McDonald started the Hamburger University. And they made the world sick. Because they didn’t understand the human body or nutrition.
Universities can’t make anything. They are not meant to. They are not designed to. They did serve many purposes though. The movie Titanic had a dialogue which said that the purpose of University for a well groomed lady was to find a suitable match. If you go to Allahabad, keeping kids busy in University reduces rioting and crime.
Western societies invented universities as successors to Schools. And because schools had kids with varying interests, Universities developed a wide range of departments. Each kid could then choose his own poison so to say. Then someone figured out that there was money to be made – so they came up with the idea of collecting hefty fees against a promise of lucrative employment. And this is when the beginning of the end started. It was decades ago.
The trading of fees for salaries opened a can of worms which is yet to close.
Universities got rigid. They created silos. They became commercial. So they tried to standardise courses. Each department had one course for all – running at the same pace – regardless of the students needs or interests. Jobs were pursued based on the package offered. Not based on aptitude or interest.
The IITs followed this mistake. And made it into a strength. Universities killed entrepreneurship and innovation. So dropouts succeeded where graduates failed. Ambitious kids built for better things became job seekers.
Mukesh Ambani was a chemical engineer. So he only builds oil and petrochemical businesses. Gautam Adani knew nothing about- so he builds everything. Bright engineers joined IBM. College dropouts build Microsoft. Elon Musk isn’t an engineer either.
Then came liberal arts. There was nothing liberal or arts in it. The idea was that you have a good time and study whatever you feel like without being bound in the traditional silos. It worked very well. Especially if you didn’t want to work at all. The New Education Policy encourages this.
The IITs are increasingly getting lost in their strategy . They are not going anywhere because they have a great brand and attract brilliant students.
The horizontal silos in a IIT don’t matter. The vertical ones did. BTech was THE product. Then came the BY PRODUCT. And the pinnacle was the PhD – the waste product. IIT Bombay was smart. They realised that rankings depended on the PHD to BTech ratio. So IIT Bombay has the highest ratio probably in India. Next they realised that if they had to retain some BTechs for a PhD – they had to do it fast. So in IIT Bombay you can enrol for a PhD without having to do a masters. And best of all, there is no department concept for a PhD. The PhD degree just mentions your subject.
But BTech or PhD.
There will soon be no job.
So why are you there in the first place.
India will soon see a mass death of colleges. No jobs means no fees. And no fees means death.
