My American provincialism used to assume that &quot;IIT&quot; was Illinois Institute of Technology...mostly famous for its Mies Van Der Rohe campus, I suppose. Then a few years ago something on HN referenced the famous IIT, and I came to understand my neighbor.<p>His father a professor and Rotarian in Travandrum, he came to the US to study and chose the world famous Tuskegee University [as did my neighbor on the other side but from Port Harcourt after living through the Biafran War]. Anyway, over time I realized that building universities is sort of orthogonal to the goals of colonization and that the history of higher education in India doesn&#x27;t neatly map to that of the US or France or Mexico. India&#x27;s educational past is much more recent and tangible and the idea of packing up and moving half way across the world to Alabama for a degree was a lot less the crazy option than it sounds. He is part of the first generation to have been born after independence, and that&#x27;s an experience and point of view that I can&#x27;t really ever get my head around.