It’s no secret that Indian parents tend to meddle play more of an active role in their children’s lives than do American ones. Nor does this end when kids go away to University. Still, I was surprised to see how seriously even the IIT schools take their role “in loco parents” (which is Latin for “as crazy overbearing parents”).
The authorities in India’s premier engineering institute, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay (Mumbai), have cut off internet access to students in hostels at night. They feel that 24-hour internet access is hampering students’ academic performance and overall personality development… “they preferred to sit in their rooms and surf the net rather than interact with their mates. Academics are of primary importance for us but we also want our students to have a well-rounded personality…” [Link]
Helloooo? Who are they kidding – it’s a geek factory and proud of it. If students wanted a well rounded personality, they wouldn’t be at IIT, they’d be out partying and enjoying the Bombay nightlife. Amazingly, they’re not even the first IIT to do this either, IIT Madras cuts off net access for a shorter period of time, from 1 AM to 5AM.
What’s it really about? Well, in part I think it’s about pr0n:
The dean of students affairs, Prakash Gopalan, said one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students’ computers to see that bad content dominated over good. “In the end, this is the Indian taxpayers’ money as well as the IIT’s network and we have an obligation to ensure that it is not misused,” he said. [Link]
And in part it’s about exerting authority and making students show up to lecture:
… they were beginning to see a drop in attendance during morning lectures … “In the morning the students would not be fresh and attentive” … “It is working well for us now,” he said, “From personal experience I can tell you that I have two morning lectures beginning at 0800 and attendance is always 95%…” [Link]
Quite frankly, it’s absurd. If you’re training engineers, you want them to be able to work all night on their projects, and they need the internet to do so. This is like saying that you’re turning off electricity at night so that students don’t stay up all night studying, or worse yet, reading trashy novels. If you want students to show up for morning lectures, make them worth attending, and make the exams depend on in-class material. Otherwise trust your students to act like adults.
Yes, I know that few hostels in India give students all night internet access, and that in India it’s a privilege and not a right, but still they’re being treated like children. Amusingly though, they’re being treated in a way similar to Bill Gates’ children:
Bill Gates limits the amount of “screen time” for his kids. Not including homework requirements, he limits the time that his children can spend watching TV or using the computer. For example, his eldest daughter is only allowed 45 minutes of time on weekdays, and 60 on weekends. [Link]
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p> Still, given that Gates’ oldest child is 11 years old now, and that these kids will never have to work a day in their lives, it’s appalling to me that multiple IIT campuses are acting the same way.
Then they’re not quite doing their job at training true geeks, are they?
Even I know how to clear the nasties off of my computer and I’m only a mini-geek. ^__^
Ironically, the National Institute of Design, (Ahmedabad) allows its students to use the internet in their rooms from 9pm to 7am. Every day, our connection gets cut at 6 :30 am. Theyre too cheap to give students access 24/7 and they reason that if they give to us in the daytime, we’ll never go to class. Which doesnt happen either way. We had a whole bunch of filters until it got absurd and they had to remove them. For example, we weren’t allowed to google the word “girl” until recently. boys, pRon and chix worked fine. But “girl”? no.
Umm…well I gotta say, having been in India the past year or so…the bad content they refer to is likely to be pRon and more likely to be pirated movies. It’s a big “cool factor” to see indie flicks and movies that would never be allowed in India before they’re even released in the US. I think you’ll find that that’s why many sharing sites like MegaUpload and Mediafire limit or even block access to their content from countries like India.
while gates’ kids don’t have to work a day in their life, he probably wants to make sure they actually do (instead of ending as do-nothing couch potatoes). there are plenty of parents who do the same and many who forbid television entirely. but treating a bunch of students at an iit the same way? ridiculous.
I wish someone would cut off my internet access.
Unless you are kidding, I think you are pandering to stereotypes here. I think you need to meet more IITians. Many of them are really smart and good at other things besides proving P=NP.
Sakshi, you are quite right. Some of them even become traveling salesmen…
On their Hamiltonian cycles 😉 .
Hey, come on dude. Did you know that in 1976 (I think it was) in the grip of Indira Ghandi’s emergency, we at IIT Madras went on strike, and boycotted our exams? You call that geekish? I dare say it took some guts to do that when people were being nabbed at airports for badmouthing “mathaji”.
