Wednesday, May 18, 2011

A new course, a new institute: No big deal?

New institutes, new Universities are coming up in many places across India. Although the need of such new institutes in a country with second largest population in the world can not be ruled out, the question often asked is whether the new institutions are living up to the expectations of the students, their parents or other fellow countrymen. Of course the academic reputation of an institute can not be purchased or built instantaneously and it takes some time, the government should at least make sure some of the minimum requirements before opening new institutes or universities. The same is true when an institute introduces a new course. The government often hurries a lot in the process it seems, may be because of the coming elections or some other sacred reasons which I can't think of. Couple of new IIT's were introduced four years back, and most of them without proper infra-structure. Most of them did not even have their own campus, the respective state governments were yet to allot land for the campus. So the new IIT's were either operating from some state government engineering college campus (like refugees) or in extreme cases operating from a different state within the campus of its mentor IIT. The students who might have got a place in a good NIT with good infra-structure and reputation opted for several such new IIT's thinking that the brand name will work. Is that enough? People don't come to IIT just for the tag. The life in IIT has more than just a tag. After spending five years in a premier institute like IIT Bombay, I know how much valuable the life here is, and at the same time I feel sad to see the new IIT's not yet having their own campus. The first 3-4 batches of these IIT's won't even see their own campus. Apart from that, the government also increased the intake of students in the IIT's introducing reservations. Even the older IIT's have become too much populated now, with many hostels are being under construction, reducing the green coverage as well. I can imagine how crowded the new IIT's will be which are operating from other colleges by occupying a small portion of the campus. It would have been much better if these IIT's were started at least after the land for the campus were allotted and are in a position to operate from their own campus.

Similar is true when an institute introduces a new course. They often overlook the fact that the infrastructure in the institute might not support that new course as well as the new students who will opt for the course. For example, the MSc-PhD dual degree course introduced in IITB in 2005 still sounds like alien to many of the academic office people. They have not yet mentioned this course in various certificates and we need to write our course name by hand there. They do not even know that after finishing MSc coursework we should get as much fellowship as other regular PhD students get. They are also confused whether they should give PhD, MSc or both the degrees after we complete the course. In short they are yet to introduce a proper booklet mentioning the rules and regulations about this new course. They just introduced the course six years back without giving much thought about it. One more problem this course facing is the availability of PhD supervisors. The institute takes regular PhD students twice a year, and every year one batch of Dual Degree with seven students are getting added to the list. So around 15-20 people are getting admitted to a course in the department which will ultimately lead to PhD degree. But do the department has as much infrastructure or faculty for that? Nobody seems to have an answer. Earlier the students had lots of freedom in choosing their topic as well as guide, but that no longer seems to be there since many faculty members have stopped offering projects due to overload. The institute should think about all these issues before taking new students every year. Hope to see some changes soon!

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