Another Link in the Chain

We will begin with trying to understand the undergradute IIT student (I know too little about the post-graduate students' mindset to comment here). We start with accepting that fact that the motivations for coming to IIT vary widely amongst the approximately 600 undergraduate students who join IIT Bombay each year. Also, before we delve into their motivations, let us try to understand the basic nature of these students (as I understand it).

The JEE (The Joint Entrance Exam, the only way to get into the IIT undergraduate programme) has historically been a challenging examination. Even with the so-called "degradation" of the exam as well as the "factory-production" of JEE aspirants in Kota and elsewhere, it remains a tough exam to crack - not least because about 1.75 lac students appear for the exam and only about 4000 are finally successfull. With the odds of success this low, it takes a rare breed of very motivated students to get through. Even at the so-called "factories" of Kota, the kind of persistence and will power demanded from a student is extraordinary.

One very specific trait that I've observed in most IITians is that they are particularly (for lack of a better word) whimsical. I'll clarify what I mean here. Once a student gets it into his head that a certain thing is something he wants to do (for whatever reason), he is capable of putting in tremendous effort to get it done. On the flip side, if he perceives low value, he will not bother to do it for any reason (We will get back to how an IITian judges value in a while). This is more true after he has "proven his mettle" by clearing the all-conquering JEE.

Before I go deeper into the nature of an IITian, I'll try to list out the broad reasons why a student would want to join an IIT in the first place.

1. Interest in engineering (the ideal case?)
2. To find new challenges (this is different from a basic interest in engineering)
3. To study with the best in the country (ensured by the tough JEE?)
4. Parental pressure (We'll try to understand why parents would pressurise the students, under another heading)
5. To prove one's capabilities (I can too)
6. To secure a good career (the IIT brand)
7. Peer pressure (all my friends are doing it)

We'll come back to discussing the student again later.

Posted by Parijat at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments

As is customary in any such study, I'll begin with trying to list out the major stakeholders in this issue. The first two, and the most obvious, stakeholders are the students and the faculty. Followed by these is the institute as an independent organisation with its own presence in society and academia. Another immediately associated group is the group of parents of the students of the institute. In a peripheral way, the industrial sector of the nation is also a stakeholder as they depend on research coming out of institutes such as IITs for furthering of technical prowess. The government is also a stakeholder since they provide the largest share (infact, almost all) of the money required to run these institutes. Insofar as the government is spending the tax-payers' money to subsidise education/research in these institutes, the tax-payer is also a stakeholder. Thus, we have established that the stakeholders, not necessarily in this order of importance are:

1. The students
2. The faculty
3. The institute
4. The parents
5. Industry
6. The government
7. The tax-payers (people at large)

Posted by Parijat at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments

Initially I had thought that each entry will be to tackle one small problem. However, over the last several weeks, I have been exposed to a more critical and immediate problem. This is the problem of plunging student motivation within IIT Bombay. The faculty has been very worried that the students no longer wish to study their courses and that they (atleast the undergraduate students)produce very little research. This has been a topic of ongoing debate for a while now but no clear solution is forthcoming. The solution, in my opinion, will emerge only by understanding the motivations of both, the students and the faculty, for being at IIT Bombay in the first place and then creating an incentive system that takes into account these motivations. However, understanding the motivations of 6000-odd (and I do mean odd) individuals is no mean task. Here I will attempt to put down what I make of it, and in the process, hope that atleast some of the issues get clarified.

Posted by Parijat at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments