IIT Gandhinagar Decennial

The second generation IITs have completed 10 years (except two of them, which started a year later). Recently, IIT Gandhinagar organized a function to mark the occasion. They invited me to be present and publicly thanked me for whatever little I may have done in the last decade. This was a good time to recall many great initiatives that have been taken up by IITGN.

When Prof. Sudhir Jain became Director, IIT Gandhinagar in 2009, he asked me to be one of the many friends that IIT Gandhinagar would come to have, and spend just one day a month at that IIT. Given the logistics, costs, and overhead of travel, I promised to visit alternate months and spend on an average 2 days in each visit. And sure enough, this was my 59th visit to Ahmedabad in just a little over 9 years.

When I look at IIT Gandhinagar, it is obvious what a great leadership can do to an institution. And a great leader is not just one who can keep coming up with great ideas, but has an eye for leaders around him/her who will come up with equally great ideas themselves. Poor leaders, on the other hand, can only promote mediocrity or worse.

Though a lot of innovative thinking has gone into the policies and processes at IIT Gandhinagar, some of them have simply followed common sense. Indeed, the best example of the difference is that they treat an 18-year old as an 18-year old. It is common sense, and yet most institutions would think of under-graduate students (even 21-year olds) as juveniles. The Institute respects its students as adults, trusts them to do the right things always, and students don't let the Institute down. Treating them as adults mean not involving parents, unless the situation is serious. Adulthood means that they have a greater say in running their own affairs (hostels, festivals, discipline, mess) and have a significant say in running of the Institute. In return, the students ensure there are no headaches for the Director from their side There is huge affection for the Institute, and that shows up in statistics like the fraction of alumni giving a gift to the Institute in a year - perhaps the highest of all Indian institutions.

Another simple idea is to have liberal rules. When I was a student at IITK, we were really free birds. The rules did not matter as anything we wanted to do, we could request and it would be considered on merit and not in light of the rules. And if this request was for something worthwhile, it would be approved. But things did not stay the same 3 decades later. With student-faculty ratio declining sharply, it wasn't possible to consider each request on its merit. A lot of times, we started hearing, "rules are meant to be followed" and we found out that rules did not allow many things we took for granted as students. IIT Gandhinagar had always said that they wanted to learn from errors older IITs had made. And they decided that right from the very beginning, the flexibility will be inbuilt into the rules, and not depend on someone taking a positive decision on your application on a case-to-case basis. And the flexibility shows in branch change rules, having flexibility in curriculum like minors, honours, double majors, and many many more situations.

My favorite visits to IIT Gandhinagar have been to attend their annual Academic Advisory Council meetings and their annual Leadership Conclaves. The two are held on consecutive days. For AAC, they invite academicians who have lots of ideas and are from any part of the globe. In LC meetings, they invite people from industry, government, alumni, and academia. Typically, they will discuss academic issues in institution building in AAC and administrative/governance issues in institution building in LC. New institutes have to be open to external viewpoints since they may not have sufficient internal capacity. But even with this caveat, IIT Gandhinagar has been exceptionally outward looking. One of the advice that I heard during these meetings was that while any educational institute will take a long time to be truly world class, one need not wait to start thinking and functioning like one. So when you have to create a policy for anything, think about how a world class university would do this. This way of thinking and doing things has ensured that IIT Gandhinagar's march towards excellence has been faster than what it would have been otherwise.

Even though a new institute struggles with several problems - faculty recruitment, building of infrastructure, and so on, IIT Gandhinagar has always proclaimed that as a public funded institute, it must be open to not just its students and faculty but many more people. So they allow students of other colleges to spend a semester doing courses at IIT Gandhinagar. They have a large program of summer interns on their campus. They even have special programs for foreign students in winter. They run several training programs for teachers of other colleges. They allow non-students to set up companies in their incubation center (and now building a technology park). And all this seems to help them a lot. They attract more applications for Masters and PhD programs in a single department than the MTech/PhD applications in IIT Kanpur in all departments put together.

IIT Gandhinagar has several agreements with foreign universities and companies for summer internships, semester exchanges, research collaborations, etc. They want their graduates to have a global exposure. A very large fraction of their students would have spent some time abroad during their program. However, not all agreements are fully funded. This means that under normal circumstances, some of those programs are not accessible to students coming from financially challenged backgrounds. But not at IIT Gandhinagar. They have programs that will provide support to such students so that they too have equal access to any and all programs that IIT Gandhinagar is involved in. Much of this support comes from gifts from friends. They raise more philanthropic funds in a year than some of the old IITs.

One of the most innovative programs that they have is their Foundation Program. Every under-graduate student admitted to IIT Gandhinagar goes through a 5-week program in which their are large number of talks, workshops, discussion sessions, projects and outdoor activities. Students develop a broad set of life skills including creativity (music, drama, painting, art), sports, leadership, empathy, societal concerns, and inculcate values and ethics. This is their most famous export, and now many IITs and even other institutes have started doing similar programs.