I have to wonder, Ennis-ji, if you have ever known anyone who went to IIT. OK, I graduated 30 years ago from Chennai, but we spent far more time gabbing than studying, and topics of the gab were far more often politics, movies, sports etc than technical things. I dare say we were quite a bit more engaged in wordly matters than the average “kool kat” at American or Loyola or Presidency or Pacchaiyappas….
I think this internet cutoff is a great idea. You get far more at College from your “mates” than from the professors, and anything that promotes facemail is a good thing.
i have read an article about an IIT student committing suicide cause he was addicted to the computer and couldn’t keep up with the studies…shouldn’t this be mentioned here?
if the guys are so distracted then (i think) it is right to limit their time and cut the net access say from 1 am to 6am…its just 5 hrs and they need to sleep too right?
But I accept your point: the profs have no business deciding when and how the students can access the internet.
Two major mistakes by IIT.
First off if there was “stuff” on their hard drives, not giving them internet access does not make sense. The pr0n is already on the computer, so why cut off access?
Second, they could use a firewall with outbound rules that disallow students from accessing the bad content. Very cheap and easy.
I think this has more to do with cost cutting than with students accessing bad content.
Cost-cutting ideas don’t quite cut it, frankly. Bandwidth is cheapest during off-hours (‘night’ for most users), and even then, IIT would most likely have a dedicated pipe, etc.
Draconian as it may seem, the measure might actually do the students some good. Internet is really a modern day addiction, and I can testify, that the withdrawal pangs can be pretty severe, but once de-hooked, you discover a new world altogether.
Ignore the rambling, this is being written at well past midnight. Did I hear someone say “addict”?
I guess I should make this clear: I did not go to IIT myself, but know plenty of guys who did, and have worked on projects, etc, with them. They are all pretty regular guys, not like nerds with a big N. Smart yes, but not some kind of mutant Dr. Spocks.
I did go to IIT in the not so distant past (less than a decade ago) – but before broadband access came to every room. By most Indian college standards, IITians tended to be much more well-rounded people – far more than most day-scholars who lived with their parents in the cities. College kids (unless they belong to super-rich families) don’t go out and enjoy Bombay nightlife as much as you think – they simply cannot afford to, and if at all there are any non-rich college kids doing things out there, I’m pretty sure IIT-Bombay is well represented. I have several friends from IIT who are into Development, are writers, journalists and in other creative professions, in addition to business – not exactly professions for stereotypical geeks.
You have to know a little bit about the history of social life on IIT campuses before you form an opinion on whether this is a good step or a bad step. The IITs used to be amongst the few colleges in India that had a vibrant campus life – lots of sports rivalries both within and between the IITs and a thriving cultural scene – for instance, there were over 25 bands at the campus that I went to, active classical music chapters, film societies, dramatics groups and the likes. Budgets for IIT social-festivals are in the range of 200-300 grand (USD), and that is serious money in India.
Unfortunately, actual social interaction at the IITs has drastically declined with the advent of residential broadband access – a lot of kids simply confine themselves to their rooms and almost all their interaction is virtual. Campus cultures with decades old histories have degraded. So while an alumnus from the 70’s could come down to campus in the 90’s and still feel at home, the same cannot be said today.
Also you need to remember that the average age to start college in India is 16/17, and kids before that age are coddled by their parents in india – these are not really adults we are speaking of, and some amount of policing may actually be beneficial..
More importantly, it is only residential access to the internet (in the dorms) that is being restricted. Students can always go to their department labs or the computer center which has thousands of computers, or the library, if they wish to work. Many students are affiliated with research projects, and can access the net from their office computers if they need to. Policing internet access at dorms is, in my view, no different from policing alcohol or drugs (and i can tell you that the IIT’s are far more liberal at least when it comes to alcohol.)
Terms like ‘geek factory’ are highly loaded and mildly offensive – as sakshi says, you are really pandering to stereotypes that come from God-knows-where (possibly things like that 60 minutes piece). I don’t know how people you know that actually went to IIT, but I can tell from personal experience that the average IITian is far less nerdy than the average kid at MIT (I speak from personal experience), and probably equally smart (if not more). And compared to kids from other places in India, including the non-engineering colleges, the average IITian is a far more complete person, solely because of the amount of exposure he/she gets.
