The Indian Institute of Technology, country's most reputed engineering schools have decided to shoot up their students intake at undergraduate, postgraduate and research levels to 1 lakh by 2020.
According to a senior official, in a meeting of the IIT Council headed by HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, "in-principle" approval has been given to the proposal. "At present the IITs have around 72,000 students, however it is decided to admit 14,500 undergraduate students up from 10,500 per year and 14,000 postgraduate students up from 6000 including research scholars", an official said.
In addition, approval has also been given to Prime Minister's Research Fellowship to foster research and to reduce brain drain as more and more students are moving out of the country for better research opportunities. With this scheme, BTech students can enrol in research programmes and get paid with a monthly fellowship of nearly Rs 60,000. This programme will be offered to some 1000 meritorious students. Finance will be provided by the Union Government. "We will move the Finance Ministry for the requisite funds", said the HRD Minister.
The target to boost the intake of students to 1 lakh in 4 years could prove to be ambitious, said Gautam Barua, a former director of IIT Guwahati. But infratsructure gap and most importantly vacant teaching positions needs to be filled, said Barua. The teacher-students ratio at IITs should be 1:10, wheras at present the ratio varies from 1:12 to 1:15 for different IITs.
Javadekar said that HRD Ministry and IITs are now planning to invite teachers from overseas Universities to undertake research projects in India and also allow Indian students to spend a semester in foreign universities thus allowing global exposure.