But many other things are believed because they are consistent with a widely-held vision of the world — and this vision is held as a substitute (emphasis added) for facts.”

One such commonly-held belief is India needs more IITs. However, the facts are otherwise. A majority of IIT graduates (at any rate, its undergraduates) do not pursue the engineering profession. Even if they do, most of them do so abroad. That being the fact, Indian economy does not need any more IIT-educated engineering graduates.

It is true that, year after year, more and more youth compete in the Joint Entrance Examination for admission to IITs. It is true that many among them are denied admission even though they have the talent to undergo the rigour of IIT education.

It is also true that many business houses place high value on IIT education and recruit them at much higher salaries than what they offer others. These merits of IIT education too are undoubtedly facts. Yet, they are misleading facts.

Many youngsters struggle to get into an IIT not because they love the knowledge they can obtain there but because IIT education offers entry to lucrative careers.

Then, the question we should ask is which kind of education is best suited for the kind of careers IIT graduates ultimately enter.

Does that need the rigours of engineering knowledge or whether other less-taxing (and less-expensive) programmes will do as well? Let me put it in another way: Till recently, the study of law always followed a general degree in some field or other.

In recent years, several “National” Law Schools have emerged where admission is made directly after school with no buffer of a general education. Suppose, we have a similar business school which offers an MBA programme directly the way National Law Schools do. In that case, will not our brightest opt for a direct MBA and discard IIT?

In truth, our large businesses which pay fabulous wages treat IIT education as a convenient means of short-listing bright, prospective candidates for jobs other than engineering.

Our top-business houses do not need any more engineers of IIT quality; what the Tier-II and Tier-III colleges produce is adequate for whatever engineering they do.

They want IIT graduates to do something else — like speculating on the currency market or sell soap. One does not need a deep insight into electromagnetic theory or thermodynamics to do so.

The esoteric knowledge and skill the IITs impart are thrown into the dustbin the moment the youngster graduates is absorbed on a seven-figure salary.

What our economy values is not the scholarship IITs provide but the rigour of the JEE and the discipline, the competitive spirit the IITs impart.

In this connection, another false belief is worth noting. Many people believe — educators, social scientists and politicians assiduously propagate it — that more and more people should have university education.

Many policy-makers in India bemoan that India has barely ten per cent enrolment at the university level whereas in the US it is as high as 50 per cent.

On the other hand, very few of those who attend universities do so for the scholarship they can get there. Most students play truant and miss classes at the slightest excuse. What they want is not education but the social distinction that a university degree confers. They join colleges also because a degree qualification is often used for short-listing applicants for superior employment.

If high incomes can be earned without a university degree, people will mostly bypass college education. I know of the proprietor of a famous chain store in the old days of Madras who refused to let his sons join college for the fear college education will make them too arrogant to be humble before customers.

Thus, the stark fact is people are not interested in higher education but in good income, better security.

If these could be ensured immediately after high school education, few will bother to attend college.

Further, most jobs need skill training rather than academic scholarship. If we were to look at history, great economic empires were built not by university scholars but by skilled apprentices. Few of the richest — Gates, Buffet, Mittal, Agarwal — people in the world today will attribute their success to university education.

Every country does need academic scholars but not in the numbers proposed. Over-expansion of university education cheapens it; inculcates undesirable habits and attitudes on impressionable youth.

Suppose, we have a rule that, just as we have a minimum qualification below which candidates will not be selected, there is also a maximum qualification above which no candidate will be chosen.

Then, graduates will not be allowed to compete for such jobs as peons, bus conductors and the like. That too will be salutary for university education because it will eliminate students uninterested in learning.

I will give two instances where university education is vital. In the first case, during the Second World War, due to shortage of staff, the British Army entrusted the operation of highly sophisticated radars to high-school pass students instead of university graduates.

The Army was pleasantly surprised to note that these school-educated students performed as well as graduates did.

The question was raised whether university education was necessary at all. The matter was put to rest soon. When a more advanced model was introduced, these technicians were all at sea whereas university scholars had no difficulty in comprehending the changes.

Ultimately, engineering graduates had to be called in to re-train the technicians. The moral: teaching requires university education.

The second instance concerns the self-educated inventor, Edison, and the Nobel Laureate, Professor Langmuir. Edison wanted to know what material would be best to optimise the functioning of his electric lamp. Professor Langmuir gave him the answer — tungsten.

The scholarship that university education imparts is important for research, design and development too as well as in the “learned” professions of law, medicine and philosophy but not in fine arts or sports or politics. In most cases, job-oriented training works better than university education.

That is why our industrialists constantly complain that our graduates know little and need lot of training before they can be put to work.

In our mythology, we have the story of Markandeya whose parents had no children for a long, long time. They prayed so assiduously that Lord Shiva was moved to appear before them and offer them two choices: One, a single extraordinarily good son who will have a short life or, two, a hundred bad ones who will have a long life.

We face a similar choice; unlike the parents of Markandeya, we prefer large quantity with bad quality rather than a small quantity of high quality.

Suppose IIT admissions are reduced to meet real economic demand, and engineers are paid better than managers, will our country be better served or served worse?

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