Education is the keystone that defines a society. A country with excellent education will find all the statistics such as crime rate, employment rate, poverty, HDI and GDP in its favor. US, for instance, has excellent HDI of 0.937, thanks to the outstanding institutes that have cultivated outstanding talents. India is however struggling with the literacy rate and hence development is still elusive. We still lack primary education terribly, despite all the efforts, again thanks to poor teacher turn out in classes. Just to emphasize this, India currently has the largest illiterate population in the world.
After I see all these facts I am immediately drawn to addressing the problem of lack of proper education for all. India does not have enough educational institutions to accommodate all the aspirants. 25% of its population is still illiterate; only 15% of Indian students reach high school, and just 7% graduate. With such grave issues at hand, I find it exasperating when people clamour about the upcoming new IITs. It is boisterous or perhaps they are elitist in their own ways. The argument I have usually been given, is that this spoils the 'brand'. Oh the brand!! Lets examine the brand factor. IITs were setup through an act called "Institutes of Technology Act" and were referred to as the institutes of national importance. This was 1961, when India had just embraced freedom and started building up. The purpose of these institutions were to provide excellent higher education and thus build the country. The country isn't built but the IITs are. The country still lacks room for aspirants of higher education but the IITs have a new goal, the goal to enter the elite club of international institutions. Perhaps they should have been called Institutes of International importance.
IITs are centers for learning and not a luxury. Creating a brand out of them, is a good idea but at a bad time. We are yet to achieve the goals of establishing such institutions. Increasing the number of IITs to 16 is a good step and should be welcome. We should realise that despite this increase, the number of seats for around 500,000 aspirants is just 10,000, which is 2%. The acceptance rate is too low and increasing the number of institutions further would be the right way to go. What is a brand after all? If a country provides excellent education to only 10,000 of its more than a million eligible students, its a limitation, not a matter of pride. India is in need of education, not branded institutes. Lets focus on the primary concern before attempting to build a brand. What is unwelcome, however, is the deteriorating quality of education. This is because of scarcity of professors, again because the profession lacks the lustre of a corporate tag and also because of very few qualified Ph.Ds in the country. But that should not be a deterrent to creating new IITs. Lack of supply shouldn't stop one from creating demand. Perhaps we need more investment and deregulating the fee structure, like they did in the IIMs, would help. Also the Anil Kakodkar Committee of 2010 in its strategic recommendations for IITs set a target of 10,000 doctoral fellows being produced annually by the 2020-25 period, up from the current 1,000. The hope is that some of these Ph.Ds will stay to teach at the IITs.
All said, its important to view these institutes as temples of learning and not an elite club where few can enter.
