IIT hostels were a mess

IITs boast of housing best talents but the hostels were in a state of mess. My observation is mostly restricted to the hostels of IIT Delhi but it would not be much different for most of the other IITs. Poor infrastructure in India is justified by providing budding talents with hardships to get them ready for the hard realities of life. But the argument is far from convincing. The poor state of the toilets comes to mind. Half of them were broken and were never repaired for years even when their numbers were very less given the hygiene that should be maintained and if at all everybody had to attend the classes religiously and regularly. Its difficult for me to imagine getting back to them and I find it truly ridiculous for a world class institution to have such poor facilities and one should hope that no outsider sees them. Their cleanliness was also a very big concern. Geysers in winters were a bit hard to find on each floors. Coming to the rooms. We were not allowed to use coolers during summers and Delhi which has an extreme climate and harsh summers and winters it was difficult to stay in hostels during that time just on fans. Their congested construction and improper ventilation was also a concern. The mess was although not so bad but it wasn't up to the standards either. In totality IITs should look to concentrate on channelizing funds properly or raising fees for the matter if that is needed to end all this. Another aspect which is different but totally neglected is the medicare of students. IITs may have their medicare units but the availability of doctors and facilities is questionable leave apart their quality. So IITs definitely need to be more careful on all these aspects. 

IIT vs Harvard a session's observation

Observations from a session at IIT Delhi at which about 10-15 students from Harvard came over as part of an exchange program. The students from Harvard were presenting on their trip to IIT and India. The quality of presentation, level of inter-personal and communication skills were far superior than IITians in general could deliver. As students if we were comparing future leaders in the making it wasn't really a very pleasing experience sitting on the end I was. Very few of IITians could have matched them if at all. It was quite embarrassing when our director sir bragged about us being the best of the best of the best. The reason behind are many but the main reasons were they were being educated in a developed world, their experiences were diverse for example a girl had taught in Africa's poor territories as part of her intern and to me the quality of education imparted to them was far superior than we receive at our best institutes in India. The other important thing to notice was the flexibility they had in choosing their curriculum. They didn't have to choose a major like us in engineering at starting of their graduation. They were free to decide their electives right from the beginning, plan their schedules and come up at the end of day with the number of credits required. And thus they can choose to complete the requirements of their major and minor degrees as they go on their stint at the university. So a student who gets an entrance can explore and pursue his interests once they are exposed to all the subjects around them unlike us who choose their engineering subjects mostly due to the All India ranks that we get in JEE and that is true for any other engineering graduate in this country. Clearly we have a long way to go in terms of the flexibility we provide to our students while they are at college.The ease with which they presented themselves and their work was truly worth learning and giving importance too. Often we forget the importance of presentation and effective communication. Our education has to stress on this aspect. I would not blame completely IITs as schools also should be responsible for it. Our academicians are a disjoint set from business leaders and more often than not the professors in India lack personalities to inspire the modern generation. Students tend to learn more from teachers whom they respect. Gathering attention and arousing interest is the first step to teach subjects which sadly assumes lesser importance in Indian education system. And quite clearly it reflects in students as well unless they are groomed by industry. We are a long way behind compared to the best of the best of the best outputs that we can achieve and will require some effort to get there. 

IITians working in a backoffice

A feeling and a realization that goes in every IITian who works in a back office has to be shared for the next group of IITians coming along after us. There are trends where IITians run to in certain periods and its mostly peer pressure that drives them. I am not talking about exceptionally talented IITians but more towards the average ones. Guess there was trend of doing MS in 90s, it was jobs for a while then and then came MBA and the world of investment banks after 2005. The trend of ibanks, consultancies and analytics have ensured IITians are now working for these companies even after the financial crisis. Even though these companies have been better paymasters in the initial years and more often than not they provide good exposures before going in for an MBA but there are a list of downsides as well. IITians are not happy with the second fiddle treatment they get in these jobs. Make no mistake you are not the decision makers in these roles. You are a just better than your peers product for them who has no superior knowledge of their particular industries. Whether its US, Europe, Singapore or Hongkong it takes something to get to something in which you have a say. You are just data feeders, data manipulators or at best some strategy planners. Its lot of excel, it may be programming, it may be DBMS or at worst just punching data. Don't be fooled about it no IITian loves it and nobody enjoys such a job responsibility. Its just a rush to get to these places because they pay relatively better than the PSUs of the world and the so called Indian companies. You get definitely better workplaces to work in and professional environment but you also get no feel of the work you do, no real credit and no work satisfaction out of these jobs. Its difficult to explain to people why your degree earned such a job. It fails to please and it inexplicable in a holistic sense how exactly are you making your credentials earn you some respect which you got in your IIT days. The point is not to analyze all of them individually but important thing whether as IITians you look forward to such places. I did not for myself and definitely most IITians would not because in the long run is not beneficial. Your growth is limited beyond a point and treatment can be bad. So if you are looking at these roles just be skeptical. Better is to get higher degrees and join at better positions. I know its an individuals call but this entry is just to let you know as an IITian that you need to be skeptical about these setups and can do better to avoid them. You are made for something bigger.

