IIT, World Rankings, Rants & Raves

Late yesterday night I received the following email:

Subject: IIT
Date: 23 Jul 2006 18:09:54 -0000
From: sanket karmarkar
Reply-To: sanket karmarkar

Sir

I totally disagree with your comments on standard of IITs.latest world rankings show IITs at rank- 450-500 in the world.

Ordinary state universities in USA do must better.The JEE is tough and quality of students is great and after Btech the students get into USA for MBA or MS/PhD and do a good job in USA.if you see research publications of IITs it performs so poor,nor have IITans who did their Btech PhD in India done any great engineering achievement-the Kaveri engine which Indian engineers have been trying to build for indigenous Tejas plane is failed.
Our IIT engineers are good for paper work-i.e math calculations-complex calculations on paper-they are bad at doinng things-while others..say south Korean engineers may not do good paper work but they can create-Sure IIT students are good,but quality of IIT is better than any Indian institute but-go around the world and it stands no where.I feel sorry for that,but thats true

sanket karmarkar

Mr. Sanket Karmarkar was responding to a previous post of mine about IIT World Rankings. Sanket lives in the US but from the name & other internet postings seems to be of Indian origin. Most probably Maharastrian.

Anyway, his email intrigued me and I went to Google looking for more. Came across a number of web sites including this message board about colleges. Rather heated discussions.

I noticed one thing in both Sanket's email as well as message board discussions about the IITs - It is mostly Indians who now live abroad that are so vehement about India and it's condition. Whether it is about the contibution of IITians or the state of the roads in Pune, it is erstwhile Indians who are booing the loudest. Why is that? Is it that they are ashamed of being Indian and hope to wash away this stigma by talking about how bad things are?

I am not sure. I am an IITian (Kharagpur) and I know the IITs and their students. They are good. Are they the best in the world? I don't know and I don't care. But I hope my children will go to an IIT too.

The people who are arguing about the IITs and their contribution vis a vis the MITs of the world seem to forget a vital fact; the MITs of this world have been around longer then the IITs. They have better funding, better partnership with private and govt industries and can afford to pay their staff much better than the IITs. So, what are we comparing? A youngster with a middle aged man in his prime?

Original research needs money. Great intelligence alone will not suffice. And where is the money? In the US and other such countries of the world. So what do the IIT grads do? They migrate to the US. And do research there. IIT grads are just entering the Professor levels in their careers. So far they have been doing the grunt work of research as assistants. Give them some more time. Let them guide research and then come back and compare notes.

It is surprising how people will compare apples with oranges and arrive at a 2 = 3 solution. If you live in the US or any other "developed" nation, the rest of the world will look like a slum. Have the slums changed? Is there improvement?

Saying that the Tejas engine has failed is like saying that the first US space rockets failed. So? Give it time buddy. And if you don't like something about this country, come back and help change it. It is easy to sit in a padded sofa in an air conditioned room and pontificate about how to improve Pune's roads.

What have you done about it?