IIT directors urge govt to give new institutes another name
April 4th, 2008
Excerpts from an article in the Business Standard:
Directors of some Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are understood to have written to Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia urging the government to give the proposed IITs some other name.
They are of the view that calling the new institutes “IITs” would dilute the brand image of the existing premier institutes, which figure among the world’s 100 best technology universities and are compared with the likes of MIT, California University and Berkeley.
If true, this is an unfortunate development. I do not think increasing the number of IITs from 7 to 16 is going to have any impact on the existing IITs, if done right. IIMs don’t seem to mind any "brand dilution"; the elitist attitude of the IITs is rather shocking.
IMHO, existing IITs are so good because of their students, faculty, and funding. If the government is willing to invest in the IITs and is careful in hiring the faculty, then the proposed IITs can have equally good infrastructure and faculty compared to the old ones. As far as students are concerned, doubling the intake is not going to impact the quality of students drastically. I believe that the top 6000 IIT JEE rankers are as good as the top 3000 rankers (or however many students are admitted these days). Finally, existing IITs are nowhere near MIT or UCB, so its not really a big gap to bridge for the proposed IITs.
Entry Filed under: IITs, IISc, IISERs, NISER, IIMs,NITs, IIITs