Another interesting program is Explorer Fellowship in which a student is given a small budget to travel across India for 6 weeks. The budget of less than Rs. 1000 per day is to be used for travel (only non-AC travel allowed), stay, food, and any other personal expense. They must visit a state in South, North and North-East of India. The students not only understand the diversity of the country, but also understand the circumstances under which our people live. Another summer fellowship scheme is "Gram Fellowship" in which the student is expected to live in a rural setting.

No wonder that they care so much for everyone working for them. The facilities they have asked the contractors to create for construction workers, for example, are absolutely amazing. Each outsourced employee gets some benefits which are unheard of at other places. For example, they have created a Children's Education Fund through which some educational expenses of children of contract employees are taken care of.

There are far too many innovative ideas that IIT Gandhinagar has implemented than what I can list here. But suffice to say that my association with them for the last 9+ years have been extremely fulfilling. There are lots of faculty members with whom I have interacted with and all of them have given me new ideas and perspectives.

MTech program needs change

There was a time when MTech students were the major research manpower in our technical institutions. The number of PhDs were very small, and faculty needed some hands to work in their labs. We also needed some people to help us as Teaching Assistants to support our under-graduate teaching. So the focus of MTech program was not that we are preparing them for industry. That had to happen for us to attract anyone to the MTech program, but the program was not optimized for those outcomes. Since we needed MTech students for our research and teaching support, we would offer good students not only fee waivers, but also a decent stipend.

On the input side, there were always those few students in NITs and other good institutes who had enjoyed their under-graduate education, were more curious to learn more, did not want to commit for a PhD program (and hence getting scholarship from abroad was difficult) and if IITs offered a program which did not require depending financially on parents, why not spend 2 years in a good environment (and perhaps get a tag of an IITian as well). It was a pleasure to work with these students.

But slowly, situation is changing. The number of PhD students has gone up quite a bit in the last 10-15 years and is still climbing. So the dependence on MTech students for doing our research has declined. The top students in NITs and other good institutions are going directly for corporate jobs in larger numbers. In fact, we hardly see any applicant from NITs and IIITs these days. Also, the starting of dual-degree programs has meant that our own BTech students (who are better trained than most of the students we are now recruiting in our MTech program from affiliated colleges) are continuing as MTech students. We are also becoming more open to the idea of some of the senior Under-graduate students to help us as Teaching Assistants in our courses. (Some IITs allow even 2nd year students to be TAs.)

The motivation of the students joining the MTech program is mostly to get better trained than what a typical private affiliated college has been able to do, and improve the quality of job that they can get. From a job in the IT services industry, they want to move up the value chain and join a product company (and I am told similar motivation in other disciplines as well).

So if the motivation of students have changed, and the requirement of faculty has changed, shouldn't that get reflected in the way we handle our MTech program.

What would prepare our MTech students better for industry. Currently, we have roughly 1 year of course work and 1 year of thesis. (In IITK, it is 0.75 years of course work and 1.25 years of thesis, since we had the maximum shortage of PhD students historically. So a greater focus on MTech research.) To prepare these students better for industry, we need to improve their core knowledge, and expose them to several new ideas, and finally, get them to integrate/synthesize all they have learnt by doing a substantial project. So we need to increase course work, and reduce the thesis to a project.

This will also free up faculty time, since guiding an unwilling student for 3 semester and then eventually writing their thesis is not a worthwhile investment of time when you have PhD students on one hand, and dual-degree students on the other.

Of course, if there is someone really interested in research and is academically well prepared for it, there should be an option to do that.

More importantly, if we are no longer depending on MTech students for research support or teaching support, we don't need to have a fee waiver and a stipend for everyone in this program. The financial support should be contingent upon someone either being selected (after a careful selection process) as a teaching assistant, or someone doing quality research work. In fact, research support may come through the sponsored research route rather than using the Institute funds. This will also allow us to expand our MTech program substantially and be more useful to industry as a result. This will also push those students who are interested in research to think of joining our PhD program.

In summary, an MTech program may have about one semester of refresher courses, one semester of courses which is exposing them to advanced topics in multiple areas (breadth), and one semester of courses which provide them depth in the area they want to work more, and finally, one semester project work. Of course, one size never fits all, and the basic template could be tweaked if someone comes better prepared, is interested in research. We could allow project work to be replaced by appropriate internship experience in industry. Create several such flexible options around the basic template. Financial support only if one gets selected as teaching assistant or a faculty member is willing to recruit you on his/her sponsored research project. There may be a few need-based scholarships.

Proposal for Lateral Admission in IITs

Several years ago, I had written a blog article suggesting that IITs offer lateral admission. Whenever I have discussed this with people, a few questions have come about - how would you compare students from different colleges, would you have another form of entrance exam for entry into 2nd year.

