The appointment in December 2021 of Parag Agrawal to head Twitter shone the spotlight once again on the Indian Institutes of Technology, which the young CEO is a graduate from.
This article was originally published on December 6, 2021, on my blog called Bombay Darling on the Courrier International magazine website.
What do Parag Agrawal, 37, new CEO of Twitter, Sundar Pichai, 49, head of Google, and Arvind Krishna, 59, who chairs IBM, have in common? Beyond being Indian and leading American technology giants, these three business leader graduated from an Indian Institute of Technology, an IIT. That of Bombay for Parag Agrawal, that of Kharagpur for Sundar Pichai, and that of Kanpur for Arvind Krishna.
The Indian media welcomed the appointment of Parag Agrawal as a moment of national pride, and the 23 IITs, these public institutions that could be compared to the best French engineering schools, have benefited from a new spotlight too. The congratulations tweeted by IIT Bombay to its former student, who graduated in 2005, who very quickly received more than 35,000 “likes”.
An admission rate between 1.5 and 2.5%
Since the creation of the first IITs in the 1950s, these scientific universities have aimed for – and achieved – excellence. Their undergraduate admission rate fluctuates between 1.5 and 2.5%, an even more competitive selection than at Harvard (4.6%) or MIT (7%), the crème de la crème of higher education internationally. This has earned IITs the reputation of being the most selective institutions in the world. In 2021, 660,000 applicants were competing for 16,000 seats.
The most prestigious IITs remain the seven “historic” IITs, founded between 1950 and 2001 (Kharagpur, Delhi, Bombay, Roorkee, Madras, Guwahati and Kanpur). The other sixteen were created after 2008, under the impetus of the government which had identified the need for India to have more scientific universities of excellence. They are spread over the entire subcontinent. The five most recent, Jammu, Goa, Dhanbad, Bilai, Dharwad, only date from 2016.
The holy grail: computer science or electrical engineering
To say that the competition is fierce to get the chance to study there would be an understatement. The entrance exam, the famous and dreaded IIT Joint Entrance Examination, better known as IIT JEE, is only open to students who have obtained very good academic results in science. In addition, the final ranking of candidates determines in which institution and in which department they can be accepted. Over the years the grail has remained computer science or electrical engineering. Only a tiny percentage of applicants will succeed.
The candidates therefore prepare for years, in particular through coaching classes, the equivalent of our private preparatory courses. These preparations are literally burgeoning all over India, and parents sometimes save since their children are in primary school to be able to enroll them. Depending on the city and the institute that delivers them, these courses cost between 1500 and 3000 euros per year.
Tuition increase
The question of social equity among IIT candidates is regularly raised, since not all families can afford such a financial investment. The competition had even been reformed in 2014 with the aim of limiting the use of coaching classes, but without much effect. Tuition fees for IITs, modest before 2013, have also increased in recent years to reach around 4,000 euros per year for non-scholarship holders.
Courses by the best teacher-researchers in the country, quality infrastructure often financed by the private sector, and above all, a brilliant career almost guaranteed, are the main rewards of all these sacrifices for students and their families. The IITs have also been widely accused of fueling the brain drain, particularly towards the United States until around the 2000s, before the Indian economy began to reap the benefits of the liberalization of 1991.
The bygone era of the brain drain
Today, if universities like American companies continue to make eyes at IIT graduates, the era of the brain drain seems to be over. The director of IIT Delhi thus declared in the Times of India: “20 years ago, 80% of a Bachelor promotion left to work abroad. Today, this proportion has become insignificant. Of the 10,000 graduates of the last promotion of the 23 IITs, only 200 got hired abroad.
The final objective of all these hard working students obviously remains professional opportunities. IITs are thus particularly known for their “placement” system which allows graduates to easily find their first job. Like in British or American universities, employers are invited to come and recruit directly on campus. The entry package is between 15 and 25,000 euros a year, amongst the most enviable salaries in the country. For some graduates, like Parag Agarwal, it will only be the beginning of a formidable ascent… Enough to maintain the legend of IITs within the next generations of Indians.
They also studied in an IIT
Sachin Bansal, founder and CEO of Flipkart, Amazon competitor in India (IIT Delhi)
Deepinder Goyal, founder of Zomato, an app that allows you to order and have meals delivered in all major Indian cities (IIT Delhi)
Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli, Ravijot Chugh, three of the four founders of UpGrad, one of the new Indian EdTech unicorns, (IIT Delhi)
Narayan Murthy, co-founder and former CEO of Indian multinational IT company Infosys (IIT Kanpur)
Arvind Kejriwal, Indian politician, Chief Minister of the State of Delhi since 2015 (IIT Kharagpur)
Rono Dutta, CEO of Indigo Airlines, the airline with the largest market share in India (IIT Kharagpur)
Raghuram Rajan, economist and former director of the RBI, the Indian federal bank, professor of economics at the University of Chicago (IIT Delhi)
As we can see, efforts clearly remain to be made in terms of gender parity... Today, approximately 18% of IIT students are female students.
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