Prof. R.K Shevgaonkar Director, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi “The arrangement we have in Mauritius has never happened in any other country before”

4 août 2014

4 août 2014, 16:27

Commentaire(s)

16:27

Commentaire(s)

Par

Touria Prayag

Partager cet article

Prof. R.K Shevgaonkar Director, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi “The arrangement we have in Mauritius has never happened in any other country before”

Director of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, Professor Shevgaonkar, is currently in the process of helping set up an International Institute of Technology Research Academy in Mauritius. He talks to Weekly about how the institution will work, the opportunities which will be open to our students, his view on Indian universities in Mauritius and how he sees the relationship between industry and academia.

■ Your visit here is in the context of setting up The International Institute of Technology Research Academy (IITRA). What kind of collaboration will there be between this new institution and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi, of which you are the director?

The IIT Research Academy is a separate institution which will be based in Mauritius and mentored by the IIT Delhi for its first five years of existence. The idea is to start research clusters in this campus, to attract faculty and students and then start doing research so that when the research is going on, we can get a quality faculty and then, five years down the line, we can begin undergraduate programmes.

■ If the role of the IIT Delhi is only a mentoring one, it will not be able to give qualifications, will it?

At the beginning, we will register PhD students with the IIT Delhi. So in the next five years, those who are registered with the research academy will be given PhDs and master’s from the IIT Delhi. These students will spend most of their time here in the academy, but for a short duration will go to Delhi and be required to do some courses there. When they come back, there will be joint supervision, one supervisor from here and one from IIT Delhi and the degree will be given by IIT Delhi.

■ When you say that our postgraduate students will follow some courses in Delhi, does that mean half here and half in Delhi?

No, for a PhD, we require a stay of at least one semester in Delhi to follow courses there. This is a requirement for every external candidate at the IIT Delhi. That model is being put in place for the IITRA in Mauritius.

■ Do you mean that our postgraduate students will get the same degrees as those given out at IIT Delhi?

Yes, that’s correct.

■ And what will happen after the first five years?

Once the faculty is in place, the institution will be ready to start the new undergraduate programmes. We will first take stock of how many students show interest and what programmes to offer but, by and large, the curriculum will be very similar to the IIT Delhi programme and the faculty will have been trained in IIT Delhi, so the practices will be similar to those prevailing at the IIT Delhi.

■ If the IITRA is totally independent from the IIT Delhi, where will the qualifications come from?

From the Mauritius government. As far as teaching is concerned, the IITRA will become like in India where IITs are not universities; they are research institutions established by the Indian government, so they have a completely independent status, complete academic autonomy and can decide their own policies with broad guidelines from the government. That should happen for this institute too.

■ Do you have similar arrangements with other countries as the ones you are setting up with Mauritius?

At the moment, we don’t have any other mentorship arrangements with any other country. Mauritius will be the first one. But we do have Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) and exchange programmes, whereby students come to the IIT. The degrees, however, are given by the respective institutions. The arrangement we have in Mauritius has never happened in any other country before.

■ Will there be anybody from the IIT in Delhi controlling quality here?

There will be. The regional director will put in the same quality here as in the IIT Delhi.

■ But since the qualifications don’t come from there, the control might not necessarily follow.

Initially, the institute will be controlled from there. By the time the institute becomes independent, it will have devised a mechanism about the admission criteria and a developed faculty will have been put in place.

■ What terms of collaboration have been established with the IITRA at this point in time?

We have three mandates: one is to help create quality PhD programmes, the second is recruit quality staff similar to the kind we recruit in the IIT Delhi, and third, start a master’s programme which will be held either in Bel Air or somewhere else in Mauritius. So it’s a threefold thing: manpower, capacity building as well as creating the quality faculty. Once the faculty is in place, it will be responsible for running and maintaining an undergraduate programme.

■ Is there any agreement about the number of staff from India and locally?

Not in concrete terms. At the beginning, there will perhaps be more staff coming in from the IIT Delhi, and others will be visiting staff. But for full-time recruitment, we are talking about people who will be based in Mauritius, who know that they will be here for the next 20 or 25 years. So the ultimate responsibility will be theirs.

■ Who will be in charge of the institute?

To start with, a regional director. We are also going to have a steering committee that takes policy decisions. The equivalent of the director of the IIT Delhi will be a member of it. As far as execution is concerned, policy decisions will directly go to the regional director. To start with, most of these decisions will come from the IIT Delhi, but maybe two years down the line, there will be a distinguished academician who will become the executive director here.

■ Are joint degrees on the cards?

We haven’t worked on joint degrees as yet because at the IIT we don’t offer that. We do take postgraduates but because our undergraduate recruitment takes place through a highly competitive national examination, it would be very difficult to have a joint degree. We don’t see that happening. If we did that, our nationals would ask, “why not us?” So we aren’t doing that, but for master’s and PhD levels, yes it can be worked out.

■ Before coming here, you must have made yourself familiar with the issues we have with the University Grants Commission (UGC). We won’t have similar issues with you of course, will we?

We are not related to universities. The IIT system is completely outside the university system. The University Grants Commission regulates most Indian universities but we do not go through that system. We are regulated by an Act of Parliament.

