Why We Should Continue Celebrating JEE Toppers

Shri Gautam Desiraju has been extremely vocal on Twitter on the short-comings of the JEE framework and its dangers for our education system and our students.

He has also written an article building on those same threads in Swarajya recently. He has perhaps intentionally avoided any nuance in that post to provoke the readers. But there are plenty of blind spots in his analysis which merit a slightly elaborate response. This post is an attempt to shine some light on those blind spots.

We must first set some expectations from IITs and students of those institutes before we try and navigate through the many allegations and sentences passed by Shri Desiraju against them.

It would be fair to compare a median B.Tech graduate from the IITs with the undergraduates from the top five campuses in any advanced country. Hence, expectations from him must also be roughly the same.

The motivations, attractions and confusions of an undergraduate will also be similar. But, Shri Desiraju’s expectations from a median 17-year-old IIT UG student are much higher than parents!

17-year-old UG students are expected to pay attention to their coursework, turn-in their assignments on time, understand their domain and give some serious thought to their life and career ahead.

There are exceptions across the globe, as there are in IITs – where select students impress the professors and become a part of research work in different capacities. However, that is not the norm anywhere. We must remember that these 17-year-olds are not there to double-up as free labour for someone else’s research job.

Shri Desiraju also seems to take a great deal of pleasure in pointing out the total failure of IIT graduates in starting companies like Microsoft, Tesla, or Facebook.

What he calls as “social media hype” or “annual polemics which come wedded with their JEE ranks” – seems to be largely a creation of his own fertile mind. When a 17-year-old enters one of the top five IITs, the society assumes that he will earn comfortably, emigrate to a developed country, continue his studies in a top university abroad, become a millionaire etc.

Undergraduates from IITs have checked these boxes with phenomenal success. It is this predictable track record that adds to the appeal of those institutes. As is well known - plenty of IIT alumni have started companies, made pioneering contributions to Science and Engineering.

Reasonable people must have realistic expectations. M.Techs from IITs are designing the same kind of chips as say someone with an MS from UT Austin may be designing in the Dallas HQ of a US MNC.

Contribution of B.Techs from IITs to the definition, design and execution of a software product from Hyderabad is definitely comparable to that of a MS graduate from Columbia University employed in Boston.

IIT graduates in a Korean design centre in Bengaluru are equal partners and owners in the design of complex systems – as much as their Korean counterparts in Seoul. There was a time when these opportunities were open only to IIT graduates, but today a lot of capable engineers from non-IIT campuses are also contributing admirably in these efforts. 

Why does not someone with “a ring-side seat in the Indian educational system for 45 years in two of the most well-known educational institutions in the country” – notice these obvious trends?

I would guess that the part of the reason is clearly the contemptuous gaze one takes at every forward and upward step taken by the Indians in India.

Perhaps, Shri Desiraju might have respected these engineers more if they had done their B.Tech from some nondescript college and then taken a huge education loan to do a MS from a UTx, or UCxy and landed the same job in the US HQ instead of those “Global Capability Centres” – which he holds in such high contempt! 

Every domain of engineering in India follows its own trajectory based on the quality of academia, market opportunity and student interest. Each of these are not independent variables by themselves but depend on a host of other factors.

A median student in a third world country like India, with a per capita income of under $2,500, can certainly be excused for working hard to ensure a better life for himself and his family.

There are plenty of students coming into the IITs for their love of Engineering and Sciences, our faculty must do whatever it takes to keep an open mind about the next generations. One can find so many cases of students volunteering across departments and “putting-enthu” to participate in research/project work outside their coursework.

After pouring much scorn on the IIT’s, its students and the past ten generations of each of those students (implying they are Nazis etc), Shri Desiraju surprisingly identifies some obvious and important issues plaguing our education system – but does not even bother to discuss any solutions.

He bemoans the lack of space for meritorious students in India on the one hand, and on the other dismisses the stream of capable students in IITs because their intellect has been tainted by hard work.

He laments the disastrous effect the caste and language politics have had on our campuses on the one hand, and on the other hand makes arguments that will directly strengthen the very hands of those actors.

He had ended his post with the question, “What would happen if the Computer Science B.Tech. program in IIT Bombay were suspended for one year?"

Answer to that question is obvious, “Those students will either go to EE in IIT Bombay or CSE in IIT Madras or Delhi. They are highly unlikely to opt for Integrated MSc in Chemistry or Physics because one CSE dept got closed.”

Let us not assume knocking down elite engineering departments will automatically benefit the Sciences in India.

His piece can be described as unhelpful at best. It seems snobbery can dim the brightest minds and shut themselves to the reality.