Several Indian universities have been giving a year off to students interested in building startups. Leading institutes, including BITS Pilani, IIT Madras, IIT Hyderabad, DIT University, IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur, have incorporated this initiative. These ‘temporary withdrawal programmes’ allow students to take a break from their academic studies and pursue their entrepreneurial calling.
BITS Pilani takes it to another level. The ‘zero attendance policy’, which means exactly what it sounds like, doesn’t require students to attend lectures. Their evaluation is done entirely on the basis of examinations and assessments at the end of the semester. This, according to the university, pushes a lot of students to pursue entrepreneurial paths and build startups for the country.
For example, unicorns like Swiggy, redBus, Groww, bigbasket, SanDisk, Postman, Maser Group, Eruditus, OfBusiness, FalconX, and MPL, were all born out of BITS Pilani.
This begs the question – should all Indian universities adopt a similar policy to some extent? If the BITS experiment has proven the zero attendance policy since 1946, why can’t such policies be adopted at IIT Delhi or any other IITs or NITs?
Though the policy has existed at BITS Pilani for almost five decades, this time it has sparked a debate on social media platforms where professors, students, and policymakers alike are discussing whether or not such an approach would work for other institutes.
How Does the Policy Work?
BITS Pilani campus group vice-chancellor, professor V Ramgopal Rao, joined the debate. He referenced the profiles of BITS Pilani alumni and compared them to the top three IITs in the country.
“[There are] over 6,400 founders/co-founders of companies, 15 unicorn founders, over 7,500 CEOs/VPs in large corporates, over 3,500 faculty members in top institutions the world over,” Rao explained that BITS Pilani has been supporting its students for being on top of their game and the attendance policy has definitely played its part.
This is also one of the reasons why the acceptance rate at BITS Pilani is around 2%, which is similar to that of any of the old IITs.
While speaking with AIM, Rao clarified that ‘zero attendance’ actually means that attendance is not an eligibility criterion for appearing for the exams. “The whole semester and throughout the year, there are several quizzes and mid-sem exams, where the weightage is distributed so students are always preparing for the courses.”
He further added that since BITS has no reservations, students get selected with a very narrow window of merit. Therefore, the students of BITS Pilani are very bright.
He continues to add that it is also the responsibility of the faculty to be innovative and attract students to class. “Students can also select their teachers in BITS Pilani and make their own timetable,” he said, adding that while this works for BITS Pilani, it would not be ideal for every other institute.
Rao said that BITS Pilani has a Teaching Learning Centre where every faculty member who joins the institute undergoes at least three months of training on pedagogy and ways to attract students. None of the IITs offer anything similar.
This ensures that the faculty at BITS remains the very best. “Every cycle, we receive about 7,000 applications, and we appoint 50-60 people,” he added.
The most important thing that Rao pointed out is that if one takes out any of these metrics and criteria from that equation of achieving the zero attendance policy and just implements it blindly, it can cause havoc.
Not For Everyone
Having spent 25 years at IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, Rao said that this policy was implemented there as well, but the choice was left to the faculty. “I told my students that attendance is not compulsory; you come, and you clear the exams. I used to set a limit, and if students scored above it, they passed.”
Giving an example of the two recent suicides of students of IIT Guwahati, where they were not allowed to appear for exams over the compulsory attendance of 75%, Rao said that such policies are bad. He believes that freedom should be given at least to the faculty to decide if students are required to attend their classes if there is no policy because, in certain cases, students are forced to attend classes even if the teacher is not there.
Initiatives like the zero attendance policy also enable students to pursue entrepreneurial journeys. Rao said that he has been speaking to several alumni, and all of them appreciated the attendance policy of BITS Pilani as it allowed them to optimise their time to gain hands-on experience for building startups.
“If we tied our students to classes, they couldn’t have done all that they were able to do outside the classroom.”
It is clear that the ‘zero attendance policy’ of BITS Pilani is not for every institute as it requires several bits and pieces to fall together to work properly. At the same time, the question of the zero attendance policy as a rule for every university is also still up for debate.
Manoj BS, professor and associate dean at IIST, agreed that the policy is not for every institute.
He said that the policy can be effective only if the assessment is done appropriately. “Mandating a certain percentage of attendance is very, very important. Otherwise, there can be some instances where students can be completely away, [impacting] the quality of education.”
He added that creating one special program on entrepreneurial activities where attendance can be made non-essential is a better approach.
The thing to be noted is that the classes are always being conducted. It’s the students’ choice whether they want to attend or not. Amit Sheth, the chair and founding director of AIISC, told AIM that BITSians are exposed to many opportunities through this policy, which makes them ideal for an entrepreneurial journey.
“Since BITSians have more opportunities to do things such as internships and practice schools, they have more exposure to what it takes to be an entrepreneur,” Sheth said. He added that this helps find partners, network, and reach potential investors. “This could be a reason they feel ready to try their hands at entrepreneurship earlier than the norm.”
Similar to Rao, Sheth also pointed out that this freedom may not work as well for most institutions, but for BITSian, this has demonstrably worked. “BITSians also have many learning and extracurricular options outside of course material and classrooms, which can lead to more personalised preparation for the student’s next step after the BITS,” Sheth added.
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