Good points aDDiNYC, but cutting off internet access is idiotic and paternalistic. While I was at IIT, we did not have internet connection in our hostels, but that did not stop us from remaining glued to the screen – I have personally covered almost all the maps on Unreal Tournament.
I think those interested in interacting with their fellow students will definitely find ways and means of doing it even with the “temptation” of free online pr0n looming large at the midnight hours. What about the daytime when the internet is on? Should they not be curbed access during those hours as well? Why encourage “facemail” only in the wee hours of the night?
While, I agree with the tone of most of the commentators that IIT students are not, for the most part, total geeks, the internet is a valuable tool for academic as well as social connectivity in college campuses worldwide. I don’t see immediately, how spending a few hours on the net naturally makes students shy and receding. Also, it is unclear if these students are not using online venues — such as this blog itself — to seek out friends offline. What is trolling similar blogs at night gave them access to like minded individuals who get them? What if, in some coffee shop in Adayar or Cuffe Parade, there are IIT kids meeting college students, poets, playwrights and social workers that they met on the Internet?
Regulating Internet hours does not regulate access to pr0n. It merely forces them to look for more creative ways to access it.
DDiA,
I don’t think the issue is pr0n at all. pr0n was present even in the days before broadband access – people would run 100 gig servers loaded up with the stuff, and anyone with a password could hook up. It existed even before everyone had a comp (I actually saw those days). And as far as network gaming goes, yes, I spent hundreds of hours playing unreal and quake and NFS too.
I agree with you when you say that those who are interested in interacting with fellow students will find ways to do it on their own. You would have made that choice, had you been there today. So would I. I am just worried about those who do not realize that facemail is important. I know of many people in my year who came out of their shells solely because there was some social pressure on them to do so – to participate in real activities that were happening around on campus – in some cases this pressure was very overt and was exerted by people from senior years. I am sure it benefited them ultimately. I highly doubt that they would have done so if they could simply lock themselves away in their rooms and stay glued to the net.
The action is paternalistic and idiotic if you are dealing with adults who know what is right for them, and who realize the importance of also having real world social interaction. I doubt that most 16 year old IIT freshies, having put JEE-mugga (to use some IIT-lingo) through most of high school, are like that.
I don’t claim that professors always know what is right for the kids (mostly they are clueless), but I don’t think regulating internet access in dorms is as bad as it is made out to be. To be fair, “my” IIT (yeah, the one in Bumblefcuk, West Bengal) has not done anything like this yet (and historically they have been “liberal” about everything – from drugs to alcohol and from hazing to hookers), but I wouldn’t be so upset if they clamp down on the internets-in-your-room-gig a little bit.
The fact still remains that it’s just internet access in the dorms that is restricted. There are literally thousands of computers lying all over campus from where it can be accessed, if only the kids get off their lazy asses and step out of their rooms.
I would have made it to the IIT. But, I was sixteen and she was sixteen, and we had better things to do than prepare for stupid entrance exams.
It comes from my experience with IIT grads, many of whom are my friends. IITs did not seem not places that cared about creating well balanced individuals any more than CalTech or MIT, at least not from the stories they told (although they may have been choosing to tell me the geekiest stories).
BTW, what you described about a vibrant campus life is true of MIT as well, but MIT (with all due respect) does not produce well balanced individuals, nor does it pretend to.
Right, so how does this help the socializing problem? Shouldn’t they shut down all internet access at all places from 2300 to 1230? There are two reasons why it makes sense to allow internet access in public venues, even if you think it has a damaging effect. The first is that usage in those venues can be monitored, unlike usage in your dorm room. The second is that shutting off dorm room access through noon makes it more likely that students will go to classes. I’m still not seeing anything in here about socializing though, despite the IIT administration’s best efforts to spin it that way.
Balance is over-rated.
I don’t know about socializing… but if cutting off access will make the students go to class, I’m all for it. Much better than stupid 75% attendance rules. Schools have an interest in making sure that their products (students) turn out to be good at what they do.
Isn’t the indian educational system more maternalistic than its american counterpart at just about every level?
BTW, what you described about a vibrant campus life is true of MIT as well, but MIT (with all due respect) does not produce well balanced individuals, nor does it pretend to.
