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Does joining a top 5 IIT make someone more likely to go for research? Or does someone’s interest in research make them more likely to join a top-5 IIT? Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ina Ganguli and Patrick Gaule from the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) in the US have recently published a working paper analysing the effect of studying in one of the Top 5 IITs on migration for graduate studies. As students of one of the top 5 IITs, we were curious as to what the researchers conclude about us.
The authors acknowledge the contribution of highly skilled immigrants to US technological innovation, and observe that “they study in elite universities in their home countries before getting advanced degrees abroad. For example, many successful Indian immigrants in the technology industry—including Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet Inc./Google, and Arvind Krishna, the CEO of IBM—are undergraduate alumni of the selective Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).” Therefore, they study the extent to which the elite-institutions of India facilitate migration, focusing on the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), mainly the top 5 ones(including IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur), which are prestigious highly-selective universities, with an acceptance rate that is lower than the Ivy league colleges. They conclude that while students from one of the top 5 IITs are more likely to migrate for graduate studies, no significant difference is observed in migration for work.
The paper focuses on the top scorers in the JEE 2010 examination, who could have gotten admission in one of the top 5 IITs. While 9 out of the top 10 scorers have migrated, the percentage decreases with lower JEE scores with 62 among the top 100 and 360 among the top 1000 choosing to migrate. The percentage of migration is sizable throughout the sample. Most of the students migrate for graduate school – 83% of the individuals migrated to pursue a Masters or Ph.D, while only 17% migrated for work.
Research methodology
The authors found it difficult to get data on high performing students in public domain. Since few past surveys have been conducted with similar focus, the lack of relevant data makes it challenging to study migration patterns, since it requires information both about the migrants as well as the stayers. To overcome this, the authors with the help of a dedicated team used the data of JEE 2010 that was leaked publicly, which included the full names and JEE scores of the students along with their final allotment (chosen IIT and branch). They used various platforms including LinkedIn, Github, ResearchGate, AngelList and alumni yearbooks to locate the migration outcome for roughly the top 2,500 scorers in the general category. They also compared migration outcomes of individuals with the same JEE scores, and hence the same available choices. Finally, the researchers ran a regression to analyse the effect of the score, whether they attended one of the top 5 IITs or not, the gender and the major of students, on their migration status.
Discussion on migration mechanisms
The relationship between attending a top 5 IIT and subsequent migration is observed from the regression results on the main sample of 2,470 top scorers. It is seen that someone is 4.9% more likely to migrate for graduate school given that they attended a top 5 IIT, and in particular a 5.4% increased likelihood of migrating for Ph.D. One possible reason for the effect of attending a top 5 IIT on migration is the difference in human capital, since students with similar ranks might opt for different majors in the top-5 IITs as opposed to other IITs and engineering institutions. The course selectivity or major doesn’t appear to be correlated with migration, suggesting that human capital differences in terms of the major areas of study doesn’t significantly impact migration probabilities.
Another possible reason could be the signalling value of the IIT brand name. To understand the effect of this, they did a case study on the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), which was converted into an IIT in 2012. While this change was brought about, there was no change in its staff, curriculum, or admission system, allowing the study of the impact of the IIT brand name alone. Comparing BHU students graduating before and after it received the IIT designation, a clear increase of 5.4% is seen in the share of students migrating for graduating school after it became an IIT (2014 and 2015). Hence, the IIT brand name itself appears to promote migration. While the increase is sizable, the migration percentages are still smaller in comparison to the top 5 IITs which perhaps provide a stronger signal.
Lastly, the effect of alumni network on migration was analysed. We would guess that alumni networks would play an important role in migration as it can lower the costs for migration by providing students information about opportunities, and can also facilitate access to particular programs where they might have influence over the admission decisions. The results show that the presence of an alumnus from one’s own IIT in a particular destination increases the probability of enrollment there by 30%, while the number of IIT alumni from other IITs doesn’t seem to impact the decision.
In conclusion, we note that the authors broadly conclude the positive impact of alumni network, IIT brand signalling, and studying from top 5 IITs on migration for graduate studies (and especially Ph.D. programmes) while no significant difference is observed for migration driven by work. We can point out at two possible shortcomings of this research – firstly, the authors are not clear on how they separate enrollment in graduate programmes from the eventual transition of graduates to the industry, and secondly, the authors have not considered the impact of other social factors such as caste and class on the migration patterns. Overall, this is an interesting study with insights that can potentially influence US immigration policy. We hope you enjoyed this review as much as we did!
The above article is based on the below quoted research paper. We are sincerely grateful for their contribution.
Prithwiraj Choudhury, Ina Ganguli, Patrick Gaulé, Top Talent, Elite Colleges, and Migration: Evidence from the Indian Institutes of Technology, Journal of Development Economics, Volume 164, 2023, 103120, ISSN 0304-3878,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103120.
Written by: Sruthi Subramanian
Edited by: Soumyadeep Datta
Design by: Zehaan Naik, Athrav Jiwane
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