IIT Kharagpur Suspends a Professor

As per this ToI news item, IIT Kharagpur has finally decided to suspend Professor Rajeev Kumar. It was coming. IIT Kharagpur has been in the news for the last five years for all the wrong reasons. And generally government organizations tend to believe that we must shoot the messenger, rather than take care of basic problems that are being raised. The leadership is very unlikely to question itself. And the service rules for government officers are such that if Government wants, it can find ways to harass any employee. So, given this power equation, we were just waiting for this event to happen.

But it is sad. IIT Kharagpur was the first IIT, and has been the harbinger of quality engineering education. With such an illustrious history, it has to stoop to the level that it has gone to, is really sad and reflective of the quality of leadership that it has had in the last decade or so.

Let us look at the charges against Prof. Kumar, as reported. He had alleged that there is mass copying in IIT Kharagpur, could not prove it, and this tarnished the image of the faculty and students, and lowered their morale. Similarly, he made allegations about some wrongdoing in the laptop purchase process of the Institute.

How can an allegation of mass copying lower the morale of the faculty. Suppose I were to allege that Indian Army has killed 1 crore civilians in Jammu and Kashmir. This would tarnish the image and lower the morale ONLY IF people believe it. Otherwise, it would be treated as a stupid joke, and I cannot be punished for stupid jokes. On the other hand, if what I say is largely true, then I cannot be punished for just making a statement of fact. The only time I can be punished for tarnishing image is when what I say is wrong, but still believable. I am sure that IIT Kharagpur faculty (and academicians and other interested persons elsewhere) did not take his charge seriously. (And if several faculty members of IIT Kharagpur faculty did take the charge seriously, and actually got demoralized by it, students must avoid going to IIT Kharagpur to be taught by persons of such fragile egos. They will mistreat you also.)

There is a bit more problem with the laptop purchase in the sense that the model that IIT Kharagpur was planning to buy and the model that Prof. Kumar was planning to buy were not identical. They were very similar in specifications, and there could have been a confusion in the beginning. But as soon as it was pointed out that they were not identical, he should have apologized and closed the chapter. But think about it. This charge has stuck a bit more compared to the previous charge, because there is an element of truth in it. The way IIT Kharagpur treated his request, and tried to malign him on account of his asking his son to get an additional quotation, was not worthy of a world class institution. They made some statements and then retracted. They were not fully transparent either. Later, MHRD had to intervene and asked them to stop purchases of those laptops. Is this matter so serious and so one-sided that a Professor be suspended. Sorry, that is too draconian a step by IIT Kharagpur.

It is true that IIT Kharagpur reputation has been going down consistently since 2006, when Prof. Rajeev Kumar exposed the serious problems in the way IIT Kharagpur conducted JEE that year. In my earlier blog, Trends in JEE Counseling, I had mentioned that IIT Kharagpur has seen the sharpest decline of closing ranks of various programs amongst the oldest five IITs in the last five years, and my conjecture is that it is at least partly due to the bad press that IIT Kharagpur has received in this period.

IIT Kharagpur has received bad press on several counts. The issue of fake institute, which was apparently not just run by some faculty members of the IIT, but even alleged to have received some official support in the past. The issue of poor health facilities on campus, leading to death of a student, which resulted in Prof. Damodar Acharya submitting his resignation (which was promptly rejected after there was calm on campus). Director of IIT Kharagpur has been made an accused in AICTE Scam as per this ToI report. It may be noted that Prof. Acharya was AICTE Chairman before assuming the role of Director, IIT Kharagpur.

These issues have been far more serious, far more demoralizing, and tarnished the image far more than the laptop issue or the mass copying issue. But IIT Kharagpur is certainly not happy with the JEE 2006 case, which Professor Kumar has been pursuing for the last five years, and which has resulted in significant (but still not sufficient) improvement in transparency of JEE. So, they have now found relatively minor cases, which they can use to punish Prof. Kumar.

By the way, in the issue of Director being made a co-accused by CBI, which should demoralize the faculty a lot more, there is no move to make him resign, not just in IIT Kharagpur, but even outside. It is because, by and large, the academicians understand that an accusation is not the same as a proof of involvement or culpability. Everyone has to be presumed innocent, till proven guilty. But under the leadership of the same Director, IIT Kharagpur is now interested in silencing a prominent critic.

Educational institutions should not be seen as government departments. They must have value systems which are far more liberal than what may be permitted in other government departments. And, I am, of course, referring to the freedom of speech. Someone should read and understand what all is accepted by administrators of top universities in the world. The tolerance on IIT Kharagpur campus is really low at this time.

