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The Indian Institutes of Technology (Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान), or IITs, are a group of seven autonomous engineering and technology oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Government of India. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947. The students and alumni of IITs are colloquially referred to as IITians. In order of establishment, the seven IITs are located at Kharagpur, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), Kanpur, Delhi, Guwahati, and Roorkee. Some IITs were established with financial assistance and technical expertise from UNESCO, Germany, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Each IIT is an autonomous university, linked to the others through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration. They have a common admission process for undergraduate admissions, using the Joint Entrance Examination (popularly known as IIT-JEE) to select around 4,000 undergraduate candidates a year. Graduate Admissions are done on the basis of the GATE. About 15,500 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students study in the seven IITs, in addition to research scholars. IITians have achieved success in a variety of professions, resulting in the establishment of the widely recognised Brand IIT.• The autonomy of the IITs has helped them to create specialised degrees in technology at the undergraduate level, and consequently to award the Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.) degree, as opposed to the Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree awarded by most other Indian universities. The success of the IITs has led to the creation of similar institutes in other fields, such as the National Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management, the Indian Institute of Information Technology & Management and the Indian Institute of Information Technology. The Institutes
Establishment and development
Organisational structure The President of India is the most powerful person in the organisational structure of IITs, being the ex officio Visitor, Below the Heads of Department (HOD) are the faculty members (Professors, Associate Professors, and Assistant Professors). The Wardens come under the Chairman of the Hall Management Committee.• Admission Admission to most undergraduate and postgraduate courses in IITs is granted through various written entrance examinations. Admission to M.S. and Ph.D. programs is based primarily on a personal interview, though candidates must also appear for written tests. The IITs are also well known for their special reservation policy, which stands out in contrast with the rest of India. Entrance examinations
Reservation policy India is one of the countries Another group of candidates who do not meet this relaxed admission criteria are offered a "Preparatory Course" comprising of English, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics at the IIT concerned. After one year of study, those candidates who are able to secure a grade higher than the prescribed cut-off mark during end-of-semester exams are allowed to continue regular studies. There is no relaxation on the criteria for passing the exams or graduating a course. The candidates admitted through the reservation policy are also subjected to the same criteria as the general candiates for graduation. In 1989, Prime Minister V. P. Singh accepted and implemented the proposals of the Mandal Commission that recommended provisions of reservations for OBCs in private unaided institutions as well as high-end government jobs for minority communities. No changes took place in the IITs because of the legislation, but in 2005, based on the recommendations of a political panel, the UPA government proposed to implement the reserved-quota system for the OBCs in IITs and IIMs. It received critical objections by BJP and other opposing parties, who described the proposal as "dangerous and divisive".• When the government planned to implement the quota system, anti-reservation protests were organised throughout India against the proposal. Student agitations also took place in the IITs and many students who opposed caste-based reservations resorted to hunger strikes. They labelled the quota system as a government tactic to earn cheap votes, and that the system would lead to increased casteism and a severe compromise on merit and talent.• The additional procedures for admission into the IITs (the preparatory course and the qualifying end-of-semester exams that follow) have also been criticised as unnecessary and counter-productive. One of the arguments opposing the modified policy of reservation and favouring direct admission is that a large number of seats remain vacant under the present scheme, and only about 10% of all seats go to the Scheduled Caste candidates.• Education
