‘Interviews are a good way of getting to know a JEE candidate’: Director of IIT Madras Zanzibar

IE: IIT Zanzibar is the first IIT outside India, what are the challenges that you and the team have battled till now, and the ones that you are forecasting in the future?

Preeti Aghalayam: This is absolutely unchartered territory for us. I think the biggest challenge has been that we set ourselves a fairly aggressive timeline because we were keen to align it with the academic calendar here. This means our classes at the new campus should also begin by October.

This is a very compressed timeline, especially considering that there is student selection, faculty deployment, discussing and approving courses with the experts, and more. It is amazing and sometimes I wonder how we manage to do so many of these things. From several ministerial discussions, signing the MoU recently to holding discussions with our counterparts and team in Zanzibar, I think it’s better to frame them not as challenges, but as opportunities.

Looking ahead, there’s going to be tons of challenges. Thankfully, we have a (temporary) campus in Zanzibar. We are holding regular meetings with our team in Zanzibar; there are several things that still need to be taken care of such as housing for students, faculty, catering facility, getting the students here, and ensuring that visa paperwork is done in time for us and for the students. These are a few details, and I am sure there will be bigger challenges, and we are trying to anticipate and plan for those well in advance. The IIT Madras team, our team in Zanzibar and the government have been working together to plan for a bright future for this campus.

IE: When is the IIT Zanzibar’s permanent campus expected to be complete?

Preeti Aghalayam: As of now, we have a temporary campus set up and the permanent one will take some time. We are building this new campus on 200 acres of land from scratch and are planning to complete it in another three years. The application process, meanwhile, will conclude on August 6.

IE: What will be the admission criteria for the IIT Zanzibar campus? Do students need to clear the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for this?

Preeti Aghalayam: This is a new region and while JEE works for India, people here do not know about JEE at all. To seek admission to the IIT Madras Zanzibar campus, students need to have cleared their basic Class 12 education — which can be from an international board, CBSE, state boards etc — and then there will be a screening test and an interview round for selection.

Back when IITs had just started in the 50s and 60s, interviews were an important part of the admission process, and while that is not possible at such a large scale now in India, it is feasible on the new campus. I feel interviews are a good way of getting to know the candidate. For locals here, we have substituted the Class 12 eligibility with what they call ‘form six’.

IE: How will the class proportion look like, in terms of Indian and international students?

Preeti Aghalayam: Right now, this is open. We will see in our process what it is going to turn out to be, and this will be looked at according to how things turn out in the future, but as of now, there is no specific quota.

IE: What is the tuition fees, and housing cost for the IIT Zanzibar campus?

Preeti Aghalayam: The tuition fee for the undergraduate programme is US$ 12,000 a year, and probably US$ 3000-4000 for on-site accommodation. For the master’s programme, as is typical in our system, the tuition fee is less, which will be around US $4000.

The operational expense for this institution is coming from the local government as they are funding it. However, the other IITs were built back in the 50s and 60s, and we are building this one in 2023, so there are bound to be some differences (in the cost). Obviously, this kind of tuition fee is extremely competitive with what you would spend in the UK or the US. It’s also commensurate with what several engineering students are spending in private institutions in India. We have had discussions and debates with experts to reach this figure, considering all aspects.

IE: …and are there any scholarships for students who will be taking admission to the new campus?

Preeti Aghalayam: Since the President of Zanzibar is aware that the IITs are very competitive, he has announced that the top ranking Zanzibar students will be given a good scholarship from his side. We are expecting a similar scholarship from mainland Tanzania too. As of now, we only have these but we are looking at more such opportunities.

IE: What will the curriculum look like at IIT Zanzibar? 

Preeti Aghalayam: We believe in a blend of different kinds of courses — electives, humanities, and social science based electives — that broaden the horizons of the students. We have core subjects which are more foundational in nature, elective courses where the students have a little bit of freedom to explore their particular interests. We will also have project work and experiential learning. Good proportions of each of these should be present in the curriculum.

The structure of the programme has been completely vetted by the IIT Madras experts. The principles on which the programme is based are the same as the IIT Madras, but every course that will be taught in the Zanzibar campus has also been separately discussed and approved by the experts. For example, there is a Bachelor of Science in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence degree which will only be offered on the Zanzibar campus as of now.

IE: …and will the faculty be completely from India?

Preeti Aghalayam: Right now we’re looking at deputing full time faculty from IIT Madras, including myself. In terms of the head of the academic programmes and a few of the teachers, we are looking at faculty from India because we want to start off with strength.

