IIT and IIM. These two institutions have helped launch several thousand of careers in corporates and have shaped the current state of Corporate India. Having a degree from these institutes would potentially boost one’s career and in the case of India, marital prospects. Many believe that life after cracking some of the toughest exams (JEE, CAT, etc.) would be a smooth sail into a corporate life. A degree in technology from IIT or an MBA from IIM should help you get through life without any hassles. Getting a job right off campus is tough, there’s no doubt about that but this applies for a few handfuls of students. For a majority, it’s not the same.
The effort required to be qualified enough to be accepted into an IIM or IIT institute is so intense that certain exhaustion sets into your system. You develop an “entitlement mindset”, as Vineet Nayar (former CEO of HCL Technologies) said. People don’t want to work after the two years of effort they put in. We also find that the magic of being a graduate from such institutes is diminishing. The number of MBA graduates from institutes other than IIM, who are CEOs of top 200 companies is 43. The number of CEOs of top 200 companies with IIM degrees is at 25. This is a massive gap.
Over a third of all CEOs with IIM degrees work in retail consumer space. According to Mohandas Pai (Chairman of Manipal Global Education) graduates from IIT and IIM institutes have been in the system for around 20 years — they were hired two decades ago, at which time FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) ruled the market. Now the best students join consulting firms, the newer and younger companies where IIT and IIM graduates are not CEOs.
Does this mean the reputation of said institutes is at stake? The answer is both, yes and no. While IIT and IIM institutes do hold a place of honor when it comes to “qualification”, by the mid-2000s several other institutes stood to fill the gap during a time when the economy was booming. Graduates from IIT and IIM institutes then became a smaller part of the education system. With the population boom, there are about 8 million graduates every year of which 2500-3000 graduate from IIM and about 10,000 from IIT. Two decades back, the best of the best students went to IITs, without any 50% reservations. Now, there are millions of people applying and going through an extremely cramming test to enter these institutes.
For those who do get past these exams and years of education, a major chunk of them end up working in positions which have little to no relation to what they actually graduated in. So, you could have a Btech in aerospace engineering end up developing software for a client delivering financial services. There are dreams, prospects, goals which you want to fulfill after your graduation. Your energy is contagious and palpable. You’re the next Ratan Tata with an aim to change the world. But once you realize you’d rather have a cushy job with a great salary and unlimited coffee and memberships to clubs, those disillusions of grandeur begin to fade.
This is a long-term prospect. Most IIT graduates prefer an IIT-IIM tag rather than a plain IIT label. It helps them get away from just technical jobs. So, after four grueling years of technical courses, they head toward the world of management and business. The biggest companies pick you up in a flash with fancy packages and a lot of zeros on the paycheck. But there’s a hierarchy here too. Not everyone gets the fancy treatment. The ones that don’t get picked up first must accept other jobs, easily and widely ranging from menial or mediocre to excellent ones and head back to the corporate world two years after simple IITians did.
This brings up another point: that IITs create more entrepreneurs than IIMs. What you learn in an IIT course becomes a ground for new start-ups, unlike IIMs where you learn how to manage businesses. IIMs are for managing businesses. Not generating them. The spark of innovation that techies from IIT possess grows into taking risks instead of calculating the impact of the risk. This makes entrepreneurship, a high-risk profession, gel well with IIT students.
Compared to IIM students, IITians don’t have to pay large sums of money as fees. Graduation is quite early, usually around 22-25 years of age so you have a lot of time to make mistakes without the generic social pressure of getting married. Once you reach the IIM stage, you become wary. You’re not willing to take as many risks as you may have been before. Being fresh out of IIT you have little to no experience while about 30% of IIM students have some amount of experience. Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO of Next Education started his first company immediately after graduating from IIT Bombay, 1999, but the venture failed. According to him, the biggest lesson was not doing something you were not passionate about because “what you would do casually would be the passion of someone else. And you would eventually fail.”
Whether a person goes for IIT or IIM, and you’re thinking of heading toward a third career track, take a second. Don’t jump into another degree before you address the basic questions, because you might just end up where you started, with an internationally accepted degree (not to mention more expensive than the last one) that’ll do little or nothing for your career five years down the line.
You might want to go abroad, live the American Dream now but once you do get there it’s a wake-up call because things really aren’t that easy. In India, people know how to exploit people well and how to exploit the services available too. That’s what makes a life in Mumbai so attractive. A little bit of brooding and soul-searching can help you find the right track to get on, which is a lot better than soaking up textbooks for another two or three years. Get to know other people and their perspectives, experiences of those who wore your hat once. There’s a lot more to IIT and IIM courses than just a sheet of paper with your grades on it.
Finally, it would be essential to point out that this piece isn’t meant to denigrate anyone from IIT or IIM institutions. It’s just a view on the ironic situation, the juxtaposition to put it mildly, where the best of the best talent in this country is implored to accept a job that is entirely separate from that talent or person’s abilities. It’s probably why even after you get the stamp of these institutes on your CVs that you’ll probably head abroad looking for a second MBA and top jobs.
By Danesh Fatakia
Image Source: Careeizma