What Should India’s IITs Be Built to Achieve?
India’s IITs need a clearer purpose, stronger undergraduate research, and a broader curriculum that values both engineering and the humanities.
India’s Indian Institutes of Technology have a clear global name, but their purpose is less clear. Are the IITs meant to train engineers for industry, build research careers, support national projects, or compete in global rankings? At present, they are asked to do all four.
This mixed purpose shapes almost every debate about the IITs. When research output falls short, people call them undergraduate colleges. When the government seeks more funds, they are described as research institutions. When students receive high placement offers, that becomes the main sign of success. The result is an institution pulled in several directions.
The usual explanations miss the larger issue
When people ask why IIT graduates do not enter research in larger numbers, three answers appear often. The first is a lack of money and good laboratories. The second is a lack of talent. The third is the presence of humanities and social science courses in engineering education.
Each point has some truth. Research needs funding, equipment and time. Yet talent is not a strong excuse. IIT students clear one of the toughest admission tests in the world. They already have strong academic ability.
The argument against the humanities also has a weak base. Leading science and engineering colleges across the world include subjects such as history, economics, writing and political science. These courses do not replace technical learning. They help students understand how their work affects people, markets and public life.
India is using the wrong comparison
Indian institutions are often compared with Stanford and MIT. These universities have vast endowments, large research budgets and long histories of global influence. The comparison can help set a high standard, but it can also hide India’s real choices.
A better comparison may be Harvey Mudd College in California. It is a small, undergraduate-only science and engineering college. Like the first IITs, it began in the 1950s. Yet it sends a far larger share of its graduates into science and engineering doctorates.
Harvey Mudd does not have the scale of an IIT. It spends more per student and attracts many students who already want research careers. These facts matter. Still, money and student choice do not explain the full difference. The college has built research into undergraduate education.
Students work with faculty members early. They use research equipment, join projects and help write papers. They do not wait until the final year to see how research works. Its long-running Clinic Program also places student teams on open-ended problems from industry and other organisations.
What IIT students learn to value
The IIT system rewards speed, accuracy and performance in exams. The Joint Entrance Examination must select students at a huge scale, so it needs clear measures. The problem begins after admission.
A student’s rank can affect branch allocation. Grades then shape internships and placements. Finally, the salary package becomes a public measure of success. This system trains students to follow targets set by others. Research demands a different habit. It asks students to frame questions, test ideas and accept that failure can produce useful evidence.
High salaries do not have to block research. Harvey Mudd graduates have ranked among the highest-paid young professionals in the United States, while the college also sends many students to doctoral programmes. This suggests that students respond to what their institution respects and rewards.
In India, the gap between a corporate salary and a doctoral stipend is much wider for many families. That pressure is real. But a research career should not be treated as a failed placement. A PhD is not a consolation prize for a student who missed a job offer. It is a different path with a different reward.
Research needs access, not just equipment
The older IITs have advanced laboratories, supercomputers and cleanrooms. However, research facilities often serve doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers first. Many B.Tech students meet research through a short final-year project.
IITs already run summer research schemes, honours tracks and faculty projects. These programmes show that change is possible. The key question is whether such work stays on the edge of campus life or becomes part of the main undergraduate experience.
Colleges can take several practical steps:
- Place first and second-year students in faculty research groups.
- Give course credit for open-ended research projects.
- Ask students to defend their methods, not just present final answers.
- Create project tracks with public laboratories, state governments and Indian companies.
- Reward faculty members who guide undergraduate research.
These steps do not require every IIT to copy an American college. Large classes may make one-to-one tutorials hard. Indian institutions also face a different student mix, funding system and social need. But the basic idea can travel: students learn research by doing it.
Why the humanities still matter
There is no simple proof that one humanities course will turn an engineer into a researcher. That is not the main point. The strongest research colleges keep a broad curriculum because technical work does not happen outside society.
Engineers build tools that shape jobs, privacy, health, cities and public policy. A student who studies only formulas may solve a technical problem and miss its wider cost. Writing, ethics, economics and social science can help students ask better questions and explain their work clearly.
India’s National Education Policy 2020 also calls for broader and more multidisciplinary education, including in engineering institutions. Removing the humanities from the IITs would move against that goal and against the structure used by many research-focused colleges.
A choice the country must make
The IITs can remain strong professional colleges with excellent links to industry. They can become major research universities. They can also build a planned combination of both. But each path needs clear goals, funding rules and measures of success.
Rankings may count papers and doctoral numbers. Placement reports may count salary packages. Neither measure can show whether students learned to frame original questions. That skill takes time to build, and it often appears years after graduation.
The next IIT reform debate should ask direct questions. How much undergraduate research should every student receive? What share of the curriculum should cover the humanities and social sciences? Which projects should public funding support? What should an IIT director be rewarded for improving?
The answers will shape whether the IITs remain places where students secure good jobs, or become places where more students learn to create new knowledge, products and public solutions.