Special

Felt special cracking JEE but never felt that its something one should take credit for. Cracking IIT felt good because I never thought about it how easy was it compared to thousands of students who tried probably harder than me. Now after failing consistently in many other things I know it was a gift and a blessing. Came easier to me than many other around. A fact that I can be proud of but am not so proud of, anyway. Hasn't taken me anywhere apart from the feeling of being respected and liked for it. The achievement resulted in getting an access to an institution which is supposed to impart quality education. Technology was not my type but to be fair had no idea about earlier. In effect the whole thing was nothing more than a waste of my time as well as the resources that were spent on me. Feels so guilty about using them now. I'm not alone. My guilt is reduced by the fact the systemic processes at IIT are nowhere near what they are supposed to be. IITians reading this would be saying this is going too far and thinking too much about not so important issue. Non-IITians would react probably in a different way and think how stupid and how ridiculously undeserving. Both are right and wrong. To give an access to "special" people in so called quality institutions when their motivation is confused and questionable is like building a team with players who are talented but are never part of the force that a team is build up with (Symonds comes to my mind). Society like "special" talents but there's something else that is required to make it happen. To get the output as big there's a lot of hardwork and other inputs that need to be fed in. And so it doesn't feel special about the product I am, this day. God wired me in a certain way and fortunately or unfortunately that helped me crack a very tough exam. Yes, coaching and hardwork were also a part of it but there was something inside that made it easy and has left me as a achiever and non-achiever at the same time. Its being special for something without feeling special. Its a problem of what you are blessed with and what you want to do with life. Have no qualms in admitting that some things that come naturally to me puts me off and somethings that excites me I keep failing in them. Such a shame and a confusing problem. A dilemma: To use what you have or to pursue what you want to have but will take something special. And this special is not gifted. It has to be earned. So you see that is what takes IITians to a different arena and to pursue different challenges. Its about the gift that probably they actually want from life. IIT life is about these paradoxes which is so difficult to understand and not so beautiful to live with. And trust me every person irrespective of his degree has to comprehend this story of his life to make it big. What is "special" for the world is not special for you and what's special for you is the ultimate thing that will take something special out of you anyway. The conclusion is IIT life on its own is not desirably special but its very much same as any other life in its journey towards a special one.

Corruption in IIT life

You hear about corruption everywhere all these days. Something which people do not know probably is that the best minds of their country are also corrupt. Want to know how?

IITs aim to churn out future leaders of society. So IIT life would try to equip its students with as much diversity and opportunities as possible. So within IITs you have all kinds of events. There are three fests in each academic year - one cultural fest, one technical fest and one sports fest. Additionally there are clubs for things like dramatics, music, arts, indoor sports etc etc which are about 10-15. Also you have most of the sports in IITs. Now to keep the system running IITs hold different positions to run these clubs and various activities both academic as well as non-academic. For every activity there's a student secretary and there are numerous representatives which help making the process a success. Naturally for each activity, club or any event there's a budget which is decided and bills are submitted during due course fitting that budget. Be it fudging of bills, be it use of budgets for personal benefits etc etc everything is done by the students. There's a whole host of politics involved in the selection of secretaries and reps. The funds of these events are also used for lavish treats. Some part of it is right, some not. People can differ on that.

To get a sense of money a student secy can make is that at the end of a fest, people are able to their dream bikes financed. Mess secretary is a very coveted post as it involves managing the budget for a hostel's mess and can get you in a good position to exploit the tricks of trade. On the other hand sometimes bills do not get cleared easily for representatives. The secy's who head them have better ways to use them. Everybody know what are those. The big cut is obtained when you set up something big. So say a pool table for your hostel or renovation of the hostel garden. Everybody takes a cut for taking a initiative but how much is the question. But these are small if you consider their impact and if there was a way to quantify the wrongdoing all these are not so severe.

One big thing that happens from the end of students which I have witnessed is the scholarship from the institute which waivers tuition fees of students coming from family below a certain annual income (about 2-3 lakhs). There were about 15 people atleast (out of 50 in our batch) that I know in my hostel in my year who fulfilled the criteria on paper just because there was no proof to ascertain their family income. I am not sure about how many more did the same. Anyways the percentage was huge I can tell you that but still the authorities at IIT did nothing about it. The scholarship is like 30k for tuition fees and another 18k for the year. So its roughly 50k per student that IIT spends per year which it should save. Anyways that is the way it is.

One more shady area which I cannot confirm by examples but know happens in from the end of professors. When you get those equipments in laboratories, they misrepresent the prices and inflate bills to the tune of many lakhs for personal benefits. Also the institute infrastructure is a big money churning area for the people in charge. A friend of mine in IIT Roorkee told me a certain road was build over and over just to because it offered good margins for takers. This and many more happens in our premier institutes and our future leaders are part of it. No wonder a stalwart like Rajat Gupta is under scrutiny. But that's the way it is.

