Bharat Rakshak

Tanaji wrote:After reading the Kota thing I was like
All I can ask : Is it really worth it?

Bade wrote: That leaves one nuke option, make the exit from an IIT not easy. This can be implemented for the older ones of the current IITs. It should no more be a traditional BTech centered institution.

That role can be taken over by the new upcoming ones, to fill in the entry levels for industry jobs. Why not make the 5 campuses for real misfits to society.

To exit with a degree be it B Tech or MS/MTech something out of the ordinary has to be done, beyond the minimum credits and class work to get the basic foundation. The bar has to be raised a lot to get out with a degree at every level. That will be a deterrent for the 'coasters' through the system.

• Well.....in some cases this mugging and coasting also has to be seen in context. For most of us at BRF we come from comparatively well-off backgrounds (doesn't mean we are all feelthy rich like RM ji )....if you look at the folks who do the whole Super-30 thing, it is a totally different crowd than most of the VMC/FIIT-JEE crowd. For them getting into IIT itself is the big goal since it provides them a quantum leap into a level of opportunity and recognition (which will hopefully turn into clout) which they can otherwise only dream of. For them it is not a question of always pushing for the next higher level at every stage - they don't have that luxury or in a lot of cases even the concept because you can have those thoughts if your basic needs are met but not if you have to plough the fields with your father every day after school (and during harvest season bunk school to pick the crops). Hence, the goal becomes to beat the system or master the system to the level where it ensures a comparatively much higher level of opportunity but not necessarily the highest level of opportunity.
• At various stages, there are opportunities which level the playing field for all regardless of IIT, MIT, BIT, NIT etc.
  1) Going to massa/elsewhere for studies.
  2) After your 1st or 2nd job.
  3) Doing a career change.
  4) Doing an Yum Bee Aye at a top place.
  ...
  ..
  
  However, as many have pointed out the worth of being associated with institutions such as IIT, MIT, Stanford is not their superior education or the superior intellect of their peers. Rather it is the social network - the people you know who know people who know people who get things done. This provides a big cushion and boost for one's efforts (ofcourse some people misuse this to do crappy work but thats a separate issue). For example, a mediocre student at Stanford has a better chance at making it big than a better student at a lesser known place. If Google's founders were not in Stanford, their much vaunted PageRank would be just another academic paper which would be read and forgotten. It is precisely due to the Stanford alumni network, the angel investors amongst them (and thru them the VCs) that they succeeded (that includes the recruitment of Eric Schimdt who as per me is the real architect behind Google's success as a company - PageRank != $$$).
  
  But that being said, I don't see (and never have seen despite all sorts of parental threats) the merit of slogging like crazy, forgoing all the fun of teenage life to get into some "good" college. In the end, it doesn't matter. If I look back at my class 12th classmates - after 8-9 odd years, I don't see any clear demarcation (in terms of job and quality of life) amongst the IIT-JEE toppers (I went to school with the AIR1 and a couple amongst AIR top-10 and top-20 and later on PGM winners), IIT alumni, AIIMS alumni and the non-IIT/AIIMS/other TFTA college fellas and this includes everybody who went to massa universities. How successful one is in life does not seem to be a function of where one went to school, though the minimum threshold of success in the short-term might be a function of that.

Singha wrote:problem is IISc profs are supposed to be real terror in timelines to award Phd. the joke a decade ago was if you enter into Phd pgm there after Btech, you can forget about the next 7-8 yrs,

Singha wrote:problem is IISc profs are supposed to be real terror in timelines to award Phd. the joke a decade ago was if you enter into Phd pgm there after Btech, you can forget about the next 7-8 yrs, while if you go to massa you could put in the same work and get in 5.
not sure if its still true today. most yindu do have some other goals in life than simply slogging on campus on a stipend for the big guy who constantly moves the bar.

negi wrote:Fwiw

Came across this blog ,writer is a Professor in IISc

Pay scales in IISc

I have to admit though the 6th pay commission recommendations have increased the pay stubs by a significant margin ; the final figure is still no where close to what a guy with similar experience in private sector would make . Don't know what to say .

Why do you think so? The guys are eligible for inflation-adjusted government pension, which is enough to put them over the top.

That leaves one nuke option, make the exit from an IIT not easy. This can be implemented for the older ones of the current IITs. It should no more be a traditional BTech centered institution. That role can be taken over by the new upcoming ones, to fill in the entry levels for industry jobs. Why not make the 5 campuses for real misfits to society

Tanaji wrote:^^^^ Post graduate Diploma in Library Automation and Networking? WTF???

vina wrote:
Just make sure that you get a whole range of smart people other than one dimensional geeks who manage to ace an exam and have nothing else in life. The IIT hostels were simply exciting because of the who range of extra curricular and social activites that I am sure not many campuses in India (including St Stephens etc) can hold a candle to. That kind of multiple interests and diversity gets reflected in the final career choices that get made as well.

Over the last five years, three people (!) have went to the US for postgrad in one discipline that has say ~50 people per year. And I am not kidding you, this is the exact line I heard from a prof now in iitm, he hardly gets reference requests from students!!

vina wrote: Unbelievable. Is this IIT-M as in IIT Madras and not the newfangled one in Maharashtra ?

