Private Institutions in India -: The Myth and Hype of Quality in Education. “Within few years we will beat MIT !!! “ I got stalled and stucked for few minutes. Where am I standing Stanford, Princeton, Berkley or even IISc, any IIT in India? Suddenly I reinvented the lost moments and started laughing… Don’t get astonished these are some of the marketing quotes came from one of the well known top 10 (as per some magazines) Fool’s Paradise private university in India. Then I just looked at the audience but there was not a slight single sign of astonishment from anyone including faculties or students. All were proud of that precious moment. I assumed MIT may be something like Madrass Institute of technology for them. Last week I happened to see some of the ranking done by different magazines on engineering colleges in India. The funny part is that in each magazine different private colleges are in top 10. If a college A is in top 10 of magazine X then college B is in magazine Y ,but college B is not even in first 10 in X vice versa(check Sunday express,education times, zee news,indiatoday). Then I checked the websites of these colleges, yes they have done their advertisement such that they are in the league of IITs. For a person who studied in IITs and got some chance with these private institutions do know the screenplay behind this HIDE and SEEK. But for a new student who is about to select his college or those “green frogs” in the paradise wells of these so called top private institutions may not be knowing the actual facts. In order to clear the air surrounded to this top 10 colleges I would like to present some of the parameters that can be used to unmask the hype of quality in education in these so called top private colleges. (All arguments are based on the courses conducted by these universities including BTech, MTech, PhD. All B grade courses conducted by these universities are not subjected to discussion.) 1) IF THESE PRIVATE COLLEGES ARE TOP 10 THEN WHY INDIA’S TOP QUALITY STUDENTS NEVER OPT THESE COLLEGES? If you check the ranking done by magazines these universities should get top students. But have you ever heard any one cleared JEE, AIEEE, state entrance and GATE in top rank opted these colleges? A person who cleared 700-900 in JEE or a person within 1000 rank in GATE should opt these colleges as per their so called ranking, but not. Now if you ask any of the students studying these universities after their so called entrance about their performance in these exams, all can say a failed story. How students white washed from all the entrance exams represent an Institute competable with IIT or NIT? General Priority List for B tech( It may vary slightly according to the courses - ref CSE) General Priority List 1) IIT B,D,K 2) IIT M,IIT KGP 3) IIT G ,IIT R 4) IT BHU,ISM,IIST 5) NIT suratkal,trichy warangal,ISI 6) NIT rourkala,NITC,NIT allahabad,jadavpoor university,dce,nsit 7) IIIT H 8) Rest of NITs 9) Top govt colleges in state,BITS Pilani 10) Loosers will go to the so called private colleges For MTech list is same except first 30 prefer IISc. From the CSE perspective you should have at least an All india rank 350 to get at least a call for written test from IIT. Have you ever checked the GATE performance of the students studying these universities? 85% will have to say a failed story of GATE and the rest have ranks starting from 2000. How a fellow got rank 2000+ or no rank in GATE is capable of competing with students who secured rank withinfirt350 in CSE. Then what is the meaning of the statement “we are in the league of IITs”? 2) IF THESE UNIVERSITIES ARE IN THE LEAGUE OF IITS, THEN WHY THEIR STUDENT PERFORMANCE OR ALUMNI PERFORMANCE IS SO PATHETIC IN COMPARISON WITH IITS? Have you ever heard any of these private university alumni did any significant contributions as IIT alumni(checkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Institutes_of_Technology_alumni)? How many of their students are doing higher studies in A grade universities like MIT, Stanford, Princeton, and Berkley? You name the IIT I can show from each BTech branch at least 1 in these universities. Can you show these kind of record per batch from these crap universities? They can only show students studying abroad for so called “Software Eng“in low profile colleges based GRE(can be very very exceptions as any eng college) or any low profile universities abroad(If all abroad universities are good then why Australian govt,nowadays cancelled the recognition of so many colleges there?). Have you ever noticed the results of exams like CAT, GATE, most of the time toppers are form IITs or NITs including new iits like IIT G and IITR(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WLcKYwp5JA&feature=related). Why IIMs are dominated by IITians? Why these kinds of fool’s paradises can’t even produce near about results like this?Have you checked the statics of GATE? I do know one university there around 300-400 students in CSE doesn’t even have 5 students have rank in CSE within 1000. Is it the case withIITs and NITs? Even NIT C has produced GATE topper (top 1).How many tire 1 papers are published from these universities by their students? They may maximum show a local conference paper. Is it the case of IITs? Have you ever checked the internship details of BTechor Mtech students from IITs? I do know people doing internship inMicrosft america from IITs.If you check private universities most of them are in local service companies maximum(can be very very exceptions as any eng college) … Why these universities can’t produce such results? Yes money can’t buy performance when it comes to genuine authorities hehe. 3) FACULTY