If we end up producing 50,000 IIT-ians every year, we would, most certainly, be killing brand IIT.

IITs as institutions would have crumbled to meet the demands of the HRD ministry which has never been known to appreciate brilliance.

I may be wrong here too. The thinking in the HRD ministry may just be going along these lines: “We need to increase the learning experience of the average student. To do so, we need to increase the comprehension and retention. What better way than to send all of them to IIT? If there are only seven IITs right now, let’s create a hundred more!”

IITs are not able to attract quality professors because their salaries are controlled by AICTE/GoI — 15,667/249-987/22,098 is not exactly the type of pay scale that people will be lining up for.

No quality professors and JEE 50,000 ranked students; it’s a mix destined to kill brand IIT. In fact, it’s a college outside Erode in Tamil Nadu.

Believe it or not, I may be unfair, or wrong, here too.

They may be setting up the new IITs as the model learning institutes, unparalleled in the world. We may be seeing the use of technology in the classroom, the like of which we have not seen till now.

The new IITs may have classrooms where each student has access to video-on-demand lectures; where each student has access to web X.0 features of collaborative learning; where all labs are digital; where all students use technology to pace their learning to be in tune with their individual learning speeds.

... contd.