■ So you are not registered with the UGC?

No, we are not registered with the UGC. Official status is given to institutions that are regarded as being of national importance which would include all IITs and the central universities. These are given special status. We get directives only from the president of India, not from the UGC.

■ As far as collaboration between universities and branch universities is concerned, India is the only country we have had significant problems with. Is this due to the fact that the UGC is not as strong as its equivalent in countries like the US, UK or Australia?

I don’t know the way the UGC operates because we are not in that system. We have a different system so I don’t think I will be able to make a judgment on the work of the UGC.

■ But before you came to set up shop here, were you not deterred by the noise the Indian press made about Indian branch campuses here?

Actually no! When the minister of tertiary education [Rajesh Jeetah] visited India and the IIT in Delhi, he said that he wanted to set up an IIT-like institution in Mauritius. We were very clear then that such institutions should have a special status in the country, similar to the status of the IITs in India. It should have its own governance, the same national priority and be of national importance. So we are very clear on that.

■ Why Mauritius?

First of all, there was willingness on the Mauritian side; I can’t say that we were very proactive in approaching Mauritius. It was the Mauritian government that saw some benefits in having a collaboration and mentorship from the IITs in India. Secondly, the IITs have become a global brand and it has taken many years to make that brand and when we talk about branding, the culture and ethos are very similar, so I think the Mauritian government saw that as a greater advantage of collaborating with the IIT brand as opposed to other brands.

■ Mauritius is a small market. What does it represent for you?

We are not only looking at Mauritius. In the long run, we are hoping that this institution will become a hub to attract African students. We want it to become a hub for cutting-edge research in the region.

■ Why would foreign students come here instead of going to Delhi?

African students have more affinities with the people here than with those in Delhi. The cultures are similar, so coming to Mauritius might be much more convenient for them than going to Delhi. Mauritius seems to be an intersection between African and Indian culture. That’s the kind of leverage this institute can have.

■ Is it going to be cheaper?

For the first five years, the cost will be the same as for the IIT students doing their PhD or master’s in Delhi. That’s about Rs40,000 per year. Eventually, when the institution starts recruiting undergraduates, that’s up to the Mauritian government to decide.

■ How many PhD students are you hoping to attract?

To begin with, we will have maybe 10 students and then two or three years down the line, maybe 50. To start with, there will be two subject clusters, one will be electronics and telecommunications and the second will be computer sciences and IT.

■ Only 50?

Fifty is not a small number at PhD level if you don’t want to compromise on quality. We will select students based on quality. If there aren’t enough, we will wait but we certainly will not

recruit just to get numbers up. The message should go out very clearly that this is the place where quality research is done and if you want to do that, then the place is here, either for Mauritians, people around Mauritius or the Mauritian diaspora abroad. So the quality message has to be loud and clear.

■ IT in general is not a course that’s attracting a lot of students in Mauritius, is that true in India as well?

That’s true for low-end IT but for high-end IT like programming etc, I think there is a huge demand. So right from the beginning, we have already decided not to do low-end IT but focus on high-end IT and become globally competitive. There is no dearth of jobs for in high-end IT.

■ But a lot of people holding an IT degree here end up working in call centres.

A degree in IT happens in waves. Think about it like this: the IT educational field can be divided into two categories: one is IT information creation and the other is information dissemination. Dissemination requires a lot of people; creation requires a lot of talent. Now when the creation is done, then dissemination can be done. But once that’s done, you need more talent to create more information, not just in IT but in all fields. And that’s where you require lots of qualified manpower. So these PhD holders and others won’t just disseminate information, but will create information as well. That’s the platform that we have to create. This is where cutting-edge research and information creation will take place.

■ What about equipment? Today, research has become extremely capital intensive. Where will the money come from?

The question to ask is: what is the research for? If the objective of the research is to go to society, it will be taken to society by industry. If you want to productionize it and take it to society, industry should play its role. The commercial model will be developed by industry and, if they see that good research is coming out of that, they will be more than willing to invest in high-end research. So from the start, industry has to be taken onboard. Once it is, there is no dearth of money.

■ Will your courses be tailored to the needs of the industry?

Eventually yes. There will be a foundation of courses that will always be there and some courses will be industry-tailored and oriented. We would also like industry people to come and teach and, in so doing, say what they expect. So industry should not just be a partner in terms of money and investment, but also become an intellectual partner.

■ How much willingness is there in the industry to partner with this institute?

I think it’s a matter of trust. You develop that rapport with industry. At the moment, at least in India – and that might be the case here too – there is not a good relationship between industry and academia. Academia thinks that industry is not doing things that are of highquality, so they cannot really work with them. Industry feels that what the academia is doing doesn’t have applications for them. Instead of seeing the weaknesses of the two sides, you have to look at the strengths of the two sides. The strength of academia is that they are very up-to-date on knowledge: something happened last month and is published in a journal, academia knows all about it. Industry is very good at converting research into products. So if we understand the strengths and leverage them, we will have a good partnership.

■ When is the first batch going to be enrolled?

In January 2015. So in the next few months, we will have completed the admissions formalities and hopefully, by January 2015, we will have the first batch of PhD students.

* Article published in Weekly's issue 31^st July 2014.