Undergraduate education The B.Tech. degree is the most common undergraduate degree in the IITs in terms of student enrolment, though it has started a Dual Degree programme recently. The B.Tech course is based on a 4-year program with eight semesters, allowing only the exceptionally meritorious students. From the second year onwards, the students study subjects exclusively from their respective departments. In addition to these, the students have to take compulsory advanced courses from other departments in order to broaden their education. Separate compulsory courses from humanities and social sciences department, and sometimes management courses are also enforced. At the end of third year, the undergraduate students have to undertake a summer project at an industry or reputed academic institute as part of the curriculum. In the last year of their studies, most of the students are placed into industries and organisations via the placement process of the respective IIT, though some students opt out of this either when going for higher studies or when they take up jobs by applying to the companies directly.• Postgraduate and doctoral education The IITs offer a number of postgraduate programs including Master of Technology (M.Tech.), Master of Business Administration (MBA),only for engineers and post graduates in science, and Master of Science (M.Sc.). Some IITs offer specialised graduate programmes such as Post Graduate Diploma in Information Technology (PGDIT), Master in Medical Science and Technology (MMST), Master of City Planning (MCP), Postgraduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law (PGDIPL), Master in Design (MDes), and Postgraduate Diploma in Maritime Operation & Management (PGDMOM). The IITs also offer Doctor of Philosophy degree (Ph.D.) as part of their doctoral education programme. In it, the candidates are given a topic of academic interest by the professor or have to work on the consultancy projects given by the industries. The duration of the program is usually unspecified and depends on the specific discipline. Ph.D. candidates have to submit a dissertation as well as provide oral defence for their thesis. Teaching Assistantships (TA) and Research Assistantships (RA) are often provided. Some of the IITs offer an M.S. (by research) program; the M.Tech. and M.S. are similar to the US universities' non-thesis (course based) and thesis (research based) master programs respectively. The IITs, along with NITs and IISc, account for nearly 80% of all PhDs in engineering.• The IITs also offer an unconventional B.Tech. and M.Tech. integrated educational program called "Dual Degree". It integrates undergraduate and postgraduate studies in selected pairs of branch and specialisation. It is completed in five years as against six years in conventional B.Tech. (four years) followed by an M.Tech. (two years).• The reason for starting this program was to encourage IITians to complete postgraduate studies from IIT rather than going to other reputed institutes. All IITs (except IIT Guwahati) have schools of management offering degrees in management or business administration. Culture and student life
Technical and cultural festivals
Inter-IIT sports meet The IITs compete among themselves in a number of sports events held under the aegis of the Annual Inter-IIT Sports Meet. Started in 1961, the competition is held every December at an IIT chosen by rotation. The award consists of a running shield that is passed over to the winning IIT. The winner is decided based on the weighted sum of the points earned in various events held over a period of five days. Separate events for men and women are held and points are tallied separately for determining the final winner of the General Championship.• The 12 events included in the Inter-IIT Sports are athletics, badminton, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, swimming, lawn and squash tennis, table tennis, volleyball, water polo and weightlifting. As swimming and water polo are played in water, which is usually cold in the month of December, the Inter-IIT Sports Meet for them is held in the first week of October, and is called Inter-IIT Aquatics Meet.• Recognition The degrees provided by IITs are recognised by the AICTE and hence recognised by all institutions in India. Even outside India, IIT degrees are respected, largely due to the prestige of the IITs as created by their alumni. One of the contributing factors behind the success of IITs is the special status of the IITs as Institutes of National Importance under the Indian Institute of Technology Act. The IIT Act ensures that the IITs have special privileges and lays the foundation for them to evolve as world-class institutes. The autonomy ensured by the Act enables the IITs to implement changes quickly, to keep up with changing scenarios in both the educational world, and society in general. Student politics in IITs is kept under control with strict vigilance over the way student body elections are held. The IIT-JEE is another important factor behind the success of IITs, as it enables the IITs to accept only a select group of meritorious students. This combination of success factors has led to the concept of the IIT Brand.• Similarly, China also recognised the value of IITs and planned to replicate the model.• Educational rankings Most IITs are consistently ranked above other engineering colleges in India in engineering education surveys,• with regard to quality of faculty, teaching standards, research facilities and campus placements. In international surveys, the IITs fail to achieve top rankings. The Times Higher Education Supplement (2005) ranked the IITs the 50th best overall universities in their World University Rankings• and gave IITs the 36th position globally for science. The IITs were ranked third-best worldwide for technology, after MIT and Caltech. In the Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities, only one IIT (IIT Kharagpur) was listed among the top 500 universities worldwide.• The IITs fall short in many parameters that are considered for educational rankings. The criteria for ranking• prominently includes internationally recognised research output, in which the IITs do not achieve notable success.