In my days, in a batch of 50, say 6 people would stay back in India, with one of them going to say IISc or something, the others into industry and one or two to do YumBeeYea from Eye Eye Yum.

How is the B.Tech student body like these days? Back in my days,there used to be a strong contingent from TN (mostly Mylapore/Mambalam types and rest of TN) and Tams who were from Dilli, Mumbai , Calcutta and other places who made it thru JEE, but whose parents dutifully

And what wide range of interests in everything. These guys would simply crush all other colleges in all events in anything (other than sports of course, where we would get crushed, which is understandable).. There were guys interested in music, poetry, writing, debating, jam, quiz, crosswords, carving, painting . you name it, in addition to their academics.

Why folks like Rahul The Mehta will put forth dark conspiracy theories of NBJPrie and Elitemen conspiring to keep "commons" out of the IITs .

Misfits in society should be secluded and sequestered away from sight and civilization in the new IITs that come up in places like Kota and other random places. The current IITs should be left as they are and made better, sort of like a UC B or Stanford, MIT etc.

Bade wrote:I thought pension has stopped for all central govt recruitment since the year 2000 or so. So anyone entering now at DRDO/ISRO/IITS/CISR etc is not going to get any pension except the equivalent of the 401k type plans in massa.

The retirement age for all purposes is now 70. However, if I retire (hopefully !) from IISc in 2019 after 20 years of service at the age of 50, I will get pension for the rest of my life at 50% of the basic that I get at 2019. The pension will increase with increase in DA.

negi wrote:While the numbers look attractive at first glance you need to also see the amount of experience required to become a Professor/Asst. Professor in institutes like IISc . I just think for that amount of experience and nature of job (this does not look like a typical 40hrs a week job to me) the remuneration should be higher , how to achieve this and whether it is viable in the current system are different topics altogether.

if I retire (hopefully !) from IISc in 2019 after 20 years of service at the age of 50, I will get pension for the rest of my life

vina wrote:There were guys interested in music, poetry, writing, debating, jam, quiz, crosswords, carving, painting . you name it, in addition to their academics. When I look back at some of my hostel mates and what they are doing today (many are absolute top stars in their chosen careers) and think back on what kind of multi facted personalities they were and talents they had, it is just amazing.

Singha wrote:do robotics courses in qakhanate use custom designed and ordered kits or COTS ?

I have first hand info in iit-guwahati, they used a lego mindstorm kit as of now. some kinda
basic stuff like taking video input and coding obstacle avoidance algorithms etc were done as term projects.

thats way more than we were exposed to 14 yrs ago.

Singha wrote:that was what I was worried of. if someone disassembled the whole thing to nuts and bolts - they wouldnt be able to put it together, unless chankian concepts like taking a photo after every few steps used.

Singha wrote:problem is IISc profs are supposed to be real terror in timelines to award Phd. the joke a decade ago was if you enter into Phd pgm there after Btech, you can forget about the next 7-8 yrs, while if you go to massa you could put in the same work and get in 5.
not sure if its still true today. most yindu do have some other goals in life than simply slogging on campus on a stipend for the big guy who constantly moves the bar.

Bose Babu wrote:(PS: Maybe you are as old as my father? (....runs away....))

vina wrote:

Bose Babu wrote:(PS: Maybe you are as old as my father? (....runs away....))

I am, only if you happen to be 4 1/2 years old!

Admit it. You are closer to 40 1/2 than 4 1/2

Bade wrote:Pipe dreams. It will look more like IIM than IIT in a few years time.

The misfits I allude to are the ones who do not necessarily fall into the tight fits of the JEE system, Kota coached or not. The Kota ones are exact fits for the current IIT culture.

This has been true from what I noticed right from 1987 days too. This tooling around and doing nothing was quite common among BTech even then. (There was a EE guy called toolie, who was always found in the common room, evey hostel even had a guy named pondy in those days) In fact in our wing in Mandak, we had 3rd and 4th year BTechs who could be found in their hostel rooms at anytime of the day, discussing pee-lo-sopie of American constitution and graduate school admissions loopholes.

It was a rigged system with huge QBies to ace the GRE at 99.999999% level for most subjects.

In fact applying for fizziks MS/Pacchadi among the JEE geniuses from EE was common, as general RGing was high to get into good schools in EE with full scholarship, considering the inflated GRE scores. So a GRE physics score of 95% or so could get them to some good schools. Most have disappeared from the physics, which is true for MSc types too considering that the attrition is higher than engg to get a faculty position in a reasonable time.

Raja Bose wrote:Nope I am closer to 4 1/2 - (you didn't mention mentally or physically and anyhow my GHQ will swear that I am closer to the lower bound as opposed to the upper bound).

raghunath wrote: Not true any more. Now CSIR/UGC and other Institute scholarships for the PhD students has a cap of 5 years i.e. you have to finish PhD in 5 yeasr or else you will be not paid full stipend. They will be paid only honorary stipend of Rs 2500 or so against the full stipend of Rs 15,000. After this cap was introduced, many of my M.Sc classmates have finished PhDs within 5 years and some within 4 years depending on work. I hope they will reduce the cap to 4 years as the facilities in the IISc and other institutes increase and timelines required for doing experiments and finishing PhD also decrease.

vina wrote: Muttuks and B.Techs