IIT Paradox: High Industry Recognition but Low World Ranking

In 2003, Bill Gates delivered the keynote speech in an IIT alumni meet at California where he described IIT as a ‘world class institute’, a ‘unique institution’ and an ‘incredible institution’. He even said that ‘IIT is a world treasure’. About 40 of every 100 people employed at the famous Silicon Valley are IITians. Almost all the top universities in the world recognize IITians as one of the brightest faculty members and students they have. The top news channel of the US – CBS – even released a complete documentary on the IITs. Still, when it comes to World University Rankings, IITs don’t even make it to the Top 50 Technological Universities of the World!

Most of the major university rankings of the world judge institutions on a number of parameters like infrastructure, quality of faculty, quality of teaching, quality of research, number of papers published, number of citations per faculty and other such things. This is where IIT system falters. Lack of funding, corruption and brain-drain phenomena mean that research conducted at IITs is negligible in comparision to what it could have been. The severe crunch of quality M.Tech and PhD programmes at IITs are hurting their rankings too.

Yet, apparently, this has not stopped IITs from topping other universities when it comes to the quality of manpower they produce. In fact, many industry surveys have put IITs at par with the Top 5 Universities of the World (such as MIT and Stanford) for the quality of graduates it produces. IIT alumni also contribute to at least 30-40% of the quality research outputs of the best universities in the world.

So, while IITs may not be considered the best on the parameters of the university ranking bodies, IIT alumni are a force in the US academia and industry for the quantity and quality of their contributions. It means that IITs are the most efficient and economical manpower generator in the world.

Overanalyzing about why IITs are not in Top 100 Universities in the World might not be quite fruitful in the long run. While we do need to improve upon our weaknesses, we should also take pride in the fact that they are counted among Top 10 Universities of the World too at times. We also need to focus on what makes us different from any average university in the world and emphasize on them too.