My response has been that if we are convinced that lateral admission is good for IITs and good for students, then we will find a way out. So before asking for implementation details, are you convinced that it is a good idea. The obvious win for IITs is that the single exam misses out on a lot of meritorious students, and we get a second chance to identify them and recruit them. And this second chance, if designed carefully, will involve not just an exam on one day, but looking at their one year effort, and hence a better predictor of future success than a single exam can ever be. The obvious win for the students is that they get a second chance to get into the institutions of their choice. And, of course, if some student is not convinced that this is good, they don't have to apply.

Good thing about lateral admission is that we don't need all IITs to agree on this. A single IIT can choose to do it. There is some agreement that we will all do silly things together when it comes to admission to first year of under-graduate programs. But there is no such agreement for lateral admissions, and there have been lateral admissions in 60s, 70s, and 80s.

The only top tier institution that admits students laterally (that I know of) is IIIT Hyderabad. They admit students only to dual-degree (BTech+MS), from those who have completed 2 years of engineering in some other college, and these students have to spend 4 years in this program. The idea is that if these students were to complete their bachelors in their current college, they will take 2 more years and then if they were to do a Masters program, that will be another 2 years. So anyone who is looking for doing both Bachelors and Masters is better off doing a much stronger Bachelors and an integrated Masters. Of course, someone only interested in a UG degree or hoping to do a Masters from abroad or from top IITs/IISc in India will not be too keen on this program. So they have ensured that they are not inundated with thousands of applications, and they can choose those students who are well prepared and are ready for a research degree.

We may have to think of our own goals for lateral admission. But the IIITH model is a good one. Many IITs have backtracked on admission to dual-degree programs through JEE because it has been felt that a 12th class student should not be forced to choose a Master's program in an area when s/he is not aware of anything in that area. IIT Kanpur is one of those IITs. And we are noticing that few students voluntarily take up dual-degree programs. As a result, we have a shortage of good quality MTech students, and a shortage of good Teaching Assistants to support our UG teaching. But offering dual-degree after 2nd year of college is fine since the student has been exposed to the discipline, and has a good idea of whether s/he may be interested in Masters program.

We could, therefore, seek admission from students who are about to complete 2 years in their respective colleges. Ideally, we could ask for all the details of projects, internships (if any), other activities in college, and short list on that basis, followed by an interview. But since many of my readers would not trust IITs to be objective, or would fear that this may lead to corruption or at least court cases, may I suggest a test as well. If we could negotiate with GATE that they can allow 2nd year students to give GATE, and also specify a part of the curriculum which is meant for them, it would solve the problem of an objective test. Since GATE is now an online test, such complications can be easily handled. A second year student will be shown only half the paper which is of topics which are pre-announced, and will get a score different from what senior students get. And we could shortlist students based on this score. We could even have some topics/questions which are meant for only these students. In an exam which is taken by 12 lakh students, some additional students will not be a major challenge. (Actually, this could be GATE as well with no changes at all. But that might give some advantage to students from colleges which have more core courses early on.)

So we shortlist students on the basis of this version of GATE. And then we interview and do whatever else we normally do in our MTech admissions, including looking at their two years' record. Once we admit the students, we could go through their transcript and decide what courses in IIT can be waived for them. If we have a doubt about the quality of the course, we could have a small test to check the academic preparation. After 2 years of studies and a good GATE score and good performance in interview, at least one year worth of credits will be waived, and hence this is advertised as a 4-year program. But for some students, many more credits may be waived, and they may even complete their dual degree earlier than 4 years (even in three years, for that matter). We could even consider those who are in 3-year programs in universities (and hence have done less engineering courses).

We could also have lateral admission after 1st year. Here, we could offer a 3.5 year BTech or a 4.5 year dual-degree. To reduce the number of applications to a level where an IIT can handle them without having to conduct a national wide admission test, we could go back to JEE - only those students are eligible who had a JEE rank of less than 50,000 (or whatever will give us reasonable number of applications). And then from those small number of applications, look at all aspects of student life, performance in 1st year, and have an interview. If we have enough seats for this round of admissions (and in several IITs), we could even encourage most students to not repeat JEE but join a good college, since the probability of success after JEE may not be much higher than probability of success in this round, particularly for those who missed coming to IIT by only a few marks.

While we are at it, let me also write about the scheme that Kakodakar Committee had suggested, which isn't lateral admission, but something similar. It suggested that IITs could admit students who have completed 3 years of UG. These students would do one year of UG in IITs, but will promise to stay on for 2 more years doing MTech (and hopefully, PhD). To enable this, IITs would enter into an agreement with colleges (it suggested only NITs, but could be expanded to any university) where the colleges agree to transfer credits done at IITs and more importantly, agree to not give UG degree till a year later, because otherwise, the student may just do a one year of UG at IIT, go back to his/her college, get the UG degree and never come back for MTech. (I wouldn't mind that at all, but that is what was proposed.)

So we could admit students in not just 1st year of UG, but in all other years of UG as well.