Allow BTech Students to Graduate in Less Than 4 Years

Just read the ToI news about unfortunate death of a student of IIT Madras. Apparently he committed suicide because he would not have graduated in May but a few months later. He needed to do some more work on his project. He felt that he would lose his job, and the idea of staying back when a large fraction of his batchmates were graduating did not appeal to him.

The comments by the readers blame him squarely. It was just six more months. There are enough jobs for IITians.

There is no denying that graduating along with your batchmates and joining a job has become an extremely important goal for all students and the parents. Any indication that a student might not graduate in time introduces enormous stress, and every year, at the time of exams, one would find several bright young kids taking their own lives in different parts of the country.

How do we solve this problem. There are all sorts of suggestions on the readers' comments page. We must have professional counselors who would advise the students that six months is only a small fraction of the 50 year work life that they will enjoy. Even the professors should be trained to handle such students sensitively. The heads of the departments who are responsible to break this news to students must be trained to suitably advise the affected students. We must have Yoga or "Art of Living" as compulsory part of the curriculum. Basically, we must make sure that the student does not think of suicide when he comes to know that he has failed.

While all this must be done, there is an alternative, which might be easier to implement.

How about making sure that 80 percent of the batch does not graduate on a particular day. Or even 50 percent of the batch does not graduate on a single day.

Well, IITs have been offering the dual-degree (BTech and MTech together in 5 years) programs wherein the student does not graduate in the regular 4 years. They also have Integrated MSc programs. But that is not enough. A lot of people still graduate in 4 years.

We could ensure that less students graduate in 4 years, by offering more options to them: offer joint BTech-MBA programs, offer double majors (For example, BTech in Civil AND BTech in Mechanical), besides the BTech-MTech dual-degree programs. And then we advise the students that it is in their interest to go for this extra degree. But I suspect that this won't increase the number of students delaying their graduation significantly.

We should also introduce programs in which a student can have a break in studies after 4-5 semesters. He can work in industry or a research lab for a semester or two, get a wider world view, earn some money, and then get back to studies. These students would graduate later than 4 years. (At LNMIIT, we arranged some of the students to spend time at CERN, and other famous labs, doing cutting edge research.)

Another way to have less students graduate in 4 years is to fail a large number of students. But that would be rather mean.

So, we come to yet another (and my favorite) option to reduce the number of students graduating in 4 years - allow them to graduate in less than 4 years. It is high time that we shift to fully flexible credit based systems for all our degree programs. The graduation requirements should be in terms of credits that a student needs to earn, rather than the minimum number of semesters that he should have registered. (In my previous post, I had argued that if we move to credit based system, we would be able to offer an Executive MTech program, which is an urgent need of the industry.)

So students should be able to take an extra course (compared to the suggested program) in regular semester, and also do a course or two in the summer term. My expectation would be that there would be an odd student who would try to graduate in three years, but there would be 10-15 percent students would like to graduate in 7 semesters. Some more students would have done all course work, and would have left with only project work in the 8th semester, and they can graduate anytime during the semester.

So overall, we can have about 20 percent students graduate during or before 8th semester, another 20 percent students encouraged to go for dual-degree programs, and hence graduating after 9th semester or later, and about 10 percent students not graduating at the end of 8th semester due to failure in courses. All this combined would make sure that the number of students graduating at the end of 8th semester is only half the batch, or even less. And that would break the sanctity of a particular date of graduation in students' minds.

When that happens, graduation becomes a process and not a date, and a minor slip in that process will not be considered critical by the students and parents. Of course, industry also would have to become flexible in terms of its joining dates. But that is already happening. In most cases of a delayed graduation, industry is sympathetic and is able to adjust to the situation (at least in my experience at IIT Kanpur).

Of course, allowing early graduation also sends out a signal that we care about our top students. Currently, the feeling on campuses (at least amongst the faculty and the top students) is that all our time is spent on discussing how to help weak students. We must help weak students, but not by excluding good students from our thoughts and actions, altogether.

The Idea of an Executive MTech Program

The MTech program in India is considered a research program, which one does leisurely over a two year period. There is a strong need, however, for different types of offerings at the Master's level, and the more innovative universities can create a program fulfilling that need.