Not anymore than the legions of jocks and beer swirling buffoons produced by state universities across the US.
My cousin spent all of 11th/12th grade (this was in the early 90s) in India as a virtual recluse studying for the IIT entrance exam. It was his full time occupation. He even missed a family wedding because of the pressure of that exam (which was still months away at the time of the wedding). And he was only 15-16 years old at that time. I don’t know how well-rounded IIT itself makes you, but I know that for two important years of his teenage life, he did NOTHING but study, and there’s nothing well-rounded about that. And this was an athletic kid who loved to hang out with friends, play tennis, soccer, and cricket, etc. which he basically stopped doing completely at that time. I visited India for a few weeks during that time and saw all this first-hand. In the end he got accepted, but didn’t rank high enough to get the field of his choice, so ended up coming to Carnegie-Mellon instead on a scholarship. Can any of you IIT people comment on whether your high school years were spent similarly dedicated to this one overarching goal?
Tangentially, getting into AIIMS or other top-tier medical school is just has hard, correct?
Lastly, did any one out there ever consider applying for the I.A.S (Indian Administrative Service)? Seems like a sweet gig.
My friends who went to IIT were by and large, very social, very fun guys. Even my parents and their friends who were at IIT in the early 70s seemed to have great social lives – very much into the early 1970s pot and rock and roll scene. I do agree there was some geek chic going on.
Amitabh – one of my biggest regrets was not sitting for the IAS exam. Sure, for the first 20 years of your professional life, you’re shuffling from Mandya to Itharsi to Hubli, but its still a great way to live one’s life.
I did.
🙂
Yale didn’t (and i believe still doesn’t) keep their libraries open past midnight because they don’t want students studying all night (or at least they claim). Personally, I think they should have encouraged professors to assign less homework! but isn’t that the same type of thing? I didn’t think it was too bad…
I recognize you English August, so when did you return from Madna?
Is the IAS still dominated by Brahmins, or did Mandal open up some of the spots? When Mayavati was running UP, one of her favorite pasttimes was to transfer Brahmin IAS officers every few weeks or so.
And yet that didn’t stop you, right?
Actually, the proper analogy would be turning off the lights in the dorms to stop you from studying there, but leaving the libraries open all night for those willing to trudge there.
Honestly, this rule seems silly and way too involved. Some folks prefer to work at night than during the day, especially engineers (in my experience). But also, how is it the school’s responsibility to make you go to class and be social? Last I checked, that was a skill you had to develop yourself. And part of developing social skills and balance as an adult is figuring out how to moderate your time when you are not being supervised by others. Perhaps they should create more social activities/options outside of classes, or think about other alternatives? This doesn’t seem like a useful or appropriate solution.
Internet p0rn is an integral component of an engineering education. The social awkwardness and ineptitude would just be incomplete without sites like http://www.hotindianbitches.com to supplement the intensely analytical nature. And also, engineers wouldn’t be able to test their mettle in developing new and effective concealment techniques.
Case in point, an engineering student I knew, lets call him Jedi master, had nearly 10-15 popups on his screen, when the advisor appeared at a 90-deg angle (he could see the student, but not the screen) Jedi master had previously set his mouse sensitivity to maximum, so a simple wrist movement allowed the pointer to traverse the entire screen. Then, a quick right-click and close group did the trick.
Such inginuity wouldn’t be possible without access to internet porn.
I knew a few “cool” IIT kids also. Generally they were from the newer IITs, (Guwahati, Roorkee) They were still smart mofos, but they caught a movie once in a while. I knew lots of peeps from BITS too.
The major city IIT grads (Chennai, Mumbai, and Delhi) always kept it real.
It’s nice to be recognized, Anand.
I ran out of weed. And Vasant’s cooking left me hungering for more. So I left.
Is August from the IITs? I was all but 14 when I saw Dev’s film, haven’t read the book. That movie and The Big Lebowski were factors in getting my priorities right early in Life. English, August was a first of its kind, Inglish movie that heralded the arrival of the quintessential inglish parallel cinema actor – Rahul Bose.
Anand, please, read the book.
It is the greatest thing ever written.
