I expect greater investment in higher education

Dr. (Prof.) S. Sadagopan, founding-director of the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B, estb.1999), recently retired from the institute after long innings of 22 years during which he established IIIT-B as one of India’s most well-respected higher education institutions for developing human resources for the country’s booming IT and ICT (information and communications technology) industries. An engineering graduate of Madras University with a PhD awarded by the high-ranked Purdue University, USA, in his long and dedicated career in Indian academia, Dr. Sadagopan taught at IIT-Kanpur, IIM-Bangalore and IIT-Madras prior to being appointed founding-director of IIIT-Bangalore in 1999. This is an abridged version of a 47-minute Zoom interview with Dr. Sadagopan. For the full interview, see www.educationworld.in With Indian industry already being served by over 3,000 engineering colleges and more than a dozen IITs, what was the motivation for establishing IIIT-B in 1999? What were its major aims and objectives? The IITs and engineering colleges provide multidisciplinary engineering education. With the fast growth of the IT industry from the 1990s onwards, IIITs were established in Hyderabad and Bangalore to exclusively serve the needs of the IT industry to develop the manpower needed to take this industry to the next level. The second special feature of IIIT-Bangalore in particular, was that we focused on admitting postgrad M.Tech students, unlike IITs and engineering colleges that produce hundreds of B.Techs and few M.Techs. So, we started with 150 M.Techs right from day one and introduced an undergraduate programme after a decade. We also focused on preparing our graduates for products and technology companies — Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, HP and the like. All this differentiates IIIT-B from the IITs and engineering colleges. How satisfied are you with the evolution and progress of IIIT-B? With all humility, I am more than satisfied. Not only me, even IIIT-B board members and the Central and state governments. Today, there are more than 25 IIITs and the success of IIIT-B substantially influenced their promotion. In the past 22 years, we have graduated 3,500 students and certified another 10,000 through online education. Right from the start, the quality of IIIT-B alumni has been greatly appreciated by the IT industry. For instance, the US-based GE hired 51 of our very first batch of 150 graduates; and, at one point of time more than 200 of our alumni were employed by SAP, the German IT multinational. IIIT-B was established as a tripartite joint venture with the Union government, government of Karnataka and private investors. How satisfied are you with the academic and administrative autonomy granted to the institute by government during your tenure as director? The government of Karnataka was the largest investor in IIIT-B by way of cash and land grant. A significant amount of investment also came from the IT industry. I must place on record that the Karnataka government and Government of India fully respected our autonomy. Indeed, I attribute the success of IIIT-B to the full autonomy the institute enjoys in admitting students, recruiting faculty and…