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Brain drain

Among the criticisms of the IIT system by the media and academia, a common notion is that it encourages brain drain. Until liberalisation started in the early 1990s, India experienced large scale emigration of IIT graduates to developed countries, especially to the United States. Since 1953, nearly twenty-five thousand IIT graduates have settled in the US. Since the US benefited from subsidized education in IITs at the cost of Indian taxpayers' money, critics say that subsidising education in IITs is useless. Others support the emigration of graduates, arguing that the capital sent home by the IIT graduates has been a major source of the expansion of foreign exchange reserves for India, which, until the 1990s, had a substantial trade deficit. A 2023 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that among the top 1,000 JEE scorers, 36% migrated abroad, while for the top 100 scorers, the rate was 62%, primarily to the U.S. and for graduate school.

This trend has been reversed somewhat (dubbed the reverse brain drain) as hundreds of IIT graduates, who have pursued further studies in the US, started returning to India in the 1990s. The extent of intellectual loss receded substantially over the 1990s and 2000s, with the percentage of students going abroad dropping from as high as 70% at one time to around 30% in 2005. This is largely attributed to the liberalization of the Indian economy and the opening of previously closed markets. Government initiatives are encouraging IIT students into entrepreneurship programs and are increasing foreign investment. Emerging scientific and manufacturing industries, and outsourcing of technical jobs from North America and Western Europe have created opportunities for aspiring graduates in India. Additionally, IIT alumni are giving back generously to their parent institutions.