If IIT Kharagpur administration wants to consider itself as a Government Department, and therefore, charge-sheet a professor for talking to media, then it shows the vision of its leadership. Any potential student or faculty should think not just twice, but 10 times, before joining such an institute, which is agreeing through its actions that it cannot be a world class institute. Other IITs are at least trying.

There is another charge against Professor Kumar. He apparently threatened the Dean once. And as a proof, they have shown him a copy of the email that he sent. The email essentially says that because of the Dean's involvement in other cases, he should not be a member of the committee to investigate Prof. Kumar's letters, and urged him to recuse himself from the committee. Now, Prof. Kumar has mis-spelt the word and said rescue , which apparently is a threat word. You rescue yourself if you can, I will kill you, sort of thing. Can anything be more laughable, and does one still need proof that IIT Kharagpur is hell bent on destroying a career, because of the past genuine exposures of that professor.

What is the solution, now. I think it is clear that Prof. Kumar has gone overboard in some of his recent allegations. Also, there is too much negative feelings between him and a lot of people at IIT Kharagpur. This is not the environment where he can continue to live peacefully, and carry out his teaching and research. He and IIT Kharagpur administration should come to a settlement, which may include withdrawal of all charges and suspension against him, and he should immediately start looking for a job. With his credentials, he should not have any difficulty in joining one of the several other IITs. He could take VRS from IIT Kharagpur, so that he can get both a pension and a salary, which will be financially beneficial to him. IIT Kharagpur can then work towards finding other scapegoats for its problems.

But while all this play itself out, my message to JEE 2011 candidates: Avoid an institute where a significant part of time and energy of its leadership is spent on ensuring that its problems are not visible to the outside world.

JEE 2011 Admits Errors in Question Papers

JEE has announced the answer key on its website.

It took JEE only 5 weeks to announce the answer key. And it must have hurt the organizers of the world's toughest exam to admit that they had SEVEN questions which were either ambiguous, or had a printing mistake, or were simply wrong. And these questions are worth 36 marks. That is huge when 4+ lakh students are vying for less than 10,000 seats.

And this is not all. Apparently, there are more questions, even in Chemistry, where the "official" answer is being considered unsatisfactory by the students. But IIT will not take cognizance of these complaints. The answer key is final.

And one wonders why did IITs take 5 weeks to announce the marking scheme. If they had done so in 5 hours, they could have taken inputs from all, and then finalized the scheme. But now, they have to announce the result on 25th May, and they can't change the key at this late stage, even if some errors are genuine. The doubt about JEE 2011 will always remain.

Of course, given that they weren't interested in listening to the students to begin with, they did the next best thing, in terms of giving marks to all, or giving marks for multiple correct answers.

But doing the best under the circumstances does not mean that it won't hurt anyone. For the ambiguous questions, if someone found the answer, what is now deemed correct, but did not write the answer, the candidate does not get any benefit. Of course, the hope is that there are very few such students, and some unfairness to them is more acceptable than to redo the exam and delay the entire admission process by two months. (And I agree that one needs to be practical about these things.)

The Right to Information Act has forced JEE to give out some information in the last 5-6 years, and in each of these years, there have been some serious doubts about the conduct of the exam. It makes me wonder. Was I lucky to have passed JEE a few decades ago. May be they were equally inept at conducting the exam at that time too, and I was declared selected by mistake. I must thank my stars that there was no RTI then. Otherwise, someone else may have studied in IIT in my place, and that someone would have been writing this blog, instead of me.

I think IITs should seriously consider giving up JEE. They just can't handle it. A professional organization should be entrusted with conduct of such an important exam.

My 2011 List of Recommended CS/IT Programs Outside the IIT System

For last many years, I have been coming out with a small list of CS/IT Departments, which are in my opinion provide a decent quality of education, or have something interesting about them. I have formed my opinion about these departments, mostly through a visit, but sometimes by talking to alumni, other academicians, and reading information provided on their website.

This year, I thought I will put it on blog to have some amount of public discussion on this list. But "limited" is the operative word here. Please do not mind if I reject your comment, as I do not intend to make this a free-for-all forum.

I have primarily looked at CS or IT departments. In India, many Institutes (particularly NITs) built their reputation based on traditional engineering disciplines. When Computer Science was introduced to most of these institutes a couple of decades ago, they just could not find enough faculty, and most of the NITs (and many old government institutions) continue to have serious shortage of faculty. But the way things happen in India, if some institute is good in one discipline, we assume, without question, that that institute is good in every discipline. I have tried not to get influenced by the presence of good traditional departments on the same campus, and therefore, you would notice that some of the high ranking institutes are not on this page, because I believe that their high ranking is based on departments other than CS and IT.

