In pursuit of excellence: A comparative study of IIT and UDSM

 

By 

Charles Makakala

Tanzania’s progress depends greatly on education. However, so little is being done to foster it. In fact, our institutions have become burial grounds for gifts and talents. How can we change this?

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet professors Raghunathan Rengaswamy, Preeti Aghalayam, and Ligy Philip from IIT Madras to speak about their IIT at Zanzibar project. It was a marvellous opportunity to understand what makes them different as instructors, and why we get different results in Tanzania.

I was thinking about my alma mater, the University of Dar es Salaam, when I spoke to them. At UDSM, I majored in mathematics and physics and was taught by numerous honourable professors. I might question every aspect of my time at UDSM, but I wouldn’t dare dispute their capability. However, it has little impact on the outcomes of the institution’s many graduates. Therefore, what separates IIT from UDSM?

It boils down to three factors: the institution’s autonomy, the quality of its programmes, and the effectiveness of programme delivery.

In India, the IITs are known for their independence. They set their own standards, strategies, and operational plans, and enforce them without any interference. But what’s most important is that all the faculty members have become ‘gatekeepers of quality.’ Without following the prescribed procedure, not even top officials of IITs can get their children into IITs.

The quality of programmes comes next. IIT strives to create cutting-edge programmes in every field it involves itself in. Electives make up roughly 40 percent of programmes, they offer cutting-edge skills in their respective domains and include a sizable amount of hands-on training. The objective is to broaden the range of possibilities open to students, give them solid hands-on experience in their specialized disciplines, and provide them with a clear competitive edge in the market.

Then there is the quality of delivery. This is the part that differentiates professors from professors. The ‘how of delivery’ at IIT is focused on offering original materials that are derived from their actual work and life experiences. Given that around one-third of IIT PhDs are devoted exclusively to research, the faculty’s personal research experience contributes to their uniqueness and expertise. While the intensity of rivalry for admission to IITs is well-known, the competition is equally fierce for faculty members, who are judged on their ratings, research output, and level of student engagement.

This final point may help to explain the stark disparity in results between IIT and UDSM. I believe that at UDSM, mediocrity is the norm because there is a general apathy towards excellence. Even with the resources at hand, if there is a genuine desire to produce better graduates, much more can be accomplished.

In September 2004, Prof Tod Amon from Utah joined the Computer Science Department at UDSM after winning a Fulbright Scholar Award. Prof Amon built up a server infrastructure for his classes and for students to practice programming within a few weeks. While the UDSM’s system is exams driven, Prof Amon encouraged students to spend as much time as possible programming. At the end of the semester, he invited individuals who had spent the most time on the server rather than those with the best grades to his house for a meal. When I heard about his novel approach, I couldn’t help but sign up for his Java Programming class.

It is interesting that after all these years, the best example that I can come up with of a UDSM professor who cared the most about what he was producing during my time there was an American professor. Like many third-world institutions, UDSM has a shortage of resources but, as Prof Amon demonstrated, the opportunities it has are clearly not being fully exploited.

Over a decade ago, I used to interact with a country director of one telecom solutions manufacturer. They had donated a core network system to UDSM, but he was dismayed that it wasn’t being used. This was clearly a big deal to him – and to anyone that knows anything about telecom. The technology might have been employed by the university to produce a large number of highly sought-after core network engineers, but UDSM didn’t see things that way.

For an institution the size of UDSM, quality and experiences vary from department to department and from time to time. Therefore, some may feel aggrieved by the conclusions we might draw from our experiences with UDSM.

That said, I think we can agree that there is a reason why Tanesco went to Tech Mahindra for a $30 million software deal, why TPA went to Adani, or why thousands of us go to Apollo and other hospitals in India for medical care.

There is only one way to sum up the quality disparity between IIT and UDSM: one institution is passionate about quality, and the other is not. Even if you are given all the resources in the world, your performance will still reflect your indifference to excellence.