Views on coaching

A coaching class as a business has prospered for IIT-JEE preparation and there has been a lot of debate about the effect it has. Like all debates some parts of it are true some not. I would accept the argument that good coaching is a definite advantage to students who get them and sometimes would be disadvantageous to a more capable student who is unable to access them. But that is one part of the story. The second part is it helps. It helps immensely a student who learns from good teachers and learns better than otherwise on his own. What is so bad in it? I fail to understand. If the student has the ability to pick up and understand when told in a different way and develops a capability to solve the most complex questions in the exam what is so bad about it. Yes the coaching refines and cuts down the amount of effort the student has to make to crack the exam. But what is so wrong if they are able to find an efficient way to help students to get into an institute which is so coveted in our country. Don't tell me the students groomed by coaching are not competent enough and the IITs are churning out less brilliant students. If it is the case, its because the level of JEE has dropped significantly over the years. Why don't they make it as tough as possible and let the best minds crack it, which happen in the Olympiads as well. I am an IITian and I owe more of my engineering knowledge to my coaching teachers as compared to IIT professors or my school teachers. In school, teachers have no real motivation to teach, their salaries are fixed, their task is cut out and they don't really care. Don't forget the teachers we have in our school are nowhere close to the best minds in the country. In contrast, I can anyday bet, that my coaching teachers would fare far better in their IQ and more importantly their teaching skills. Its very easy if you map it to the corporates running in government and private sectors. The coaching institutes do not want lazy, unmindful, non-performance driven teachers who care only about the time lines of syllabus completion. So the point I'm trying to make is at the end of the day if the coaching institutes are able to impart better education irrespective of the way they run it, there's no harm in it as long as education is the winner. Why don't IIT professors learn from them how to drive the younger generation and impart better education through innovative ways. But instead they choose to criticize and reject them. I find it sad. Instead I choose to criticize their attitude. They make noises about all these things and hope to get better salaries. They are better off attending these classes and learning from them how to churn out better engineers in our society. And anyways if our schooling and our school teachers were so outstanding and if our board exams were based on meritocracy this situation would never have arrived. I can tell you the same IIT professors who are making so much hue and cry never change their ways of teaching. They more often than not stick to the class lectures to frame questions in semester exams so that a more loyal student to them who is referred to as "maggu" in IIT who attends their classes and take notes can muster them and do well to prove a point to others. The point is exactly contradictory. Their exams don't reward the best minds within IITians but who learn in a conventional way. The focus is not on thinking and strong understanding of concepts. Instead the lecture notes. Why have they failed to innovate in the exam papers that they set? Why don't people first question them and the harm they are causing the education in India? Why are they allowed to even shun these coaching classes. I would say allow these coaching teachers to run IITs and you will see what improvements in efficiencies you get in the system then.

Why IITians should be trained in a different way

The thought of giving counselling to depressed students is a noble one and one in the right direction. When IITians enter the campus they bring with them a lot of apprehensions which need to be cleared. Most of the students are from humble backgrounds and tier-II cities. And sometimes the families they belong to may not be radical as the IIT life expects them to. Pressures of performance and expectations can burden them. Also a sense of achievement engulfs a student when he clears JEE after couple of years of rigorous hardwork and he is very naturally in a state of burnout. So the tendency is to relax and enjoy and free yourself from the burden and live a college life (probably the one shown in movies) which is visualized to be much better than the life you left behind. But more often than not the students are disappointed. Now they are competing with people who are like them or probably better than them. Students from small towns or tier II, III cities generally do not match the education that students from metros or top schools bring along with them. Naturally the students are more or less similar in their levels of IQ but skills they possess can be quite different. A very simple case would be two students entering into computer science department one from say a DPS and one from say a small town like Harda in MP. One might have an access to best computer education in his school available in India, may have had a trip to a US school, may be the editor of his school magazine, participated in programming contests internationally etc etc and the other unaware of these worldly affairs a simple yet intelligent student seeing his counterpart and overawed by him/her. What it leads to is questions which his mind never asked before. He feels deprived and senses a inferiority complex which he hasn't before. He sees no other boy from his school around, not many to share or understand his thought process and feels depressed. He might even neglect or deny it but there's something that he feels which is different and troubling and trickling his mind all the time. Its change of worlds for one and its quite simple for the other. In no time their performance differs and confidence for one starts shaking. Make no mistake, it takes a lot of emotional balancing before your mind however sharp it may be performs upto its limits. IIT life exposes these differences to the hilt as clashes take place between similar IQs and different exposures and skillsets. Add to it the stubborn attitude of professors whose teaching theories and beliefs are not only outdated but also rigid. Its something that you live to learn with in IIT life. Yes, life is somewhat similar and people are exposed to different environment but IIT life is exceptional is some ways to bring that out and flash on your mind. I think the points discussed are applicable more to institutes in Delhi and Mumbai maybe Chennai as well. I think IITs should focus on behavioral differences of students and have light courses in the first semester to give breathing space to students and to adjust to a newer environment for better emotional stability of all students. I know they have huge expectations but its also important that maximum output is extracted out of the bunch or should I call the cream there.