I am amused at the observation by Narayana Murthy on the quality of IIT students; he says that the quality of IIT students has come down over the years. This is the same in every generation - each one putting the next generation down. This has been going on from time immemorial; at least I have heard of the same story in Aristotle's time.
I am not able to understand why someone who is remotely connected with education and educators, leave alone students, has to make such a comment (is he looking for a business opportunity here). Just because someone is successful in one field does not mean that he has the competence to comment on anything that comes his way. Narayana Murthy himself had not cleared the IIT entrance examination; he did his MTech in, if I remember right, Kanpur IIT. That is not something great. If he is asked to write the IIT entrance examination even today, I am sure he will fail.
Let us not under-estimate the present generation. They are born to fight and win. They have to face much more competition than what we faced in our times. It is finally the cream among the students that joins IIT. How can one say their quality has come down ?; does he mean to say that the cream does not opt for IITs and the next level gets into them ? Let us also not forget that students have to study more in less time now. There are many distractions now which were not there when Narayana Murthy was in his late teens. In spite of all these distractions these students do well.
I can agree with Jayaram Ramesh who said that the quality of faculty in IITs had come down and that their research output was not up to the mark. In spite of such a lower quality faculty, IIT students do well because of their inherent intelligence. Let us not demean them. In my opinion Narayana Murthy's comment is political; post retirement he is probably looking for an opportunity to be a politician. I would like to reject his thesis outright.
I am not able to understand why someone who is remotely connected with education and educators, leave alone students, has to make such a comment (is he looking for a business opportunity here). Just because someone is successful in one field does not mean that he has the competence to comment on anything that comes his way. Narayana Murthy himself had not cleared the IIT entrance examination; he did his MTech in, if I remember right, Kanpur IIT. That is not something great. If he is asked to write the IIT entrance examination even today, I am sure he will fail.
Let us not under-estimate the present generation. They are born to fight and win. They have to face much more competition than what we faced in our times. It is finally the cream among the students that joins IIT. How can one say their quality has come down ?; does he mean to say that the cream does not opt for IITs and the next level gets into them ? Let us also not forget that students have to study more in less time now. There are many distractions now which were not there when Narayana Murthy was in his late teens. In spite of all these distractions these students do well.
I can agree with Jayaram Ramesh who said that the quality of faculty in IITs had come down and that their research output was not up to the mark. In spite of such a lower quality faculty, IIT students do well because of their inherent intelligence. Let us not demean them. In my opinion Narayana Murthy's comment is political; post retirement he is probably looking for an opportunity to be a politician. I would like to reject his thesis outright.
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