Raj Subramaniam

IIT/IIM: National Shame!

Let me add a disclaimer right at the outset: This post is not intended to be provocative and I definitely do not want to be drawn into a lengthy debate.

My earliest brush with the word IIM was in primary school when my father, an employee in a public sector company, spoke about the time he first stood outside the gates of IIM (Bangalore) many years before his marriage. That image got stuck in my mind and there were many nights when I tried visualizing what my father had described - I wanted to feel the same awe. I got my chance not much later when one fine day, sometime during my middle or high school, my father decided to take me to IIM(B) on his 50CC moped. After what seemed like a very long journey, we reached the imposing gates and a huge signage with the words Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. After a quick chat with the security head, we walked in. I don’t remember how many hours we spent walking around the campus but it was late evening by the time we started our ride back. The return journey seemed a lot shorter - I was just not in my senses. It was a kind of high that I’ve experienced very few times after that (the latest when I was getting my married to my wonderful wife). I was hooked - and from that day forward, all I wanted to do was to force my way through those gates.

Fast forward a few years - I was peer-pressurized into joining a couple of coaching classes for the IIM entrance examination (CAT). That is when the sheer magnitude of what I wanted hit me. The classes used to be packed with extremely bright people - all fighting for the few hundred seats on offer. I loved and hated the challenge equally. Something didn’t feel right even though the competitor in me reveled.

Cut to a couple of years ahead - I was sitting in my room in one of the IIMs and surfing through the articles online when I was sent a link by one of my classmates. The link pointed to an article in “The Economist” which had rated my B-School as the toughest in the world to get into. The primary criterion was the ratio of applicants to seats. On an average there were close to 70,000 “serious applicants” for less than 200 seats. The ratio has jumped many times recently with close to 200,000 competing for around 250 odd seats. The whole school was celebrating - I was saddened.

I come from a place where there is a huge premium on education. Families make many sacrifices to provide good education to the kids. My thoughts wandered to my classmates at the CAT coaching centre - what made me special? Does just a fraction of a percentile point make me better? I thought not.

Last night while catching up on the day’s news, I came across this story about IIT entrance examination results on NDTV 24/7 where the news anchor mentions (or was it proudly declares) that getting into an IIT is tougher than getting into Harvard or MIT. That took me back to the time when I was sitting in my room and feeling guilty at being a student at a “top of the line” B-School.

What were we celebrating? SCARCITY?

The years that followed my graduation from IIM thoroughly alarmed me - the government with its shoddy and short-sighted attempts at making quality education available to all and the IIMs trying preserve their “exclusivity”. Both made extremely hollow statements - while the government failed to convincingly present their case, the IIMs took refuge under the argument that they were protesting against “dilution in the quality of education”.

If a nation of over 1.2 billion people does not have the faculty to man atleast 100 IIMs and 100 IITs, then this country shouldn’t have been posting almost double digit growth rates over the last few years. Frankly speaking, I have come across many lecturers and professors during my under-graduation days who were at par with those from IIMs.

Exclusivity/elitism is discrimination and a denial of choice. With such a large youth population, this country could definitely do with a few hundred IITs and IIMs. The only way to turbo-charging this country’s growth and changing the fate of a nation is by giving the choice of quality education to all. So what if we don’t win awards from The Economist? Why not standardize and implement the IIT/IIM-way of education across the country? Why not follow the hiring processes of IITs/IIMs for all universities across the country? If an applicant with 98.3 percentile points deserves to be in an IIM, so does someone who missed out with a 98.2 percentile - or for that matter an applicant with 97 or 96 percentile.

So lets stop this sham of celebrating scarcity and elitism in the garb preserving quality. This is the last thing a young nation on the path of endless possibilities needs. Lets march on!

UPDATE: Please read this too!