NASSCOM (and many others who have studied quality of Indian higher education system) has pointed out that a large number of engineering graduates are not employable, and most of the graduates that the software industry employ, need significant training running into months. Companies also provide short-term training to their employees on a regular basis.

All this training ensures that the employees are aware of latest technologies and tools and they are able to execute projects incorporating those technologies and using those tools. However, after a decade of growth and promotions, many employees start reaching a plateau in the technical arena. If the college education did not teach basics well enough, all this training cannot take you too far.

For these employees, it appears as if the only way to climb the corporate ladder is to go through the management route. This perception of the employee is taken advantage of by the management institutes who have made executive MBA (or equivalent) options easily available. Management institutes have realized that it is unrealistic to expect a working professional to take a long break in career and do a degree at leisurely pace. But the MBA route to career growth is not a scalable option. As long as industry was growing at rates upwards of 20 percent, it could absorb large number of management graduates. But the need for people with higher technical knowledge is becoming acute.

As stated earlier, all the training that the companies provide cannot compensate for education that happens on a campus. A large number of current employees had gone through a relatively outdated curriculum from faculty members who did not know much better. If Indian industry has to go up in the value chain, they will need employees who are better educated, and not just well trained. This means that there is likely to be a large market for an executive (one-year) MTech program, and if some university starts it, it would be doing the industry a huge favor.

It is common in US universities (and elsewhere) to have multiple options for a master's degree. One can do very few courses and significant research work, or some more course work and a project, or even just course work. One can complete a course-based master's program in one year, though the thesis option would normally take six months longer.

If we look at the way MTech programs are structured in India, it is easy to compress them into a shorter duration programs. At IIT Kanpur (and I believe the credit requirement at other IITs would not be significantly different) one needs to do about 8 courses over 2 semesters, and a thesis work over another 2 semesters where the expected effort is equivalent to 8 courses (with minor variations across departments). Till a few years ago, the requirement was 6 courses and thesis equivalent to 6 courses, which could be completed in 3 semesters.

Why is it that a BTech student does 5 or 6 courses a semester, while an MTech student does only 4 courses a semester. Well, most of the MTech students are expected to provide some support to teaching or research to their department for about 8-10 hours a week. They get financial assistance for doing this work. Because of this requirement, they do only 4 courses. But, if someone does not want this financial support, and would rather do additional courses and finish early (and get a much higher corporate salary in the period that one saves as a result), it should be possible for someone to do 6 courses a semester. MTech students in general, and working professionals in particular are more mature than under-graduate students. They do not spend much time on partying, Internet surfing, movies, and games.

The rest is straight-forward. If the MTech program starts at the beginning of the summer term, a student does 2 courses in the summer, 6 courses each in the two semesters, and another 2 courses in the next summer, and in a total of 14 months, one has completed the 16 courses required for an MTech program. This does not reduce the credit requirement for the MTech program, only replaces thesis with courses, keeping in view the requirement of the industry.

Notice that it is possible to start the program in the beginning of the summer term, since the target audience are the working professionals. So no issues regarding having to wait for the result of the BTech program.

In fact, one can further reduce it effectively to one year, by requiring a project work to be done in the second summer, which would be equivalent to two courses. And this project work can be done in the company where the student is getting employed.

To run such a program at a very high quality, one can follow the ISB model. In the ISB model, one does not have an 18-week semester, but rather 6-week terms (including a couple of days break between two terms). So a student does not do 6 courses in parallel, but only 2 courses at a time, which get over within 6 weeks. It is easier to bring in high quality visiting faculty for 6 weeks, rather than for
a full semester of 18 weeks. So overall, the year is organized as seven 6-week terms. The exact dates can be tweaked to make it convenient for the visiting faculty. One could have a break of 3 weeks after four terms, which could be used for placement activities.

The puritans will balk at compressing the courses so much, but I believe that at the master's level, when one has only the motivated students and high-quality faculty, adequate learning can take place at the fast pace. But I concede that this may not work at the under-graduate level.

