World-class students, mediocre faculty

Finally someone on the top has garnered courage to spell out the blatant truth about the premier institutes like IITs and IIMs. The recent remarks on students and faculty of IITs and IIMs by Jairam Ramesh might have hurt many, but the fact of the matter is that he is absolutely right in saying this. Certainly, the students of IITs & IIMs are world class because they have established the relevant visible evidence across the world through their immense contribution in building and heading organizations and enterprises alike. However, at the same time, the faculty members of these institutes have done nothing other than discharging their normal duties like their counterparts in any other educational institutes in India.

Well, we can't discount the credit of faculty members in offering quality teachings to the students for over last 50 years, but what have they done beyond that? How many patents have they produced? How many Nobel laureates have they produced? How many world-class inventions have they made? How many internationally-acclaimed books have they written? If we really delve deeper into the intellectual capability of these faculty members and compare it with their counterparts in world-class institutes, it would be quite deplorable.

Let's just compare one prominent intellectual parameter often accepted by global audience, i.e. the number of Nobel laureates produced by any institute. Whereas institutes like Columbia University, Cambridge University, Chicago University, MIT, and Harvard have produced 88, 84, 83, 77 and 74 Nobel laureates respectively, IITs and IIMs have produced none. How pathetic is this? So, Jairam Ramesh has aptly unfolded the open secret about self-proclaimed elites who are basking on the glory of their students, not of their own. There is no political intent in expressing this plain truth as the minister himself is a product of IIT and he knows better than anyone else about the quality and quantity of research done by the faculty members. We must accept it now that these premier institutes of India must come out from the comfort zone and do something exemplary that the world will applaud. If you want to be recognized as world class, you must deliver in that order.