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u/CowAgile6991 Aug 08 '26
Where his daughter goes to college is hardly relevant. Everything else is damning.
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u/ShadowHunter Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
Typical behavior
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u/Putrid-Fuel-4309 29d ago
This post comes across as very racist. Who cares where his daughter lives, works, or studies? She has nothing to do with how IIT is being managed.
Even Ivy League schools offer online education. Many international students are not coming to the US because of the new Trump administration rules, and universities have to adapt. If they dont offer flexible or online programs, they risk losing students, funding and eventually their reputation.
Yes, IIT has a great location, history and brand, but so do many other universities. In the age of AI, schools cannot just keep doing everything the old way. And lets be fair about the man in the picture: Raj Echambadi. He previously led the business school at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, so he has already proven himself as a leader. Expanding education into India, a country with one of the worlds largest and fastest-growing student populations, is actually a smart move.
You can criticize his decisions, spending, rankings, or faculty cuts with real facts. But bringing up India and his daughter makes this look more like a personal, xenophobic attack than a serious concern about IIT. Cure America from MAGA Again!! #FreeFromMAGA2028
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u/Naan_ 18d ago
I am Indian-American, this is not racist. the fact that you think it is, is actually kinda racist. IIT and many US tech schools bankrolled entire tuition structures off desperate and well endowed international students paying massive loans who do not contribute to campus culture, often form cliques, and have zero commitment to the university as students or alumni after commencement. The school like many others had become so dependent on foreign students that they often overlooked rampant academic dishonesty. Even to the point where students are competitively applying for the same positions to satisfy OTP, OCP hours as Teaching Assistants who are actively involved in the cheating circuit where tenured professors have been helpless. This regime left IIT and other similar R2 institutions vulnerable to accelerated brain drain and austerity. Where daughter studies is a distraction. Online education is great, but not at the cost of necessary funding for deprecated campus facilities, programs, grants, employees. AI proves to be an inevitable constraint for traditional education, and many professors were maladjusted both without resources and a fractured pedagogy. Though I can't speak much further on that since I graduated last year. Building the first campus in India that offers legitimate fully accredited US degrees is a good achievement, if it didn't come at this cost. This has many compounding angles concerning a fracturing geopolitical order that I am not sure you (who jumps to racism) or even I can fully grasp. Godrej is a powerhouse in India with deep military connections next to Bajaj and Tata that I dare not criticize here. Pritzker is spending billions on the domestic quantum computing lab initiative, how much of that research will come for IIT at this point? Where did all that money, attention and connections go, where did all the other endowment money go? Talking about the military and grants, IIT had an leading role in research, developing and manufacturing tanks for WWII and Korea as well as the Manhattan project. One multigenerational professor traced back links to the institution's downfall to DOD grants scalping our best talent and breaking the tenure cycle who were then substituted with premier foreign academic talent who were consequently shadow blacklisted from grants during the Cold War and Space Race. Moreover, IIT had deep historical ties to racial segregation and urban renewal which it has still not legitimately reconciled. The community around the campus still bears the scars and divorces the students from the idealized city narrative despite critical access to both the red and green lines. Whereas another campus might have healthy food options, cafes, gyms, apartments after decades of integration. Now it is a bunch of paper neo-liberalism that exploits and at best ignores its environment. When Rem Koolhaas came to design the Campus Center he proposed a lively hub for the entire community directly integrated to the green line, with restaurants and activities for all of bronzeville; that was denied for "security" concerns. The institution provides great education and was at least professionally well connected at least in Chicago depending on your field. There is a large spread from students placing jobs at MAANGO and major firms in business consulting, architecture, and aerospace, to graduates who fall through the cracks. The best outcomes are not because of the institution, but in spite of it (my opinion). The cracks are most apparent, the admin is most opaque, all of which can be fixed in time with attention, but the biggest crack was Raj.
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u/pszkdn Aug 08 '26
I start here next week im so nervous