Thursday, Apr 25, 2024 | Last Update : 09:18 PM IST
IITs plan to admit ‘non-resident’ students
The IIT Council on Tuesday gave “in-principle” approval to a proposal to admit “non-resident students”, that is, to allow students who would not stay in its hostels, and thus increase the number of se
The IIT Council on Tuesday gave “in-principle” approval to a proposal to admit “non-resident students”, that is, to allow students who would not stay in its hostels, and thus increase the number of seats in various courses, with the saim of raising their total intake to one lakh by 2020.
This plan, senior officials said, was cleared at a meeting of the IIT Council chaired by HRD minister Prakash Javadekar here on Tuesday. The Indian Institutes of Technology Council is the top decision-making body for the premier technological institutes in the country.
Various IITs will now undertake an exercise to fix the number of additional students they can accommodate. “At present, the IITs have around 72,000 students in their undergraduate, postgraduate or doctorate courses, which are residential. However, it is now planned that students, who will not stay in hostels, should be admitted to these institutes,” an official said.
The plan is to increase the number by 10,000 per year so that the number of IITians touches one lakh by 2020, the official said, suggesting ideally there would be an increase of 4,000 seats in undergraduate courses and 6,000 seats in postgraduate and Ph.D. programmes.
Mr Javadekar also announced after the meeting that the IIT Council had also approved a proposal to introduce the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowships. The move aims at encouraging IITians passing out of B.Tech. courses to enroll in Ph.D. programmes straightaway.
Another decision taken by the council was to introduce an induction course to help new students adjust as they join these institutes after a rigorous competitive examination.
The IIT Council has also given its nod to a “pilot” run of an aptitude test, the officials said, adding the modalities will soon be worked out. They said this test would not have any bearing on admissions.
The move to introduce NAT as a single admission test to IITs, NITs and other engineering institutions was shelved earlier during the tenure of Smriti Irani as HRD minister as it was felt it will have an adverse impact on rural students. If NAT is approved, it will replace the JEE, the national common entrance exam for admissions to several engineering courses.
