1) Students studying science and technology because they love it and are driven by it. Arish summarized this point accurately (What do IITs lack which universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Cornell or CMU have?, being a space nerd, I'd endorse it for the video alone) so I’ll skip the verbosity. I will add that having an etched-in-stone entrance test (IITJEE) is partially to blame because it cannot test engineering creativity and, furthermore, tests analytical ability only in a very specific exam environment. The IITs lose out on many candidates who could not balance creativity, analytical/computing speed and specific exam preparation. In the long run and with Moore's law, the latter two seem less important. I've addressed a corollary in #6. IITM’s Director gave a pretty candid interview on the topic here:Q&A: IIT Madras director on entrance tests and another post by a current IITB faculty member: What are some things you dislike about IIT?
2) Students studying other fields because they love those instead. Note that among the universities you brought up, most offer reputed degrees in law, liberal arts, music, etc. Students doing those are there doing them because that’s what they relate to, not because they ‘did not get 90% in their boards’ as most of statistical India would like to believe, so naturally they do them pretty darned well. It’s passion, motivation and drive again, as it is with science and tech.
3) Emphasis on teamwork. You cannot build a rocket, fly it to the moon, land a human and bring him safely back on your own. While creativity and analytics is of great importance, the most complex engineering projects in human history from the International Space Station to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig have critically hinged on team dynamics and leadership. Top schools in the US have a lot of team-based classwork and projects to instill these capabilities (e.g. communication, work splitting+combining, team diversity, etc.). The IITs, sailing on blind competition, severely hinder students’ abilities to cooperate and collaborate effectively outside of techfests, robotics competitions and the like.
4) Relatively (and pretty extremely) high resources per student capita as a result of endowments worth billions of dollars with relatively miniscule siphoning/corruption, a few more centuries of time and low population. This brings a lot of goodies including but not restricted to:
5) Mostly as a result of #4 but also because of a liberal mindset, very high flexibility in selecting majors/courses and, more importantly, to be able to modify their selection any time in their student life. Each student in the Ivy Leagues is treated individually and special attention is given to help him/her select a more-or-less unique set of subjects. As a result, a student’s major and skill sets correlate strongly with what he/she enjoys, is good at and wants to do and further as a result, more students end up pursuing this specialization for at least a few years after graduation. The story in the IITs is very different: most are frustrated with the field they’ve been locked into and want an ‘out’ as soon as they can.
6) The ability to think beyond judging a person’s ‘aptitude’ based on an objective number, be it IITJEE’s All India Rank (AIR) or CGPA. I’m not blaming anything or anybody here because for a population and corruption framework like India, I can’t imagine the chaos a non-objective system would cause. I’m just pointing out that it is unfortunate that a child’s ability to study mechanical engineering is greatly dependent on his scores in organic chemistry, obtained through an hour’s o-chem test amidst years of possible passionate pursuit of mech-e. And it is even more unfortunate when his/her neighbors, teachers and other whatnots point that out in discouragement of his/her ‘abilities’.
7) A supportive social ecosystem around the campus. This includes an innovative science/tech environment and a healthy sex ratio. The IITs were set up in relatively rural regions in the hope that they would grow an entrepreneurial environment around themselves, thus truly dedicated to the service of the nation. While it happened in Bombay and Madras, it certainly did not in Kharagpur and Kanpur. As a result, you have bright eyed, bushy tailed 18 year olds trapped in backward, alien villages who do not speak the same language, with no tech culture whatsoever, no social entertainment and nearly no socially similar women of their age. For e.g. Kharagpur, i.e. the town around the IIT, did not have a movie theater or a mall until 2008 and the number of women in my class/batch/JEE-entrance-
8) During placements, access to industries that actually want tech-smart-passionate people, not just back end analysts or number crunchers, and are willing to 'pay' for them. Pay includes challenges, environment, respect, benefits, etc. over and above the hard cash. We lost most of the tech-folks at the IITs through #5, and the precious few that are left are then subject to the training and placement drama. I skipped placements at IIT but have done a pile of internships abroad during my student life, so from that + my friends' experiences, I think the problem is beautifully summarized here in the eyes of a student: How can the brain drain be prevented from other engineering courses to IT in India? and here in the eyes of an ex-student and current faculty member: What are some things you dislike about IIT?