Having said that, we have put out an advertisement for recruiting young faculty members with suitable qualifications, in contract positions, and we have already had some outreach from the recently retired faculty members too.

Additionally, governments on both sides have come together to help in this. The Government of India has extended scholarships to several qualified people locally, to come to China and do masters and PhD programmes with us, which will also help them imbibe the IIT Madras culture. Every year, we’ll have a bunch of people going from shore to Chennai, sort of as a unit, to train themselves there because we have so many programmes ongoing in IIT-Madras, which cannot all be brought here. So, people can go to our Chennai campus on scholarships for training.

IE: If the curriculum is almost the same, faculty will be brought in from Chennai and the degree will be of IIT Madras, then why should students fly to Zanzibar instead of heading to the Chennai campus?

Preeti Aghalayam: The most important thing is to consider the class cohorts here, the peer group that students will rub shoulders with in terms of quality will be the same but the diversity in the classroom will help a student grow further.

Earlier, students used to go abroad for higher studies only after an undergraduate degree. Even I went for my Masters and onwards, and not before that. But things are changing now. Students are now heading abroad right from the undergraduate level. So, we think it will be an attractive opportunity for engineering students to head to Zanzibar and experience this unique opportunity. Plus, there are several issues in Zanzibar that need scientific solutions and our students will be able to come and work on those real-life issues too.

IE: You are the first ever woman director of an IIT, how has the journey been in this male-dominated industry? 

Preeti Aghalayam: I am a product of IIT Madras. I am a little bit loud and argumentative but they know me as someone who cares a lot about IIT Madras and who put the institute before anything else. I have very wide interests as well such as being a runner, blogging, teaching and more. Considering this, I think, the institute trusted me with this responsibility. Many times, it is only secondary that I am a woman. Many of my colleagues are my good friends, and I think in academics you have to form a level of comradery with your peers to sustain in this field.

I also come from a family of educators. My grandfather was the founding member of a school a long time ago, my dad was a professor of Chemistry and hard work comes from my mother as I have seen her sit extra hours at night and wake up early to complete her PhD when I was in my high school. Those are the roots that have helped me reach this level, and my husband — whom I met at IIT Madras — has also been a very big support.

Women are a minority in this industry, but things are slowly changing. It is important for women to be able to stand up in this world of men and be in leadership positions. I am glad for myself, but I know that if we look at our kind at large, it is not enough for a few of us to be given a title or opportunity. It has to broaden the base, both in terms of numbers and the agency that we are given. We are equal to men, but the opportunities we have access to, and in our minds and what is articulated to us in our families in terms of aspirations, there shouldn’t be any holding back. It’s a difficult change, but one that we need.

I am a supporter of women in STEM and at IIT Madras we have done a number of things with the hope that it helps women at the institute in this journey, and we will be bringing in some of those measures to the new campus too.

Another good thing is that the gender representation in Zanzibar is good. You can see women in top positions here. Things do get easier when society has already taken the rudimentary steps.

IE: In the past, it has been talked about how the IIT campuses can be a bit unsafe for women, as they are not in the majority. Are there any specific measures being taken to eliminate that issue at the IIT Zanzibar campus?

Preeti Aghalayam: The first benefit is that women are present in all spaces here and they have agency, but there is an expectation of some measures which are quite normal, such as different gender dorms of students. The Health Ministry also paid a visit to the new campus for the small healthcare centre that we are setting up here, and people from the human resources department are also helping us with this.

Security is a top priority, not just for women but overall too. There is a sizable Indian population here, so that also plays to our advantage. The crime rate is very low in Zanzibar. I remember that I passed by a jail here and my driver told me that it is very less populated due to the low crime rate. We are being very conscious about this.

IE: Have you received requests for partnerships from foreign universities?

Preeti Aghalayam: We have had several outreaches from different foreign universities for this project. The African School of Economics wants to partner with us because they bring social science strength and they synergize well with engineering and science and technology strengths that we have. They are a big institution and are building a new campus near our campus here. We have been joking that like the small city of Cambridge in Massachusetts has Harvard and MIT, we will grow the African School of Economics and IIT and help bring that level of education to this island.

We have had a few other outreaches from different institutions that want to work with us and we are reaching out to our alumni network too. We are going to sit down, evaluate and put things together nicely. We want to carve out, for example, a semester exchange study abroad programme for the Zanzibar campus students with our partners.

So far, the University of Birmingham is likely to immediately come on board and at least five or 10 other institutions like that, which we will leverage all the relationships that we’ve built up at IIT-M to ensure that students get access to different opportunities.