I have also resisted the temptation of looking at the placement scenarios. I strongly believe that the placement is a function of current perception (which is no indicator of quality). One should be interested in long term career, and not in placement. Long term career is a function of quality of education (besides your own personality, hard work, life skills, and a good bit of luck). In my view (and I have talked to thousands of people on this), initial placement has no causal relationship or even a strong correlation with a good career. And hence I only look at parameters which ensure quality, primarily the quality of faculty.

But I also look at something interesting that the Institute is doing. So the list below does not just represent a set of Institutes with good CS faculty, but those who are unique in some ways.

Disclaimer: Do Not take this as my ranking of CS/IT Departments. These are good departments that I know of. I do not claim to know about all the Institutes in the country. And as I said above, I am also including some departments for their innovation, rather than an overall quality.

If I have not listed a department here, it can be for a variety of reasons. I may not have been able to visit the Institute in the last few years, and could not get enough information from the website. I may not have even tried to get information about the Institute, since it may not have been on my radar. And, of course, I may not have found anything exciting on my visit there, and I do not believe that they are doing a good enough job of education.

Other minimum requirements for listing here:

• I only list institutes which are autonomous in academic processes (that is, they are either university themselves or a constituent college of a university). ( I am not listing colleges affiliated to any university.
  
  
• I only list colleges which have an under-graduate program in Computer Science or IT. (So, great places like IISc, Bangalore, are not on this list.)
  

First of all, I would like to list four IIITs, that is, Institutes focusing on Information Technology, which in my opinion are providing excellent quality of education in IT related disciplines in India. You can jump to a brief note of each Institute by clicking on the name.

1. International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H), Hyderabad
   
2. Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-D), Delhi
   
3. Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), Gandhinagar
   
4. LN Mittal Institute of Information Technology (LNMIIT), Jaipur
   

Of course, there are many others who have impressed me for something or the other. The list is as follows.

