the end of patronage

In the last 7 years of my stint with management reading, education and profession; I have always come across cases and situations where the quality is given utmost importance. IF one delivers quality, they say, the long-term prospects are sure to be very bright. The front page of today’s ToI covers Anil Ambani’s mopping up 8 trillion bucks is a testimony of that principle.

But the article on page 9 is shocking – in more than one ways. IITs, it reports, doesn’t have enough funds to pay the next month’s staff salaries! It refers to the same IITs that are around for more than half a decade and making us proud in all corners of world through its alumni, its innovations and through Asok. IITs have nurtured and churned out best of the intellectual property in the country. Its admissions test JEE is considered one of most competitive and challenging tests in the country alongside UPSC and CAT exams. But now it falls of greenbacks to pay its teachers, and it is as sick as it can get.

But why has this happened? And how to counter this problem?

The education of IIT students is highly subsidized and the government spends a he sum on educating each one of them. This is one of the reasons why their going abroad to ‘contribute’ to western world and their switching over to management side have been considered blasphemy. The cost incurred by IITs is budgetary allocation given from the government (read taxpayers’) funds. Some money would definitely be coming in from the alumni and from the industry projects and consulting work taken up by the IITs. But still not enough.

I don’t mind government shelling out more moneys to support IITs even though this money is going out of my pocket. Not doing this will be e bigger loss to the country, a bigger crime. But for how long can this model be sustained? The costs burden, I am sure, will keep mounting. And will further stain the budgets. While writing these pages, I peeped into some articles written by Pankaj Jalote of IIT-K and the very well-known P V Indiresan. Both are of the view that the cushy days of government support are over.

So what is the way out?
For one, why not increase the fees (taking cue from the principle of premium education)? On the first thought, if this is done, a lot of well-deserving brilliant brains will find be unable to pay such high fees and will be lost in the crowds. My recommendation is to ask the banks to lend them money. And the banks will be glad to do so realizing they are investing in very high quality assets. This is one of the ways IIM aspirants have managed all these years!

Another way out will be to increase the output of the IITs. As Jalote points out, the output in IITs is 1.2 B Tech students per year per faculty as against 2 in any elite US engineering college. It is again not rocket science to understand the economy of scale. And also not to confess that the capacity expansion requires a budgetary outlay – though this one will be more productive in the long run.

There’re many more recommendations thrown out here and there by the columnists with whom I can agree only halfheartedly. These include mandatory 1 year stint for IIT graduates in teaching/ at grassroots/ as trainees; a corporate adopting a certain number of students and bearing their cost; etc.
Whichever way is taken off this road-to-nowhere, it better be taken VERY soon.