9) Education as a lost Opportunity Cost needs to be self-justified. A degree in the US costs a load of money, e.g. a year at MIT costs $75k or at least INR 38 lakhs by direct conversion and INR 8 lakhs by Purchasing power parityconversion. Undergrads have to pay up this money every year and graduate students on scholarships earn less than a third of what they would have if they worked instead. Every student who's not Richie Rich, therefore educates himself and eventually graduates only if he thinks the cost is worth it. That's why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out. Obviously then, most of the senior students (and alumni) don't completely hate what they did and encourage the pre-frosh into science/tech.
IIT cost us INR 55k per year or $1k by direct conversion and the government paid for those who couldn't 'afford' it through MCM scholarships. The initial indifference (#1) or peer-induced skepticism/complexes (#2), followed by a relative letdown of expectations that the 'IIT Dream' had set for many (#3 to #7) and ending in most of the 'better' jobs being outside of science/tech (#8) creates a vicious cycle of many senior students getting disillusioned and discouraging junior students from the T in IIT, while continuing within IIT themselves because they can afford to. Personally, this peer pressure did not affect me much + it's not an independent event (more a result of all of the above), but I've heard lots of complaints and full fledged fights about this one so I added it.
2) Students studying other fields because they love those instead. Note that among the universities you brought up, most offer reputed degrees in law, liberal arts, music, etc. Students doing those are there doing them because that’s what they relate to, not because they ‘did not get 90% in their boards’ as most of statistical India would like to believe, so naturally they do them pretty darned well. It’s passion, motivation and drive again, as it is with science and tech.
3) Emphasis on teamwork. You cannot build a rocket, fly it to the moon, land a human and bring him safely back on your own. While creativity and analytics is of great importance, the most complex engineering projects in human history from the International Space Station to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig have critically hinged on team dynamics and leadership. Top schools in the US have a lot of team-based classwork and projects to instill these capabilities (e.g. communication, work splitting+combining, team diversity, etc.). The IITs, sailing on blind competition, severely hinder students’ abilities to cooperate and collaborate effectively outside of techfests, robotics competitions and the like.
4) Relatively (and pretty extremely) high resources per student capita as a result of endowments worth billions of dollars with relatively miniscule siphoning/corruption, a few more centuries of time and low population. This brings a lot of goodies including but not restricted to:
- Really good and cutting edge faculty members who can actually engage the country’s brightest as well as serve as role models
- Faculty-student ratio to enable healthy interaction and the ability to know each other beyond GPA
- New and challenging question papers/assignments to prevent rote learning. Students from universities above are very bright. To have them laze in an academically under-challenged environment for 4-5 years may bore, annoy and disillusion them for a long time about the 'system'
- Ability to enforce plagiarism penalties very strictly
- Lab equipment for project-based assignments and hands-on learning and generally a feel-good workplace
- Collaborations with national labs, research institutions and industry R&D sectors for student involvement during term, internships during holidays and possible recruitment after graduation. NASA sponsors thousands of US citizens through their Co-Op programs and other programs right from middle school. Not sure about now, but when I was in undergrad, ISRO did not have any opportunities for IIT undergrads to do even internships on their campus. It's a very big pity because ISRO has a LOT going on, for example, a robotic Mars mission that is indigenous from design to launch to operations: India to launch mission to Mars this year, says president
- Resources to travel for work (conferences, internships, public service, etc.) to increase exposure to new tech/science/other cultures and work with others different from yourself. Travel aways adds value, e.g. An educational journey
- Good hostels and access to healthy food that represent the socio-economic strata that students statistically come from so that they feel at least somewhat at home for the 9 months that they spend there after classes. I'm not talking about 5 star quality, I'm talking decency that does not "shock" alumni when they come to visit, for e.g. Interview with Dr. Harish Hande (the last few is what people mean when they say "infrastructure")
- Career counseling and counseling in general because kids at 20 are bound to be crazy confused
- Access to alumni gatherings, receptions, one-on-ones and other such interest-based networks
- Adequate information availability on courses before enrolment.. I’ll add more as I recall them
5) Mostly as a result of #4 but also because of a liberal mindset, very high flexibility in selecting majors/courses and, more importantly, to be able to modify their selection any time in their student life. Each student in the Ivy Leagues is treated individually and special attention is given to help him/her select a more-or-less unique set of subjects. As a result, a student’s major and skill sets correlate strongly with what he/she enjoys, is good at and wants to do and further as a result, more students end up pursuing this specialization for at least a few years after graduation. The story in the IITs is very different: most are frustrated with the field they’ve been locked into and want an ‘out’ as soon as they can.
