Some tips to reform the Indian Education System

- Convert all NITs into IITs, so there will be a total of 40-50 IITs.

- Convert all the best engineering colleges such as ISM, IT-BHU into IITs.

- Leasing of IIT brand should be allowed so that BITS Pilani, BIT Ranchi, etc. can be converted into IITs. After all, IITs also are to be given autonomy (in theory) so private institutes should also be allowed to slice a cake out of the brand.

- Brand Dilution of IITs-A misplaced fact

The IITs are now 40-50 years old. They were instituted to form a base of engineering in the country. With the requirement of techies growing especially when we want to race through to become a 10 trillion $ economy, these fall well short of the requirement. And anyway, you can't grant elite status to just 7 institutes in a country of 1.2 Billion people. Standardization should be brought about. Otherwise, with the mushrooming of so many institutes, it would be difficult to gauge the standard of one unbranded institute w.r.t the other, both from a student's as well as from an MNC or a foreigner's point of view. Over and above, it would not take 10-20 years before all these institutes get at par with the established IITs.

- Selection in IITs should be based absolutely on merit (no quotas, state ranks etc.).

- Convert AIIMS into IIMeds (Indian Institutes of Medical Sciences) and rechristen all best medical colleges in the country as IIMeds. Standardize Fashion Technology institutes under IIFTs (Indian Institutes of Fashion Technology). Convert management institutes such as FMS, MHROD-DU, IRMA, NITIE, IIFT, and all other possible institutes into IIMs. IIM brand should also be leased to institutes with good reputation viz. XLRI, MDI, XIMB, TISS etc. Similarly, convert "NLUs" into "IILs" (Indian Institutes of Law), defence academies as IIDs (Indian Institutes of Defence) and all the pure science universities into IIScs (Indian Institutes of Science) on the footsteps in IISc, Bangalore.

- The idea is not only to rechristen the institutes but also to provide them governing boards as currently done in IITs. This would overhaul the current system replacing it with a professional management system.

- The motive is also to make "II" or "Indian Institutes of ... " a sort of global patent in excellence. These would be collectively known as “Indian Institutes of Excellence”. UGC would become a banker to IIEs. Primarily, IIEs would comprise of the following:

o IITs

o IIMs

o IIMeds

o IIFTs

o IILs

o IIScs

o IIITs

o IIDs

- A separate organization for syllabi design should be instituted. This would have members from both industry and academia. It would design syllabi of all the IIEs.

- Currently each institute is affiliated to a central university. The idea is to affiliate engineering colleges with IITs, the pure science colleges with IIScs, and so each college in India would either be an IIE or affiliated to it.

- Right now, there's a lot of confusion and spending involved when the students apply to different institutes while taking admission into engineering, medical, management fields. Develop a national portal for applying to different institutes. All this hassle can be avoided if this is integrated with the NIC (National Identity Card) technology. All the institutes from a particular stream should consider a candidate if he/she opts for that particular stream. For example, if a candidate wants to pursue management, he is automatically considered by all the management institutes of the country and not apply to each institute separately.

- Now as far as the buzz of diversifying IITs into full-fledged universities, I don’t buy the idea owing to the fact that technology is the core competency of IITs, which may or may not be maintained after this conversion. Moreover, the brand will not remain intact as right now the word “Technology” identifies with what is taught in these institutes. Converting them into universities would result in destroying their specialized advantage altogether.