QUALITY--: WHY THESE PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES HAVE VERY LOW QUALITY PATHETIC PROFILE FACULTIES? If you analyse the profile of faculties in these hype universities, you can see people at positions like dept head, dean,director,vc etc have good academic profile or may be some retired professors from IITs due to high pay scale or for taking rest for their life. But have you ever checked the profile of rest of the faculties? Really pathetic. Most of them finished theirMTechfrom private universities without qualifying GATE… And you can imagine the quality of lectures, the quality of answers for doubts, quality of guidance for projects they can provide… I do know one private top 10 university where about 150 are there as faculties inCSE dept and among them only around 10 have good profile (IITians) or publications. Rest of them are beyond repair low quality people as I mentioned. But when it comes to business they only show these 10 persons profile. And if you check the publications of these available top professors, how many TIER 1 publications you can find after they joined these institutions? Nothing… most of them published papers in TIER 1 when they were in IITs or during research. If these universities are so good and more than IITs, these professors should publish papers after joining these universities in international conferences as in IITs. How can you compare high profile faculties in any of IITs with these people? Why the rest of the facultiesother than people in top positions(means 95% faculties) are not displaying their profile with academic achievements,papers published, consultancy works as IIT faculties do?In my opinion even the students are better than these rest of the faculties. Why a person who is having IITacademic profile won’t stay for long time in these universities? (Not about retired IIT prof… They are there for ZZZZZ and getting nice pay hheeh. They are actually the show materials for quality hype) 4)PLACEMENTS - : WHY TIER 1 COMPANIES ARE NOT RECRUITING OR TAKING VERY FEW STUDENTS IN LESS PACKAGE COMPARED TO IITS. WHY SERVICE COMPANIES ARE DOMINATING IN THESE UNIVERSITIES WHERE THESE ARE THE LAST PREFERENCE FOR IITIANS? Yahoo, Microsoft, Strand life science ,adobe,net app, amazon etc take 3-4 people or more from in each IITs or 1-2 from NITs in each visit. Why these companies are not recruiting people from these so called top people from these universities? Even if they recruit why they are not offering same amount or not taking this much people from these private universities compared to IITs. Why R & D companies are not visiting these universities? What is the maximum package offered in these universities up to now? 12lak? Even new IITs like IIT G and IIT R had the history of 32 lak per annum and NITs like trichy had 16 lak annum before recession. Why these companies are not daring to give that much amount to these varsity students? Before recession all IITs for B tech and M Tech there was an avg salary of 7-9 lak inCSE. . What was the case in these universities in CSE? Why service companies like TCS ,infy are the least choice in IITswhere it is the dream company for these people. Why TCS andInfosys R and D never takes people from these varsities (they only come there for service jobs). A single batch in these universities (not BITS) have students around 300-400 and due toMOU with service companies they take people with less package in bulk like 200. What about rest of the people in each branch? When it comes to number it is big 200 what about rest 200? (In IIT one batch csemeans 50-60) Why they are not mentioning %? What about non IT jobs. For instance take a mechanical engineering branch of these universities, in batch each of 300-400 how many % are in core companies? less than 10%.? what is the package? Why rest of them are resorting IT service companies?If it is as per ranking TIER 1 companies should give higher package thanIITians and should take more people. The highest package should be more and avg salary should be more… Getting 6 lak in a sw boom days is a rare case from a batch of 400 in a private varsity but it is a below avg thing in CSE of IIT. If you avoid these low package low work profile service companies due to MOU what will be the real status? 5) RESEARCH OUTCOME: WHY THESE UNIVERSITIES HAVE POOR RESEARCH OUTCOME Hype solving again..... If you visit any of these private universities you can see several research groups… Like in CSE network group, DS group,data base group etc ec. But it is sufficient to manipulate a new student or outsiders. Have you ever checked how many quality papers are coming out these groups? Who are the people there? What is profile of these people? Nothing BIG BLATANT ZERO... But for hype it is sufficient. In order to show we are doing some research they will conduct lot of poser workshop with advt. Money can give these, like different labs, diff work shop, conference, but it can’t give you quality tier one papers or quality research outcome. Please check papers published by faculties in IITs , IISc,TIFR or ISI kolkata in each group. Why all members of the groups in these private institution have no paper or only local conference papers(coz it is easy to publish from these kind of other university conferences hehe) 6) B GRADE COURSES, POOR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AND LOW QUALITY STUDENTS Who are the people join in these institutes. Sure loosers from IIT JEE OR AIEEE or state entrance or GATE (The quality products of a college competing with IIT hehe). If as per the ranking system a student got 700 -1500 in JEE or less than 350 ranks in GATE won’t preferIITR or IIT G