Dear Sir,
Like many of your KGP-alumni readers, I have always greatly enjoyed your blogposts reminiscing about your time and experiences in IIT-KGP. Most students spend a relatively short time in the IITs (and for latus like me, the time spent there is even shorter), so your recollections provide a glimpse of how the IIT's were like and how they gradually evolved over a much longer span of time than is accessible to students. From news reports over the past few years, it seems that the rate of evolution of IIT's have sped up considerably and you yourself may have noticed it during the latter part of your stay in KGP. However, I did not realize how dramatically things might change for the IITs until I came across this report yesterday. While change is inevitable and has its benefits, it remains to be seen whether this is the kind of "change we can believe in":
Kakodkar Committee Report: Part 3. The Vision Thing
I wonder what you think about these proposals and how it might impact education and research in the IITs.
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gps:
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Ha!
You are looking up the wrong tree.
See, I am no Educationist with a Grand Vision. On the contrary, I have ever been a loner in every sense of the word. My interaction throughout my life (such as it is) has been largely confined to IIT students (thank Heavens for that privilege!).
I assiduously avoided rich and affluent people, intellectuals, administrators, politicians, visionaries and artists.
But let me put it bluntly that I always felt for the forty years of my time at KGP that I was being grossly underutilized.
That was because I had a one-point agenda, viz. to learn a bit of Physics in all its glory; and I found that, the lazy lubber I am, I can only learn new subjects by being forced to teach them. Somehow it didn't turn out like that. I never learned Stat Mech and so my basic education is unhappily incomplete.
I also felt that with the infrastructure we already had, we could and should train ten times the students we used to do. Why should a gps who spent all his time learning QM, SR, GR, EM and stuff teach only ten or twelve students?
Your batch was particularly tiny (11?). I could perhaps rivet the attention of 40 students easily and enjoy learning from half a dozen students like you. I felt very happy that by the time I was retiring, my vastly more talented younger colleagues were teaching classes of that strength.
Also I enjoyed teaching Jumbo Classes of B Tech 350 strong towards the fag end of my stay there. It called for a different set of skills.
I must admit that my Guru SDM was my antithesis and there were perhaps several SDMs. The system could be flexible enough to cater to the enjoyment of the entire spectrum of Faculty recognizing the talent in each individual they recruit and stimulating them so that they contribute their best without feeling left out (HNB's philosophy).
Coming to the larger issues, we must remember that we missed the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions that shaped the West by a wide margin of 300 years.
It was due to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, particularly the much maligned Nehrujee that you and I came to meet at KGP.
My Father used to express that only male graduates (perhaps from his Madras Christian College) should be allowed to contest elections and vote.
Perhaps he resented the wild growth of the number of Colleges and Universities that were sprouting everywhere soon after Independence.
But he produced 7 kids alright and didn't care how the explosion of population that he participated in willy-nilly would be fed, educated, housed and clothed.
I love my Indian kids (Ishanis) and wish that every one of our newborn should be educated to the degree they like, absolutely FREE (with midday meals thrown in...I had no pocket money while at my University, and used to sit down glumly alone in the deserted class room while my classmates used to go for their coffee-and-dosa-breaks).
Remember that Indian GDP is growing at 8 or 9% largely on the sweat of the underdogs (like the construction workers I watch daily in Hyderabad) and can afford the pittance that is needed for educating their kids. As such the fraction of the budget that is allocated to higher education is laughably tiny. Our Government can and should fund all Education and wash its hands then on and let the Faculty whose salaries they pay do what they think is best...I mean: "Autonomy". And snuff out Private Colleges and Universities for now and let them come in after a century.
So too in Health Care and Medical Education.
I guess the current thinking of expansion in higher education is along the right lines, warts and all.
You can fill in the details...you are the generation that are shouldered with the responsibility of lifting a hundred gps-es from a thousand Muthukurs to KGP-s.
Cheers!
You are looking up the wrong tree.
See, I am no Educationist with a Grand Vision. On the contrary, I have ever been a loner in every sense of the word. My interaction throughout my life (such as it is) has been largely confined to IIT students (thank Heavens for that privilege!).
I assiduously avoided rich and affluent people, intellectuals, administrators, politicians, visionaries and artists.
But let me put it bluntly that I always felt for the forty years of my time at KGP that I was being grossly underutilized.
That was because I had a one-point agenda, viz. to learn a bit of Physics in all its glory; and I found that, the lazy lubber I am, I can only learn new subjects by being forced to teach them. Somehow it didn't turn out like that. I never learned Stat Mech and so my basic education is unhappily incomplete.
I also felt that with the infrastructure we already had, we could and should train ten times the students we used to do. Why should a gps who spent all his time learning QM, SR, GR, EM and stuff teach only ten or twelve students?
Your batch was particularly tiny (11?). I could perhaps rivet the attention of 40 students easily and enjoy learning from half a dozen students like you. I felt very happy that by the time I was retiring, my vastly more talented younger colleagues were teaching classes of that strength.
Also I enjoyed teaching Jumbo Classes of B Tech 350 strong towards the fag end of my stay there. It called for a different set of skills.
I must admit that my Guru SDM was my antithesis and there were perhaps several SDMs. The system could be flexible enough to cater to the enjoyment of the entire spectrum of Faculty recognizing the talent in each individual they recruit and stimulating them so that they contribute their best without feeling left out (HNB's philosophy).
Coming to the larger issues, we must remember that we missed the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions that shaped the West by a wide margin of 300 years.
It was due to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, particularly the much maligned Nehrujee that you and I came to meet at KGP.
My Father used to express that only male graduates (perhaps from his Madras Christian College) should be allowed to contest elections and vote.
Perhaps he resented the wild growth of the number of Colleges and Universities that were sprouting everywhere soon after Independence.
But he produced 7 kids alright and didn't care how the explosion of population that he participated in willy-nilly would be fed, educated, housed and clothed.
I love my Indian kids (Ishanis) and wish that every one of our newborn should be educated to the degree they like, absolutely FREE (with midday meals thrown in...I had no pocket money while at my University, and used to sit down glumly alone in the deserted class room while my classmates used to go for their coffee-and-dosa-breaks).
Remember that Indian GDP is growing at 8 or 9% largely on the sweat of the underdogs (like the construction workers I watch daily in Hyderabad) and can afford the pittance that is needed for educating their kids. As such the fraction of the budget that is allocated to higher education is laughably tiny. Our Government can and should fund all Education and wash its hands then on and let the Faculty whose salaries they pay do what they think is best...I mean: "Autonomy". And snuff out Private Colleges and Universities for now and let them come in after a century.
So too in Health Care and Medical Education.
I guess the current thinking of expansion in higher education is along the right lines, warts and all.
You can fill in the details...you are the generation that are shouldered with the responsibility of lifting a hundred gps-es from a thousand Muthukurs to KGP-s.
Cheers!
1 comment:
I would like to narrate an incidence in this regard:
An IIT professor visited my top-notch US university department some years ago to present a seminar. In the beginning of the seminar, while introducing the IIT system, he boasted " ... we admit only 1 out of 100 applicants ... even more selective than Ivy leagues ... blah ... blah" that we often hear in India. After the seminar a senior professor asked a very simple but blunt question: "If you have 100 students interested in IIT education, why have capacity to teach only 1 student? Why not at least 25 of them? The more-selective-than-Ivy-leagues argument makes no sense! The US and other countries will be happy to attract these students as they are likely to boost our economies in the long run". The eminent IIT professor had no answer. At least I hope he never introduces the IIT system the same way.
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