IIT goes global

THERE is much excitement and rightly so around the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) branching out overseas. IIT-Madras has become the first one to make the significant foray. With India signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Tanzania on Thursday in this regard, Zanzibar is set to have an IIT campus from October. Next in line are IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kharagpur, which will have their campuses in the UAE and Malaysia, respectively. The expansion of the footprint of India’s high-ranked institutes and universities worldwide is aligned with the country’s foreign policy and commitment to strengthening South-South cooperation. The internationalisation of education through such collaborative endeavours is bound to deepen ties with the recipient countries through the spread of tech education and student mobility as well as the resultant opening of more global research opportunities.

However, at the same time, this development underlines how poorly our overall higher education sector is generally placed. Other than the handful of high-performing institutes, such as the IITs and the IISc, most of our universities and colleges are lowly placed in various global rankings. Shackled by the lack of adequate funds and staff, they are struggling to give quality education to their students.

Even though the youth from the hinterland are talented, the educational institutions that they mostly have access to are, unfortunately, not good enough to hone their skills. This impacts their employability and potential to launch startups or register patents. A lot of degree-holders end up doing jobs much below their capabilities or even opting out of their core field and area of expertise. The government should prioritise empowering India’s youth with quality education along with enhancing the country’s global presence.