The IIT aspirant seems to have to humble themselves upon exiting the exalted institution, in anticipation of real-world undervaluation. | K. Murali Kumar

“Pehle engineering ki. Uske baad MBA kiya. Uske baad America jaake bank me naukri kar raha hai. Agar bank me naukri karni thi, toh engineering kyun kiya. Aise gadhon ke liye life, sirf ek profit aur loss statement hota hai [First, he studied engineering. Then, pursued an MBA. And then, he went to the United States to work in a bank. Why did he study engineering just to go work at a bank? For such idiots, life is just a profit-loss statement].”

That’s what Rancho, the lead character in the blockbuster movie 3 Idiots, had to say about the engineer-turned-banker Suhas — a ‘fool’ who was making big bucks in the world of finance after having spent his undergraduate years pursuing a bachelors in technology. The likes of Suhas are criticised by many. And more so, if you are a graduate of India’s elitist institute of higher education — the IITs. When the movie had hit the theatres, I was in high school, preparing for the IIT entrance examination. Rancho, the idealist, became my hero.

I agreed with him: why on earth would someone do what Suhas did? Switch careers for — evil word alert — money?

Fast forward to 2016: I graduated with a bachelors degree in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Kanpur, last year. Having witnessed two campus placement seasons very closely — not as a candidate looking for jobs but helping my friends find one — I think Rancho oversimplified things. There is an element of truth there, but the broader narrative around career choices made by science and engineering graduates seems flawed to me. The criticism tends to overlook the reasons why people do what they do, and how decisions are made.

Here is how my friends went through this process.

**

Utkarsh, Rishabh and Vinayak were my wingmates at IIT.

Hailing from a small town of Uttar Pradesh, Utkarsh was told that ‘intelligent’ students who are ‘good at Maths and Science’ go to IIT. Hence, he should too and that became the reason for him preparing for IIT-JEE — no parental pressure as such, but no real love for machines. He joined the department of Civil Engineering. As he progressed, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or Geospatial Engineering captured his interest. The excitement with which he would tell me about the stuff he had learnt made it very clear that Utkarsh had fallen in love with maps.

Vinayak, also a student of Civil Engineering, had a similar background. Only, like many of the engineering students, he lost interest in the subject over time. I am not sure if he was ever interested, given that at IITs, just a few students ‘chose’ what they want to study. Most students ‘get’ a branch based on the JEE rank.

This is the situation at IITs, the best that the technical education in the country has to offer. The graduates get a ‘brand’ — one that can make or break you. Use that to take risks. In the worst-case scenario, you will still have a decent job, or live under the burden to fulfil the expectations that are associated with the big name: failure is difficult in such a case.

Rishabh got what he wanted. Passionate about physics, he was ranked under 200, and chose to study Electrical Engineering. His father is an engineer too. Many times, he would tell me about his visits to the power station along with his dad, how things around us work and other geeky stuff. We used to have endless conversations about — well — anything under the sun.

And there is Raman, not from our wing, but a dear friend with whom I had spent the bulk of my time in the final two years of college. Super ambitious and hard-working, Raman had big dreams in life.

Society and the market

It was final year of college and placement season was in the offing. Utkarsh sat in my room, along with Rishabh, facing a dilemma: “Should I apply for a job in campus placements?”

He was well aware that none of the companies which come to recruit have a profile for a geospatial engineer. And so, unlike the vast majority of students, he put in efforts to find an opportunity off-campus. His was a profile that was bound to catch eyeballs: multiple course projects, an ongoing thesis, foreign research intern and stint with a small startup — all in GIS. Such experience, in a niche area, is rare.

And indeed, he was called for an interview by a big firm based in the National Capital Region and eventually offered a role. The work was innovative, and something he wanted to do.

But he had a concern: the salary. It was low.

He wondered: after completing a BTech-MTech from IIT, shouldn’t I be making more? He would think, what will I tell my friends and relatives? Wouldn’t a lower salary be equated with a bad performance at the institute?

Such questions come naturally to many students. Utkarsh is no exception. The society is partly to blame. After my JEE result, a neighbour told my parents, “Your life is now set. Your son will now earn in crores” — all thanks to a section of media, which reports only the top salaries earned by IIT graduates. And in doing so, it fails to convey the broader picture, not mentioning the median and average salaries. Just last month, my uncle asked me, “Why are you not earning 50 lakhs rupees per annum? Were you unable to perform well?” I preferred staying silent.

