Time to stop the degree snobbery?

Remember those black-and-white graduation photos in the family album, the prized degree held up and the proud tilt of the head? For Indians, a degree has always been a weighty document. Diplomas? In our snobby minds, those were for the electrician, the beautician or the technician.
Even today most would agree with the views of Bengaluru parent Anuradha Gopinath whose son Vivek G is in Class 11.“If my son chooses to go the IIM route, a diploma is fine. Otherwise, it’s only a degree. Let’s not compare a diploma from a polytechnic to a degree from a technology institute,” she says.
So strong is the prejudice that even well-known institutions are switching to degrees. Bengaluru-based design institute Srishti began offering degrees last year. From this year, National Institute of Design (NID) will produce masters and bachelors of design instead of diploma holders after both houses of Parliament passed the NID Bill last July. It will also offer MPhil and PhD programmes.
NID director Pradyumna Vyas says his students and their parents argued that they paid a hefty fee and got “only a diploma” at the end of four years. “In India and abroad, a degree has more value and commands greater respect. Many of our students could not apply for postgraduate studies in the Netherlands, Germany and Australia because they don’t accept undergrad diplomas. Also, in India you cannot apply to UPSC if you don’t have an undergrad degree,” says Vyas.
Much of the current controversy raging over the IIM Bill is centred on the proposed move to introduce the degree in India’s most respected management schools. Several in the IIM establishment as well as admirers and alumni are against it. “Our RBI governor, a top economist, is from IIM-Ahmedabad and a diploma holder. There are hundreds of MBA institutions doling out degrees. Isn’t a diploma from a premier institute better than a degree from one of these institutions?” says Prof S Sadagopan, IIT-Bengaluru’s founder director.
Academicians say IIMs do not offer a degree simply because they do not have the degree-granting power given to institutions set up by an Act of Parliament. “The fact that IIMs continue to be governed by a society does not make its diploma any less valuable,” says a former director of IIM-A, who requested anonymity. Even in the marriage market, a good catch has to have a degree. “The only exception to his rule is a diploma from a famed institution,” says Gourav Rakshit, CEO, Shaadi.com. “Men looking for educated female partners settle for diplomas, but women generally look for a degree.”
There is a reason why the diploma is considered infra dig. Most diploma courses in India used to be in the engineering stream. Several premier colleges, including Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute and the erstwhile Delhi Institute of Technology, rose to fame because of their top-quality diploma graduates. “VJTI’s four-year diploma students were preferred over engineers. The final year of the programme put students through an internship on the factory floor, and they turned out to be technically sound,” says S S Mantha, former AICTE chairman.
But as industry changed and computerized machine tools took over, the need for supervisory-level diploma graduates fell, and engineering education boomed. In 1998, Institute for Higher Education Policy pitted the degree against the diploma to find that graduates enjoy higher savings, increased personal/professional mobility and improved quality of life.
But today, attitudes have altered and what matters is what you gained from your course or life, argues economics professor Neeraj Hatekar. “Earlier, there were diploma mills, fly-by-night operators that offered low quality programmes. Now, diploma institutes have the freedom to design their syllabus, hire the best teachers. What matters is where you studied and how it shaped you,” he says.
An employer looking for the necessary spark in a potential hire is unlikely to fret about a degree or diploma. “What is important is what one picked in the classroom and learnt from the world,” said Dileep Ranjekar, founding CEO of Azim Premji Foundation.
And what you pick depends entirely on the goal, says Debasis Chatterjee, former director of IIM, Kozhikode. A diploma prepares one for the professional world, while a degree helps one integrate with the academic world. “IIMs are professional schools and should not get into this degree-diploma row,” he says.
Reporting by Seetha Lakshmi, Hemali Chhapia, Akshaya Mukul, Joeanna Rebello Fernandes and Shobita Dhar