The real question isn’t why IITians become teachers, but why teaching is so underestimated as a destination for serious intellectual talent.
This question keeps resurfacing because it rests on a deeply ingrained hierarchy of careers. In that hierarchy, intelligence is assumed to flow “upward” toward corporate roles, startups, finance, or research labs, while teaching is treated as a fallback—something one does after better options run out. When an IIT graduate chooses teaching, the choice unsettles this mental model, and discomfort often disguises itself as curiosity.
The reality is far simpler and far less flattering to our assumptions. Graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology are among the most heavily filtered talent pools in the country. The selection process rewards abstraction, endurance, precision, and performance under pressure. These abilities are not narrow or fragile; they are transferable across domains. An IITian does not lack options. If anything, they are over-supplied with them.
Competitive exam teaching, particularly at the JEE level, is also widely misunderstood. It is not routine instruction or content delivery. It is applied cognition under constraints. A serious teacher must anticipate how problems are framed, where students systematically err, how partial understanding collapses under time pressure, and which explanations remain stable months later in an exam hall. This demands first-principles thinking, psychological insight, and relentless refinement. Many corporate roles, despite their prestige, do not demand this level of sustained intellectual rigor.
There is also the question of feedback and causality. In most organizations, the link between effort, quality, and outcome is weak and mediated by layers of hierarchy, incentives, and politics. Teaching is brutally honest. If clarity is missing, results fail. If an explanation works, it works at scale. For individuals who value clean cause-and-effect relationships, this environment is not a compromise but an upgrade.
Then comes leverage. One strong idea, articulated well, can shape thousands of minds across years. The impact compounds, not through promotions or titles, but through cognition. Few professions offer this kind of asymmetric influence with such direct ownership over one’s work.
What truly needs examination, therefore, is not the choice of IITians who teach, but the social undervaluation of teaching itself. When we assume that intellectual seriousness must express itself through certain brands or job titles, we reduce intelligence to optics. Teaching challenges that reduction. It exposes how much of our career valuation is driven by status rather than substance.
For many high-ability individuals, teaching is not an escape from ambition. It is ambition, redirected toward clarity, leverage, and long-term impact. If that unsettles our assumptions, perhaps the assumptions deserve scrutiny—not the teachers.
Note: AI Assisted Language