As Utkarsh pondered, Rishabh and I would throw clichés at him: It’s the work that matters more. Do what you love and love what you do. The money will follow. We appeared to have convinced him.

For over a month, Utkarsh was secretive about his job offer; only two people in the entire wing — me and Rishabh — knew. “Go, tell it to others. Get us some sweets. You have done a great job,” Rishabh told him.

And so he did. As a wingmate entered, Utkarsh told him with excitement, “Hey, I have a news. I have got a job.” Immediately, the wingmate asked: “How much will you be paid?” Utkarsh told him the salary and was laughed at.

“Sit for placements, you will definitely get better”. The conversation ended.

In a moment, that wingmate reaffirmed Utkarsh’s inhibitions about societal reactions to his job offer. Even when you are the supposed “cream-of-the-nation”, a product of the IITs, few care about what you do. It’s all about how much you earn. And while everyone can counsel the other to ignore ‘what others say’, an extremely small fraction can actually do that. No different for a young IIT student.

And make no mistake, I strongly believe that one shouldn’t be underpaid in today’s market economy. Utkarsh’s salary was less than what an average IIT graduate makes — I will not state the figures — but one that was justified for his role.

We decided we would hunt for more jobs for him, outside the campus. While Utkarsh initially said he would not apply for any job on campus placement, because there weren’t any in his area of interest, he eventually decided to. “I just want to experience how the interview process is like. Let me get a taste of it,” he said.

So, he applied to a few places. Much to his own astonishment, a young software startup shortlisted him. Everyone, including me, considered it to be a mistake — a foolish idea.

But thanks to the sheer randomness of the process and what happens to be a story of our times, Utkarsh took that job. I was left awestruck.

Here is the catch: this job paid him three times as much the previous one. The sheer imbalance in the economic returns of the two jobs made it easy for Utkarsh to get past the dilemma which most youngsters face — a well-paying job that you love versus a high paying not-that-fun job. He chose the latter. Utkarsh fell for the trap that placement processes at college campuses create, a market-like scenario where economics matters more than anything else. And that’s not a one-off case.

It is situations like these that kills many budding engineers.

To clarify, I know Utkarsh well enough to claim that life is not a profit-loss statement for him. He is not greedy. “I just want to be happy, howsoever it may come,” he once said to me, during our occasional philosophical discussions. All through college, Utkarsh was just going with the flow. And while, even today, I think he would have been much happier in the other job, perhaps, he is indifferent.

He is happy and that’s all he aspired for.

The Clueless

The case of randomness is even more prevalent in the case of Vinayak.

He didn’t have big dreams. All Vinayak wanted was a job. He didn’t care if he had to work as an engineer, a banker, a consultant, an analyst or whatever — he just wanted a job. He was not particularly concerned about salary packages. For, all he wanted was any job.

Vinayak, however, wasn’t into programming. Anyone from the graduating batch of IITs would tell you that the majority of the jobs at campus placement ask for programming skills — another indicator of how it is the services and software sector that has driven the Indian economy post liberalisation and not manufacturing.

In the first ten days of placement season, Vinayak sat for every possible profile that came his way. Multiple rejections left him frustrated. In the end, a friend came to his rescue and gave him a crash course in programming and algorithms. Vinayak was sharp; he got the concepts right. And eventually got placed in a financial services firm that required some programming experience.

However, it didn’t matter to him. He was as much fine being an analyst as much as being a programmer. Because I repeat, all Vinayak wanted was any job. Vinayak doesn’t want to create a breakthrough innovation. Neither does he want to start a company or earn billions. For Vinayak was a simple guy who had joined IIT with the aspirations of a good life, like many others who came along.

That’s the reality. Contrary to popular perception, IITs today are, more than anything else, institutes that give wings to the aspirations of the rising middle class. Not the hub of engineering marvels or scientific breakthroughs. The likes of Vinayak are a norm at IITs, also the biggest victims of societal expectations.

The Greedy Banker

The internship season in my third year kicked off with a strange event: more than 500 students in the 800-strong batch applied for a profile at a top investment bank. Most of the students who applied had no clue what investment banking was. They registered themselves simply because it was one of the first companies which came to recruit — that’s it. No other reason.

My friend Raman made it. It was his dream company. Due to the sheer competition — 10 out of 500 were selected — Raman and others who got through, became stars of the batch.

That year, I would see him reading up finance books. He even started reading a newspaper — not that common in the campus, unless you are a civil services aspirant — to keep himself updated about the Indian economy. He thought it would help.

He worked very hard during the two months of his internship.