The program makes financial sense for all stake holders. If we assume that we would be able to attract high quality faculty by offering a compensation of about Rs. 10,000 per lecture hour, then the cost of faculty is about Rs. 4 lakh per course. If the physical infrastructure already exists in the institute, normally one would expect all non-faculty costs to be roughly equal. So the total cost to the institute for one course is about Rs. 8 lakhs. Assuming that there are only 40 students in a course, the average cost to the student is about Rs. 20,000 per course. If the student has to do 14 courses, the total cost to the student is only Rs. 2.8 lakhs. Even if we throw in goodies like a free laptop, invite a few foreign faculty at a higher cost, include personal costs of the student like mess food, the total cost to the student will still be within Rs.4 lakhs for the entire program.

In the current two year programs, typically the student earns enough during the program to take care of tuition and other expenses. So there is generally zero cost to the student. In the one-year program, the cost is Rs. 4 lakhs, but this is peanuts compared to what the student will earn in that one year that s/he saves.

Students will be attracted towards this program, if either their current employers promise to retain their jobs after they return, or there are other employers who have promised to consider the graduates for employment (of course, at a higher salary than what most of these students were earning). So one has to have agreements with employers for providing support to this program. Also, some students would have cash flow problem to pay high cost in the beginning. Therefore, arrangements have to be made with banks for student loans.

To summarize, universities need to innovate to solve real problems of industry in terms of not having sufficient number of people who can become technical leaders. The idea of an executive MTech is a step in that direction.

AIEEE Paper Leak

Yesterday, there was chaos across the country. The AIEEE paper was found in the possession of a person in Lucknow (and later in coaching Mandi of Kanpur, and other places as well). Apparently the paper was being sold for huge sums, some media reports mentioning figures as high as Rs. 6 lakhs. Why on earth someone will pay lakhs of rupees for a paper, when the probability that such a leak will be found out is very high. But that is not what I want to discuss.

I am amazed by the handling of the incident by CBSE. It was quite remarkable that CBSE had thought of this possibility and had a full back up in terms of duplicate exam material which was already stored in each city where there was a center for the exam, and this material could be distributed to most of the centers within a couple of hours.

(Contrast this with JEE paper leak in 1997, which, co-incidentally also happened in Lucknow. We had to postpone admission by 5 weeks, causing havoc to admissions in all other engineering colleges in the country, since most students who get admission to IITs, will leave their other college, causing vacancies there. There was no plan B.)

Unfortunately, there was AFMC exam in the afternoon, and thousands of students were scheduled to give both. Worse, some schools were centers for both AIEEE and AFMC exam, and therefore, could not re-conduct AIEEE after 3 hours. CBSE lost no time in giving relief to all affected students. They announced that those who had to give AFMC or those whose center cannot conduct a late AIEEE exam will be able to give AIEEE on 8th May. Taking such quick decisions must be applauded. Of course, the problem did not end here. Some students complained that they had both AFMC on 1st afternoon, and another exam on 8th. CBSE again came to their rescue and said that they will be able to give exam on 10th May.

What this means is that CBSE was ready with not just one extra set of examination material, but is also ready with multiple sets of question papers. That is excellent planning. So despite a major problem on hand, CBSE will stick to its timeline for announcing results.

When 11 lakh students are told that they have to stop writing an exam, and give a different exam a couple of hours later, this is bound to cause problems. Chaos is bound to happen. But the fact that more than 10 lakh students could give the exam the same day is something that speaks volumes about how AIEEE is planned (as opposed to JEE where we take double the time to announce the result for less than half the number of candidates, with no transparency).

And now an interesting outcome of this. Since the students would have given several different exams (the question paper on 1st, 8th, and 10th, and the online version would be different), there would be some way to compare the performances of the students across those exams. And if the exam can be held on 1st, 8th, and 10th May,
why can't it be held on 1st December, 1st January and 1st May (just giving three random dates to make a point that it is possible to organize the exam on multiple dates through out the year - and may even allow students to sit for 2 of those exams - something that I have been arguing for in many of my posts).

Added on 3rd May: CBSE has announced that the exam will be held on 11th May for all those who could not give the exam on 1st May. So, it will not be on 8th and 10th, but only on 11th.

Let me add that all the information above is from media, and if you are an affected student, please contact AIEEE/CBSE for authentic information. Do not hold me responsible, if any of this information turns out to be incorrect.