(This story originally appeared in on Sep 13, 2018)

IIT-Ropar was among the eight new Indian Institutes of Technology established 10 years ago. When Prof Sarit Kumar Das, a professor of mechanical engineering at IIT-Madras, became its director in 2015, the fledgling IIT had 650 students. That number is now 1,550, and is likely to increase to 2,500 by 2019. Das speaks to Vinod Kumar on the problems with JEE , brain drain and why the IIT system doesn’t produce well-rounded studentsThere has been a dip in quality in the last 20 years. There are many reasons for this, but a key reason is change in the JEE ( Joint Entrance Examination ) format from problem solving to multiple choice. Now, you do not solve the problem, but try to guess the right answer. Guessing can be done by elimination, but for solving the problem one must know how to tackle it. The current system does not test your problem-solving ability.Though I feel the old system should be brought back, there are doubts about its practicality. People will go to court and there will be thousands of cases.Our system is not capable of producing well-rounded students. As a professional, you also require interpersonal skills, ideas, managerial skills and survival skills which we quite often do not impart. The world’s best universities do not admit people on the basis of one examination. They make a qualitative evaluation based on a student’s projects — social and scientific — communication skills and ideas. We are not able to catch the creativity; this is where we are lacking. In the last five to eight years, there is a conscious effort at IITs to change that. We have started giving emphasis to humanities in the curriculum.It is a myth that only IIT students are the best. A large number of very capable students are outside the IIT system. The IIT exam is such that the outcome depends upon how you performed on one particular day. You missed two problems, the rank goes down a couple of thousand points.I used to think the same way when I started my teaching career. Today, my view has changed. At 18, no one knows what his\her aptitude is. Sometimes you come to IIT due to peer and family pressure. If, after passing out of IIT, you can become a Raghuram Rajan or Manohar Parrikar, what is the problem? The IITs should not only aim at producing an engineering workforce, but leaders in every walk of life.Twenty years ago, I taught a class of 85 students at IIT-Madras. Later, I came to know that 67 of them had gone abroad as there were hardly any opportunities in the country. Five years ago, I taught a class of 120 at the same institution; only 19 went abroad. This is the scenario across IITs — hardly 10% are going abroad. Students are getting jobs in big companies here. They have also started thinking about startups, which was not the case 10 years ago.First, we have to come out of this so-called “socialist mode” of trying to provide equal salaries to all. One of the killers of the system is the pay scale. As a director, I can neither reward performance nor stop the salary of someone who is not performing. In foreign universities, one has to prove oneself or be kicked out. Only the best remain. In our system, we cannot throw out people. As for students, they should be given freedom to choose what they want to study. The old concept of teaching everything in an engineering college is a thing of the past.