'IIT academia is stuck in the past': Hotmail co-founder says knowledge from internet is the real teacher

Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia has criticised the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) system, arguing that it is outdated compared to global institutions. In a LinkedIn post, Bhatia called out the gap between Stanford’s approach to real-time innovation and what he sees as IITs' reliance on traditional methods.

"Stanford teaches what’s happening now, while much of IIT academia is stuck in the past," Bhatia wrote. He said that while grades may open doors, true innovation happens beyond the classroom. "I got into Apple on my grades, but built Hotmail by learning on the job. Today, free knowledge from the internet is the real teacher. Innovation comes from doing, not just studying."

Bhatia's comments sparked debate, with Srijan R Shetty, a startup co-founder and IIT-Kanpur alumnus, countering that IITs have been keeping pace with technological advancements for years. "Respectfully sir, your information seems to be extremely dated. Even in 2011, IIT Kanpur CS professors were teaching state-of-the-art courses," Shetty wrote, citing examples from his own academic experience.

He detailed the depth of AI/ML courses, which included training neural networks and CNNs. He pointed out that the Network Security course featured researchers and industry experts from across India. The Databases course required students to implement BPlusTrees, while undergraduate projects allowed students to work on emerging technologies.

"I personally worked on contributing to OpenVPN and made the patches available upstream," Shetty said. He added that the Compiler course challenged students to build their own compilers, sharing that he had worked on a JavaScript compiler with tail call recursion and first-class functions.

Acknowledging that Stanford remains more cutting-edge, Shetty argued that this was due more to its proximity to Silicon Valley and access to capital rather than a lack of talent in IITs. He called on Bhatia to take a proactive approach to fostering innovation, suggesting that funding ambitious technical startups from IITs could change the landscape. "If you can set up a fund, just like @nikhilkamathcio, to fund ambitious technical startups out of IITs (or any good student/college), things will change," Shetty said.

Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy has repeatedly criticised IITs for relying on rote learning, calling them "victims of the tyranny of coaching classes."

Speaking at the Infosys Prize 2022 Ceremony, Murthy outlined the need for Socratic-questioning-based teaching methods and a stronger focus on real-world problem-solving. He also pointed to the absence of Indian universities in top global rankings, saying, “There is not a single Indian institution of higher learning in the top 250 of the world university rankings.”

In 2011, Murthy questioned IIT admissions, saying that coaching classes had lowered the quality of students entering these prestigious institutions. "Thanks to coaching classes today, the quality of students entering IITs has gone lower and lower," he said at a Pan IIT summit.

Murthy has also stressed the importance of research at IITs, arguing that the institutions need to move beyond being just teaching centers. "Few IITs have done well in producing PhDs, but when we compare ourselves globally, we have a long way to go," he said. He proposed annual faculty evaluations based on research output and urged the Indian government to increase funding for research projects.