other Indian i nstitutions, have a strong al umni network. I searched the IIT Kanpurs a lumni website and found all sorts of things.

But there were no numbers about who gave what. IITians respond to numbers. Alumni donations should be right up top in the IIT Kanpur website, next to the Satyendra Dubey

awardstarting with the highest donation and down from there. IITians are competitive. Theyll want their name at the top of the list.

The other factor has to do with how the money will be used. This is something that every Indian educational institution struggles with. The default assumption seems to be

that the money will be frittered away. If the IITs can correct this, they can gain the sort of money that will allow for nanotechnology labs and stem cell research. But in order

to get large cheques from rich a lumni, the IITs have to do one thing ri ght; and this, in my view, is key. They have to gain fame as research i nstitutions i n their own right and

not merely universiti es famous for churni ng out bright engineers.

The IITs are resting their laurels on the strength of their al umni and not the strength of the work that is going on within their own campusesalong the lines of MITs MediaLab, Columbias s ociology programmes, or Stanfords entrepreneurship programmes. Facul ty at American institutions work at getting i nto the popular press featuring i n

Malcolm Gla dwells books, for ins tance. There are several Indians who appear in Gladwell s booksNalini Ambady, Sheena Iyengar and Sudhir Venkatesh, to name three. All

are academics in American universities. Why not an IIT professor or department? Sure, there was a 60-minute episode about IIT in CBS News a while ago; and it was featured

in Michael Lewis book, The New New Thing. Both were flattering portraits but they focused on the students.

The IITs need to take what they do up to the next level. They need to turn into true academic institutions, not just colleges for engineers. They need to attract star faculty or

turn their own faculty into stars. They need to better connect with alumni and make them a part of the colleges through campus visits, mentorship programmes and visiting

lectures. A few such steps will turn this remarkable success story into a model that can be duplica ted all across India. As a well -wisher of the IITs, that would be my hope.

Shoba Narayans husband is an IIT graduate. This column doesnt have inputs from him. The views (and any attendant errors) are entirely Shobas own. Write to her at

thegoodlife@livemint.com.

* Payback: Alumnus Vinod Gupta gave IIT Kharagpur (above) $2 milli on to establish a management school in hi s name. indranil Bho umik/Mint

URL: http://www.livemint.com/2011/01/28191917/A-word-of-advice-for-the-IITs.html

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