for CSE... They will prefer these institutes… Do you believe that? Once you loose then the only resort is daddy’s money and get admission in these colleges... You can’t buy quality education by this.No one in IIT even in reservation seats without a GATE score or aJEE rank If these institutes are so concerned about quality, then why they are taking people in Bulk amount for B grade courses other than BTech, MTech, MSc, Phd? If the standard ofBTech,MTech students are like this, then we can imagine the quality of B grade course students. It clearly implies the financial motive of these universities. Even if you ask any one who studied in IIT and who interacted with these students, you will get the information about the difference in attitude (The attitude of person who got admitted by Daddy’s money and the attitude of student who qualified entrance exams). Nowadays due to these hype these people intrude in toIITs or good companies for summer internship. One of my junior who is in IIT once expressed his irritation due to these hype people(no knowledge only the hype head weight hehe)coz he was assigned as TA for these people. There is a huge difference between educational methods or systems from IIT, NITs with these crap universities. I know personally the educational system there. If you check the IITmethods you can see numerical and logical problems will be there in question paper. But , here it is direct. Before the exam faculties have to tell the direct questions in the name of hot topics. It is required by the management to give all students good mark in order to avoid complaints. There is no competition(only may be between first 5 ppl). A 6 pointer from IIT is 550 % better than the 10 pointer there. Have you ever gone through courses conducted by these universities in advanced level?. Have you ever heard a private university conducts courses like (cse)advanced complexity theory,game theory,pattern recognition, randomized algorithms,Combinatorial Optimizations? If so have you ever checked the curriculum with IITs (http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/acad/courses4.html#cs744)? Have you ever compared the course content and format of question papers with IITs and these crap universities? Take theBTech second year data structure course midsem paper from IIT B, give it to the topper of these so called university final year student… he will not be able to understand the questions (That is the quality of these students). If you check these universities you can see there are lot of courses with prefix “Advanced” as hype material. It doesn’t have half of the quality of basic courses in IIT for the same subject . If you check the faculty profile,question paper format,assignment and syllabus in these universities you will come to know the real HIDE and SEEK. Even if they recruit few retired professors from IIT, they won’t follow the IIT curriculum or methods there ,because they all know to whom they have to teach. So when you select a college please go through these parameters (and also the link from oneIITK fellow regarding this http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/~dheeraj/ideas/other-coll.html). Those who treat education as business may give this low profile education if you are not gone through details behind the curtain. These people will hype the quality by showing facilities, AC hostels, gardens, parks, paid surveys, poser workshop seminars and accreditations from foreign countries by smart paper work. One funny thing is that I have seen one India today survey, the fellow who gave ranking had given IIT B (the IIT that gets top 100 in GATE and jee) a factual rank of 15. What that guy was doing while giving ranks? attending his Mom's funeral? They also targeted new IITs (if they target old ones no one will believe). It is adjusted to give some crap universities who do not even deserve to be in top 20 by ineligible credits. Once Narayana Murthi (Infosys) said “My son didt get CSE in IIT so he joined cornell university” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJuSL96MIkU)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb-wg-7NQPU&feature=related) . WE all know cornel has good facilities than IIT then why he said like that? IIT is about quality of students (coz people are not coming here by PAPAs money, it is by IIT JEE or GATE) due to high grade competition in entrance exams,quality of courses and quality of faculties. You can’t hype quality by providing A/C hostels, conducting poser workshops, paid rankings and giving enormous advertisement. It comes through hard-work and dedication. I am winding up this by quoting “The competition for kingship happens between LIONs, a STRAY DOG has no business there. Even if you put make up (illogical ranking and hyping) and make it look like a LIONthen when it comes to battle it won’t roar or fight instead it will bark, moan and run away”. NB: We are making awareness of these kind of fake ranking and hype practice by the private colleges (to get good students and getting high fee) among IIT alumni s, faculties and new students. From the perspective of an IIT alumni we won’t allow anyone to spit on theIITeducation system that we obtained by hardwork for the sake of some private universities. The matter is about to forward to IIT authorities. I am not arguing IITs are world’s best, but it is the best in India no doubt about that. IIT and IIM tags are not for some low quality private universities to do fake advertisement such that "we are in the league of IITs" or "We are better than IIM". These tags are actually the reward for their hard-work, you can't buy that by money using these private posh universities.