So Much For So Little?

I spent two years at IIT Delhi before opting out and moving to MIT. I must begin by pointing out that living conditions at IIT Delhi were appalling. In the scorching Delhi heat, students were not even allowed to have coolers in their rooms. And that too with three people clubbed together in a tiny room for the first year. The toilets and the showers were filthy. While I was there, more than a few times, there was contamination of drinking water. As a result, lots of students fell sick. You cannot expect students to perform at their best if they have to deal with such basic issues of living.

There are certain subjects in the first year that are compulsory for all students, regardless of their branch of study. These are too difficult. For example, the required physics and mathematics courses at IIT Delhi are equivalent to third year courses at elite institutions like MIT! Our freshman’s physics course during the first year at IIT Delhi (supposed to be taken by all first year students) was taught, among other tomes, from D.J. Griffiths’s textbook of electrodynamics. Here at MIT, this textbook is taught to physics majors in their third or fourth year.

Our freshman math courses at IIT Delhi covered analysis and algebra of the level that makes up a major chunk of the average MIT math major’s undergraduate curriculum. And in contrast, the freshman chemistry course at MIT dealt with stuff we had covered in preparation for the IIT-JEE. Yes, the smart guys triumph—but majority of the people either fail or start disliking learning itself.

At MIT, too, there are people who are far superior to the average level. These are students who on their own have tackled physics, analyses and algebra at very high levels. But they have the option of not doing such courses if they do not want to. Students at MIT are given enough freedom in course choice and flexibility within a broad framework of the degree curriculum structure. Those that are compulsory are at levels the average student can tackle. The system thus caters to the average person but leaves enough space for the smart people to develop their full potential. In addition, students at IITs typically take six or more courses per semester. This is way too much. At MIT, the graduation requirement is only four subjects per semester, and half of those subjects are not even directly related to your field! This is done to create a broad base of knowledge.

Lab courses in IITs are not given the importance any course in technology should give to them. Usually, they are for a lesser number of credits than the lecture courses. This is completely opposite to what it should actually be. Engineers need to get their hands dirty and build stuff and spend a lot more time in the lab. The lab courses should in fact be weighted more than lecture courses.

Any institute of higher learning needs to produce knowledge rather than just pass it down to the next generation. Unfortunately, that is not true of the IITs; they are mostly teaching institutions. A vibrant academic atmosphere which is conducive to research will happen if the IITs recruit faculty with excellent research records. This certainly cannot happen if there is a lot of inbreeding in the departments—for example, many of the faculty members at the physics department at IIT Delhi completed their PhDs at IIT Delhi itself.

Mahajan, who topped the 2006 IIT-JEE, left IIT Delhi in 2008 for MIT. He is doing his PhD at Stanford.