Top engg students to be offered chance to study at IITs

New Delhi: Students who perform well initially at their engineering
colleges may soon be offered an automatic opportunity by the Indian
Institutes of Technology (IITs) to complete their undergraduate
engineering programme at one of the prestigious institutes and also
earn a the coveted Ph.D from the IITs.

The panel that had been set up by the Human Resource Development (HRD)
ministry under former energy commission chairman Anil Kakodkar to
create reforms for IITs came up with this suggestion to allow the IITs
to pick 2500 brilliant third year students at other engineering
colleges and allow them an opportunity to study at the institutes.

According to the blueprint of the proposal, the students will be
allowed to complete their B.Tech at the IITs and then also pursue a
Ph.D. at the prestigious engineering institutes.

The proposal was put forth by the Kakodkar committee as one of the key
components of the strategy to increase the number of PhDs from the
IITs.

A member of the panel said that the proposal, if implemented, would
create a win-win situation as the selected students will be able to
pursue a dream education at the IITs and the institutes will get
students ready to take up research studies.

The report was presented before HRD Minister Kapil Sibal last week.

Several faculty members at the IITs have expressed their disapproval
about the implementation of the proposal. A senior professor from IIT
Kanpur who had been involved with the setting up of the new IIT in
Rajasthan said that he wasn't sure if the IITs could absorb the
additional students.

He further added that the burden of work on the faculty at the IITs as
well as the infrastructure is already quite high.

The panel has also suggested the HRD ministry to increase the annual
fee for the institutes from Rs.50,000 a year toRs.2-2.5 lakh per year.

The IITs had already increased their intake of doctoral students and
had also increased their output of PhDs to around 1000 every year.