6) The ability to think beyond judging a person’s ‘aptitude’ based on an objective number, be it IITJEE’s All India Rank (AIR) or CGPA. I’m not blaming anything or anybody here because for a population and corruption framework like India, I can’t imagine the chaos a non-objective system would cause. I’m just pointing out that it is unfortunate that a child’s ability to study mechanical engineering is greatly dependent on his scores in organic chemistry, obtained through an hour’s o-chem test amidst years of possible passionate pursuit of mech-e. And it is even more unfortunate when his/her neighbors, teachers and other whatnots point that out in discouragement of his/her ‘abilities’.
7) A supportive social ecosystem around the campus. This includes an innovative science/tech environment and a healthy sex ratio. The IITs were set up in relatively rural regions in the hope that they would grow an entrepreneurial environment around themselves, thus truly dedicated to the service of the nation. While it happened in Bombay and Madras, it certainly did not in Kharagpur and Kanpur. As a result, you have bright eyed, bushy tailed 18 year olds trapped in backward, alien villages who do not speak the same language, with no tech culture whatsoever, no social entertainment and nearly no socially similar women of their age. For e.g. Kharagpur, i.e. the town around the IIT, did not have a movie theater or a mall until 2008 and the number of women in my class/batch/JEE-entrance-
8) During placements, access to industries that actually want tech-smart-passionate people, not just back end analysts or number crunchers, and are willing to 'pay' for them. Pay includes challenges, environment, respect, benefits, etc. over and above the hard cash. We lost most of the tech-folks at the IITs through #5, and the precious few that are left are then subject to the training and placement drama. I skipped placements at IIT but have done a pile of internships abroad during my student life, so from that + my friends' experiences, I think the problem is beautifully summarized here in the eyes of a student: How can the brain drain be prevented from other engineering courses to IT in India? and here in the eyes of an ex-student and current faculty member: What are some things you dislike about IIT?
9) Education as a lost Opportunity Cost needs to be self-justified. A degree in the US costs a load of money, e.g. a year at MIT costs $75k or at least INR 38 lakhs by direct conversion and INR 8 lakhs by Purchasing power parityconversion. Undergrads have to pay up this money every year and graduate students on scholarships earn less than a third of what they would have if they worked instead. Every student who's not Richie Rich, therefore educates himself and eventually graduates only if he thinks the cost is worth it. That's why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out. Obviously then, most of the senior students (and alumni) don't completely hate what they did and encourage the pre-frosh into science/tech.
IIT cost us INR 55k per year or $1k by direct conversion and the government paid for those who couldn't 'afford' it through MCM scholarships. The initial indifference (#1) or peer-induced skepticism/complexes (#2), followed by a relative letdown of expectations that the 'IIT Dream' had set for many (#3 to #7) and ending in most of the 'better' jobs being outside of science/tech (#8) creates a vicious cycle of many senior students getting disillusioned and discouraging junior students from the T in IIT, while continuing within IIT themselves because they can afford to. Personally, this peer pressure did not affect me much + it's not an independent event (more a result of all of the above), but I've heard lots of complaints and full fledged fights about this one so I added it.
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