But, at times, he would call me and vent his frustration — that the work was meaningless and he wasn’t required to exercise his grey cells at all. “Did I study so hard all my life to do this kind of work? A school pass-out can do this too. What’s the use of my college education here?”

That made me think he would never pursue this profession. Or, at least, that he wouldn’t work for this company in future.

I was wrong. His work got him a pre-placement offer. He was a star again. He accepted the offer and joined the company. The situation remained the same. He continued to call me up and express his peeves. But he hasn’t quit yet.

I haven’t been able to decode why he is still working there. Raman is very talented and he could get any job he wanted. But what is it exactly that he wants? Does he want a brand? Does he want money? Does he want what he defines as good work? Or all of these things? I don’t know.

We are taught how to code, build aeroplanes, constructing bridges and a ton of other stuff. Some even learn to make films. There are a plethora of activities and opportunities to stay engaged with and build life skills. But hardly anyone among the faculty or the administration encourages a student to dream.

Raman is the Suhas-type for the outsiders. Working in a bank after engineering. But I would repeat what I had said about Utkarsh: Raman is not chasing money. He is in a trap, the success trap, one that he is unable to escape.

There is another point to note: Rancho in 3 Idiots was okay with Farhan pursuing wildlife photography after engineering but not Suhas being a banker. Both studied engineering and didn’t pursue it ahead. While one choose an alternative low-paying career that he loved, the other got into a high-paying sector. The former is okay skipping engineering, not the latter. Think.

The engineering geek

Rishabh’s story has no drama. The fine student of Electrical Engineering that he was, he knew what he was studying and would teach others as well. I can’t imagine having sailed through a few common courses without his help. He was firm: he wanted to remain a techie. That’s why he came to IIT, by choice.

Options he was considering: pursue academic research or get the hang of the industry first. He chose the latter. As sharp he was, he got a job in a reputed tech company on the first day of campus placement. Settled for now, he is exploring what lies ahead.

That’s not all

Amid all these stories, I have not included the ones where parental pressure dominates; where students are unable to pursue their dream job because they have to clear their family loans; the fascinating stories of student entrepreneurs; the numerous civil services aspirants; the plight of students hailing from a Hindi-medium background; the research-oriented students who make it to the top universities abroad.

In India, at the age of seventeen, we are asked to choose a major. At that age, most of the students hardly have any idea of the opportunities that lie ahead. Our school education system doesn’t provide us with that exposure. And, at the IITs, as I stated earlier, you don't even ‘choose’ your subject. The JEE rank decides the student’s department. How, then, can one expect a student to pursue what they studied in college?

In fact, my argument has always been that the department doesn’t matter. The IIT curriculum has a good mix of electives and, if properly structured, allow a student to tailor the courses as they wish. That, however, is not common.

Purpose

Which brings me to a broader question: what is the purpose of education at IITs? I don’t have a clear view on this. But I mostly concur with what one of my professors has to say: “There is no purpose of education at IIT Kanpur. In the last 55 years, we have not been able to come up with a vision or mission statement. The whole academic system is based on: 'get good students, do something randomly good to them, and they will turn out to be good. We shouldn't get too bothered about abstract things like the purpose of education.' This is the perspective of the institute. From the students' point of view, the purpose of education is to get a job and build a career. Period.”

This is the situation at IITs, the best that the technical education in the country has to offer. The graduates get a ‘brand’ — one that can make or break you. Use that to take risks. In the worst-case scenario, you will still have a decent job, or live under the burden to fulfil the expectations that are associated with the big name: failure is difficult in such a case.

Let’s dream

After spending four-plus years at the institution, I have one major disappointment: the institute doesn’t nurture dreams. Not at all.

We are taught how to code, build aeroplanes, constructing bridges and a ton of other stuff. Some even learn to make films. There are a plethora of activities and opportunities to stay engaged with and build life skills. But hardly anyone among the faculty or the administration encourages a student to dream.

We are told about career opportunities. Alumni come and share their experiences. Talks happen to motivate the youngsters. That’s not enough. It needs to be institutionalised.

Dreams, in fact, fade over years. In my last semester, I started chatting with few freshers. They were so pumped up. I see little of that energy in my peers. That, in itself, tells the story. The culture of the institute, I found, was not conducive for people to dream. Some, of course, escape that.

Suhas, as was portrayed in the movie, may be a greedy fool. But the people who make choices like Suhas, are not always driven by the same. Once students are asked to care — not dare — to dream, I am hopeful, change will happen.

And I am waiting for that.