Now, the perception here about Indians has changed about so much, that higher technology and quality engineering is being associated with India. Indian engineers are celebrated and to my shock and surprise people respect so much of our engineering education system. But, there is room for more.....
After seeing the way American universities work, I believe that one of the few things that we lack is a coordinated efforts through alumni action and endowments. The big universities here, work in this way - after the students graduate out, they remain committed to the university throughout their life, sharing their profits with the alma-matter all through. Many even leave their will donating their entire property and estate for their university. The alumni and other interested people, create their own grant schemes for rewarding worthy students with scholarships, creating new departments and buildings, expanding the education scope, rewarding worthy professors and so on. For eg. Harvard has more than $20b (one lakh crores) from the endowments that it can use for research, student development etc. Most other top schools have more than $1b in their endowment. But, sadly in this our educational systems lag so much behind.
How abt we start a small endowment and grants system by us. To start with we can pool up some money that we can use to:
1. Annualy give rewards from our endowment to best teachers, using some selection criterion. This award and the money it carries should really motivate our good teachers to stay on and provide best of their efforts. This would progressively enhance our system.
2. Support scholarship to worthy students, seriously in need of money. Once those students graduate they might return their favor by supporting more of their junior students and it could start a chain reaction.
3. Support department's efforts in modernization - syllabi selection, course selection, material support and some of us could go even further in giving guest lectures on topics that we have expertized at our work.
4. Guidance and information transfer for career - getting jobs and higher education....
I guess, many of them are in our reach... If just our batch pools money, we can make few thousands a year and this could atleast support a bit of awards and scholarships... But, once the process starts we could involve all our senior and junior batches, creating a vast system bringing a cyclic reaction. Believe me, thats how Harvard, Stanford & MIT evolved.
You might ask, what is in it for us??? Apart from the satisfaction from philanthrophy, you can also benefit from a better prestige for the college, as it would be a prestige for all of us. For eg. 30 years back IITs were not much known, but now we respect all those batches of people for what they have done to bring up the great institutions. We can build greater networks and centers of interaction, that wud be a win-win situation for all of us.
The occasion of 50th anniversary, could really suit us for what we r goin 2 do. Let us make this small step. We can start out with our initial awards and small token scholarships, then and there.