(I actually haven’t seen the film)
Its all cos of the suicide….and in an order to “promote” socializing…
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1084328
I wonder if the students have already found a way around the ban 😉
Yes, mine were. I also think that there are many IITians who can become well-rounded people and there are lots of opportunities on campus for non-geeky pursuits. However, it is still fundamentally a male institution (less than 10% women when I was there less than a decade ago).
A lot of the well-rounded people I know from IIT campus were already well-rounded when they got into IIT because they were from richer/upperclass families, went to better schools and stuff. The majority were mostly geeks and struggled through their four years so they could get into a good school/job in the US.
This situation has probably changed a lot in the last 5 years, with enormous opportunities in India for a lot of engineers and less pressure to come to the US. The IITians I met recently are far more confident and ‘clued-in’ than those I knew when I was there (including myself). They don’t seem that different from American undergrads nowadays! The magic of globalization, I guess.
Oh come on, now… if you went to IIT, do you really consider yourself well-rounded?
i thought i had seen my share of nerds from MIT but you IIT boys definitely take the cake … y’all are as nerdie as they come … but that’s why we lowe you 🙂 🙂 🙂
Afraid I agree with Ennis here. What is appropriate for Bill Gates, as parent to a young child, is overbearing for university students. There are many legitimate uses for late-night internet access — wikipedia, online programming references, etc. Turning off the internet access will simply make the resourceful IIT students waste time finding other means to access the net.
Hari…sahebra,tavu kannadavru enri? (extremely sorry for threadjacking)
Is it sad that some of us can point out the comp sci geeks in this thread? sakshi I’m looking at you buddy… “P=NP” “Hamiltonian cycles”… jeez
Also the Real MaCaca. You passed the test.Welcome to the cabal, OMGPONIES.
Sssssssh. Don’t encourage him. We don’t want a spate of traveling salesman jokes …
Is looking at porn socially acceptable in India or are you guys joking around ? I didn’t realize it was so common over there..
Man, if a society says you can’t have sex until your parents pick someone out for you in your early 30s based solely on economic and prestige considerations, then how could porn NOT be common? (yes, I know, hyperbole, but not THAT much…)
Ain’t nothing wrong with the TSP. Incidentally, there used to be this bicycle manufacturer in India called Hamilton (no kidding). You can only imagine the geekgasms that drove us into back in IIT.
All I have to say is,
IITians are the best and IIT Madras is the bestest. My buddy Ram Narayan’s – whose nickname was Modest, and who grew weed in a pot with a Tulsi plant outside his room, is what I miss the mostest.
I’m going to be giggling over “in loco parents” for a while.
Was that lost on this crowd? No one gives up a chuckle?
This is what most middle class students who plan to attend a college where admission is competitive, have to do. I did it. I did not play any sports in the last 2 years of high school. IIT-JEE( Joint entrance exam) classes start from grade 9 a full 3 year in advance. There is no way in HELL a person can be well rounded with a singular focus on standardized test taking through out the most important of the formative teen years.
After being a TA here in the US, I feel that the undergrads at IITs have far less ‘academic load’ than the ones at US (top 10) engineering schools. When I was in IIT, we almost never had weekly assignments and majority of the students studied one day before the exam. Even if there was an assignment, “cogging” was the name of the game. One person worked out the solution while the rest blindly copied it. The senior year was exclusively meant for “relaxation”, and almost everyone had less than 50% attendance.
IMO, IITs are over-rated. They cash on the brand name, which is mostly because of the tough entrance exam that they have in place (JEE). High school students put in a lot of effort to get into IITS, but most of these guys give up as soon as they enter IITs. They chill out for 4 years and finally land up a job (or a schol) and then the real hardwork starts.
Life in IIT hostels is pretty laid back and most of it was due to the amount of personal interaction that people had with each other. Hostel pride, wing pride etc used to be high on everyones agenda. With the advent of 24hr internet, chatrooms, multi-player games etc, these things are quickly changing. 5-6 yrs ago, the hostel lounge used to be the eipcentre of all the activities – be it a water fight, a gaali fight, a jam session, mock-rock etc. This is no longer the case. People prefer to be in their rooms, update their orkut (myspace) pages and keep in ‘virtual’ touch with their friends. For an old-timer (like me), all this seems like a decay of the typcial IITian hostel life..but to a present student, this is the norm. Times have changed and so have the priorities of those students. The authorities shouldn’t force the students to “talk to each other”. Let them make the choice.