• Another criteria being the Social Science Citation Index, the rank of IITs suffers as they do not have large departments of liberal arts and social sciences. Since the IITs have only a few international faculty and students (except those by exchange programs), the rankings of IITs in many international surveys have suffered. Since the IITs have scored better under most educational ranking criteria than other Indian colleges and universities, they continue to achieve top positions in nationwide surveys. Criticism The IITs have faced criticism from within and outside academia. Major concerns include allegations that they encourage a brain drain and that their stringent entrance examinations encourage coaching colleges and skew the socio-economic profile of the student body. Other critics are concerned at the insufficient representation of women and the disadvantaged. Brain drain Among the criticisms of the IIT system by the media, academia and the people in general, the most prominent is that it encourages brain drain. Until the process of liberalisation started in early 1990s, India was unable to provide good job opportunities to the graduates of IITs. This resulted in large scale emigration of IITians to western countries, especially to the United States. Since 1953, nearly twenty-five thousand IITians have settled in the USA.• Since the USA benefited from subsidised education in IITs at the cost of Indian taxpayers' money, critics say that subsidising education in IITs is useless. Others support the emigration of graduates, arguing that the capital sent home by the IITians has been a major source of the expansion of foreign exchange reserves for India, which, until the 1990s, had a substantial trade deficit. The extent of the brain drain has receded substantially over the past decade, with the percentage of students going abroad dropping from as high as 70% to around 30% today.• This is largely attributed to the liberalisation of the Indian economy and the opening of previously closed markets. Government initiatives are encouraging IIT students into entrepreneurship programs and are increasing foreign investment. Emerging scientific and manufacturing industries, and outsourcing of technical jobs from North America and Western Europe have created opportunities for aspiring graduates in India. Many undergraduates go abroad to pursue further studies, such as MS and PhD. Entrance competition The highly competitive examination in the form of IIT-JEE has led to establishment of a large number of coaching institutes throughout the country that provide intensive, and specific preparation for the IIT-JEE for substantial fees. It is argued that this favours students from specific regions and richer backgrounds. Some coaching institutes say that they have individually coached nearly 800 successful candidates year after year.• According to some estimates, nearly 95% of all students who clear the IIT-JEE had joined coaching classes.• The psychological stress and emotional trauma faced by candidates not able to pass the examination and their families is considered to be a serious problem. This has led to criticism of the way the examinations are conducted. The IIT-JEE format was restructured in 2006 following these complaints.• After the change to the objective pattern of questioning, even the students who initially considered themselves not fit for subjective pattern of IIT-JEE decided to take the examination. Though the restructuring was meant to reduce the dependence of students on coaching classes, it led to an increase in students registering for coaching classes.• Some people (mostly IITians) have criticised the changed pattern of the IIT-JEE. Their reasoning is that while IIT-JEE traditionally used to test students understanding of fundamentals and his ability to apply them to solve large unseen problems, the current pattern does not stress much on the application part.• Alumni The IITians are known for their loyalty to their alma mater and many IIT Alumni Associations are active in India and abroad. The IIT alumni either help their alma mater in the form of donations, or by preferential job opportunities extended to students from the IITs. The Vinod Gupta School of Management at IIT Kharagpur and Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management at IIT Bombay are management schools within IITs that have been established largely by alumni donations; these schools were named after their benefactors. Many IIT alumni have become entrepreneurs, including N.R. Narayana Murthy (co-founder and chairman of Infosys), Vinod Khosla (co-founder, Sun Microsystems), and Suhas S. Patil (founder and Chairman Emeritus Cirrus Logic Inc.) Other alumni have achieved leading positions in corporations, such as Rajat Gupta (former Managing Director, McKinsey), Arun Sarin (CEO, Vodafone), Victor Menezes (Senior Vice Chairman, Citigroup), and Kanwal Rekhi (CTO, Novell). IIT alumni have also pursued careers in politics: for example, Manohar Parrikar became the Chief Minister of Goa. Many alumni have gained national and international recognition: Sushantha Kumar Bhattacharyya was awarded the CBE, a knighthood, and Padma Bhushan; and V. C. Kulandaiswamy was awarded Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan. Narendra Karmarkar is also world-renowned for his work in applied mathematics. See also Notes Further reading | |||||||||||||||||||
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