Page 68 - EducationWorld Oct 2021

Interview

“I expect greater investment in higher education” institute.

The institute has been successful in
r. (Prof.) S. Sadagopan, recruiting highly qualified faculty from
founding-director of the top universities around the world. Yet
DIndian Institute of Informa- students’ tuition-cum-residence fees are
tion Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B, modest averaging around Rs.2 lakh per
estb.1999), recently retired from year. To what extent is education subsi-
the institute after a long innings of dised by government?
22 years during which he estab- We have been lucky because of our
lished IIIT-B as one of India’s most location in Bengaluru. Over the past
well-respected higher education 20 years, a large number of business
institutions for developing human professionals and engineers who had
resources for the country’s booming emigrated from the US, UK etc relo-
IT and ICT (information and com- cated to work in India’s IT industry.
munications technology) industries. Because Bangalore is an industry
An engineering graduate of hub, when we recruit faculty, spouses
Madras University with a Ph D can also easily get employment in
awarded by the high-ranked Purdue Bengaluru. This is the locational
University, USA, in his long and advantage we enjoy and this has
dedicated career in Indian aca- helped us attract excellent faculty, in
demia, Dr. Sadagopan taught at addition of our core strengths.
IIT-Kanpur, IIM-Bangalore and
IIT-Madras prior to being appoint-
ed founding-director of IIIT-Banga- and progress of IIIT-B? How satisfied are you with IIIT-B’s IT
lore in 1999. With all humility, I am more than industry placement record?
This is an abridged version of a satisfied. Not only me, even IIIT-B Som Mittal, former chairman of
47-minute Zoom interview with Dr. board members and the Central and NASSCOM who was on our board,
Sadagopan. For the full interview, state governments. Today, there are used to say that for IIIT-B, the
see www.educationworld.in more than 25 IIITs and the success graduates’ placement season was
of IIIT-B substantially influenced a swayamvaar. Companies had to
their promotion. In the past 22 years, dress themselves up to be chosen by
With Indian industry already being served we have graduated 3,500 students our graduates. Placement has never
by over 3,000 engineering colleges and and certified another 10,000 through been a problem — 100 percent place-
more than a dozen IITs, what was the online education. Right from the ment is normative, so we don’t talk
motivation for establishing IIIT-B in 1999? start, the quality of IIIT-B alumni about it.
What were its major aims and objectives? has been greatly appreciated by the
The IITs and engineering colleges IT industry. For instance, the US- What are the average starting salaries
provide multidisciplinary engineer- based GE hired 51 of our very first
ing education. With the fast growth batch of 150 graduates; and, at one that your graduates get?
of the IT industry from the 1990s point of time more than 200 of our I don’t remember the exact figures.
onwards, IIITs were established alumni were employed by SAP, the But our average is around Rs.14 lakh
in Hyderabad and Bangalore to German IT multinational. per year with the brightest graduates
exclusively serve the needs of the IT snapped up for Rs.1.5-2 crore. One
industry to develop the manpower IIIT-B was established as a tripartite or two companies pay that kind of
needed to take this industry to the joint venture with the Union government, money.
next level. The second special feature government of Karnataka and private
of IIIT-Bangalore in particular, investors. How satisfied are you with the There’s a school of opinion that says In-
was that we focused on admitting academic and administrative autonomy dia’s IT industry is relatively underdevel-
postgrad M.Tech students, unlike granted to the institute by government oped and derives much of its impressive
IITs and engineering colleges that during your tenure as director? revenue doing low-end jobs for offshore,
produce hundreds of B.Techs and The government of Karnataka was IT multinationals. What’s your comment?
few M.Techs. So, we started with This is an interesting comment that’s
150 M.Techs right from day one and the largest investor in IIIT-B by way often made. Indians love to run
of cash and land grant. A significant
introduced an undergraduate pro- down our own people and our own
gramme after a decade. We also fo- amount of investment also came companies. But although it’s laud-
from the IT industry. I must place on
cused on preparing our graduates for able to aspire to execute projects at
products and technology companies record that the Karnataka govern- the high end of the value chain, every
ment and Government of India fully
— Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, HP link in the chain is important. India
and the like. All this differentiates respected our autonomy. Indeed, I is a country of 1.3 billion people.
attribute the success of IIIT-B to the
IIIT-B from the IITs and engineering So we need to employ people at all
colleges. full autonomy the institute enjoys in levels of the value chain. Therefore,
admitting students, recruiting faculty
How satisfied are you with the evolution and staff and the way we manage the I would request everybody to stop
68 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2021