1. BITS, Pilani
   
2. NIT, Calicut
   
3. Jadavpur University, Kolkata
   
4. NIT, Hamirpur
   
5. Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi
   
6. College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai
   

I consider IIIT, Hyderabad as the best alternative to IITs (from amongst the institutes I know or I have been told of). This Institute is already competing with IITs on attracting faculty, and every year it does attract some students who have got a good enough rank in JEE to get admission to IITs. They also get top students from AIEEE, and I believe that these students are as good as those in IITs. Basically, if you made a small mistake on the day of JEE, and did not do that mistake in AIEEE, you join IIIT Hyderabad. They have tremendous focus on research and human values. I have visited IIIT Hyderabad umpteen number of times, and I come back more impressed every time I go there.
IIIT Delhi is the newest amongst the IIITs. Though it has been in the existence for only 3 years, it has already started making waves. It has been able to attract excellent faculty, start strong research programs, have a great curriculum, and everything else that you would want from a good institution. It is supported by Delhi Government, though it is managed largely through a board which has very little representation from Delhi Government. Its Director, Prof. Pankaj Jalote, is a well known academician who has been writing a great deal about technical education for the last many years. He has a great vision and his presence as the founding director is really giving this Institute a great shape.
Another Institute, which is making an impact in IT education is DA-IICT at Gandhinagar. I am very impressed with the number of faculty members with PhD degrees from various IITs and decent US universities. And let me admit, being a faculty member myself, I think that an Institute which has so many of PhDs in their faculty, has to be on the right track. Of course, having "Dhirubhai Ambani" in the name of the Institute will ensure that the ADA (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani) group would never let it become a second-rate institution. Further, in their curriculum, there is a unique mix of Information Technology (CS) and Communication Technology, and depending on one's interest, one can go into the depth in either direction. And they seem to truly believe that under-graduate education is about broadening the horizons, and not become an expert. So not only do they have humanities courses in their curriculum, but they also have a six-week stay in a rural setting as part of curriculum.
LNMIIT is the fourth of the IT-focused institute which has potential to compete with the best in the future. The Institute has excellent infrastructure, beautiful architecture, and some of the best teachers in the country, who have retired from IIT system. Many of the young faculty members too have PhDs from IITs, IISc, and other fine institutions. Another great thing about LNMIIT is that they let you chose and change the discipline any time you want, with very liberal limits. You decide the discipline at the end of first year, and if after doing a few courses in that discipline, you think you like something else, just change it. They believe that a single exam on a single day should not determine the career of a young boy or girl. So they offer admissions through both AIEEE and IIT JEE. The curriculum is modern, and has only 40 odd courses. (Elsewhere, I have argued that a BTech curriculum should have no more than about 40 courses.) LNMIIT is a unique experiment of education in the joint sector. It is not a private college. It is a public private partnership between the Rajasthan Government and Lakshmi and Usha Mittal Foundation. And of course, Jaipur is arguably the best city to live in North India.
I admire BITS, Pilani for a lot of innovation that they have been doing in the engineering education. Whether it is the one semester training (Practice School) in the industry, or their online entrance exam, they always seem to be a step ahead of others in the new ways of doing education. They have an excellent dual-degree program, more flexible than any IIT can boast of. They have the best admission process, which takes some amount of language abilities into account. Of course, one concern that I have is whether BITS is spreading itself too thin by growing so fast. They have opened campuses in Dubai, Goa, and Hyderabad. Also, their focus on research seems less than other top class institutes in the country. (And, by the way, my strong recommendation is only for the Pilani campus.)
In September 2006, I had a chance to visit NIT Calicut, and I must say that I was very impressed. As you can see from the short list of institutes on this page, I do not get impressed easily. And let me tell you why. The first thing I noticed was that pretty much every faculty member in the department had a degree from either an IIT or IISc. They do hire people who have a BTech degree, but then ask them to do graduate education from outside. Most colleges run graduate programs (MTech or PhD) primarily to ensure that their own faculty members can get part-time graduate degrees. Even in NITs, most faculty members do MTech or PhD internally. But this in-breeding is dangerous for the quality of a department, and NIT Calicut has avoided the path of convenience to ensure quality. The maintenance of the campus is another thing that struck me as something great. The infrastructure is very good. The faculty is very cohesive. They have resisted the temptation of starting a program on IT. (Why shouldn't CSE and IT departments be merged in all NITs? There is hardly any difference in the programs, and these differences can be handled by offering electives.)
As one of the oldest engineering college in the country, Jadavpur University has made great contributions to the country. It was one of the early universities to start programs in computer science. It has a faculty, which includes 20 PhDs, which is rare, and almost impossible to find outside the IIT system. They have put out the number of their papers and other output on the website, which is good, though I would have liked to see the list of those papers, preferably with links to download them. The number of specializations is more than the number of faculty members. A large number of those PhDs are from Jadavpur University itself, and as I said above, I think there is something wrong with a department that encourages so many of the internal PhDs. This is particularly strange in their case, when fine institutions like IIT Kharagpur and ISI Kolkata are nearby. And the website is very poorly designed.
If there was an award for the most improved Institute in the country, it had to be given to NIT Hamirpur. Besides being the most beautiful campus that I have visited (and I have visited more than 100 colleges in the country), the improvements in the last five years are everywhere to see. You talk to anyone and they have a story to tell, a story of change, a change for the positive. The infrastructure improvement (computers, Internet bandwidth, buildings, and everything else) have taken place at a very rapid pace. It is no longer a sleepy NIT, with no link to the outside world. Now they welcome visitors from other NITs, IITs, and everywhere else. And once you go there, you are bound to fall in love with the campus. The curriculum has seen major changes (for the good). There is focus on hiring more faculty. They have started new MTech programs. They are starting to build relationships with their alumni. Everything that a college can and should do is being done at NIT Hamirpur, and it is no surprise to me that they have started appearing in some of the surveys of top engineering colleges. It also shows that while institutions are built through team-work, leadership makes a huge difference. Prof. I K Bhat, ex-Director of NIT Hamirpur, is one such visionary, who has made a huge difference. But the question being asked now is: Who after Prof. Bhat? The Institute has been without a Director for the past six months.
Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi has many strengths. It has been participating in the Joint Entrance Examination for several decades and that has really given it a good brand image. It is part of a great university and a great campus. That means that not only the campus has facilities of all sorts, but it also enables some cultural exchange between engineering students and non-engineering students, which is very good for wholesome education. And of course, it is expected that IT BHU will soon be converted into an IIT. The bill has already been passed by Lok Sabha, and Rajya Sabha is expected to pass it in the next session. And, as this list only contains institutes other than IITs, this is perhaps the last year for IT BHU to be on this list.
Another excellent place that I visited in 2006 is College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai. The CS department has a fairly large faculty, and lots of them have a PhD degree. There is an active research program, and one can find several publications from that department in literature. It is an active and vibrant department. Also, they have a very interesting part-time under-graduate program. As I said above, whenever I visit a department, I am looking out for something unique, an idea which is worth emulating, and I don't know of any other place which has such a part-time under-graduate program. The curriculum is based on a credit-based system, which is a big positive.
If you have a suggestion for including another institute, please let me know. But back up that suggestion with data. Not placement data. Not India Today ranking, or any other ranking. Not the closing rank of AIEEE. But data about quality of faculty or something innovative about the program there.