My thoughts on “Taking IITs to Excellence and Greater Relevanceâ€
June 7th, 2011
A committee under the chairmanship of Dr. Anil Kakodkar has circulated a report (see also here and here) with the above name. Following is an input that I hope to send to the committee.
My suggestion is that the IITs combine the idea of free seats and paid seats that is used in many state engineering colleges with (some aspects of) the idea of honors colleges used in many universities in the US.
This means, for any discipline or program, there would be some number of seats (say between 20-40) for a "Research-Honours" program. The students in this program will be required to be involved in research all through their 4 years. Starting from second year they would be part of the research lab of a faculty and each semester they would have to sign up for research credits (and do research) whose grade will be based on research done by the students. Each class from the 4th semester onwards would have research component where students would have to go beyond textbooks and read latest papers on that topic. The students would be required to publish in a good international conference or journal before they graduate. During the summers they will be required to spend time in research labs. In general these students would be motivated and prepared for research careers as is being done in the IISERs and NISER. For these students the fees will be minimal and they may be even given scholarships like the INSPIRE scholarship. To remain in the "honors-research" program the students would have to maintain a required grade point average.
The rest of the students would be in regular programs (as they exist now) and would be required to pay more substantial fees, similar in amount to what the Kakodkar committee recommends. (Based on their academic performance some of these students may be allowed to change over to the "honors-research" program after the end of first year or perhaps even later.)
The above idea may be implemented at NITs too, may be with lesser number of seats in the "honors-research" program.
This will address several issues mentioned in the Kakodkar committee report.
- It will result in more IIT (and NIT) graduate pursuing research.
- It will result in more funds for the institutes.
- The students will have a clear expectations. The ones going to the "research-honors" program will know that research is expected of them and they are supposed to study hard.
The rationale behind the fees difference is fairly obvious. The "research-honors" students have a high chance of pursuing research in their chosen fields and that is the current need of the nation. On the other had the other students, as evident from the current trend, are less likely to pursue careers in their own disciplines (except the ones in electrical/cs/it/electronics areas) and many are likely to go for management and other careers. Since that is not the core goal of the IITs, these students need not be subsidized. Loans and other mechanisms need to be in place so that everyone who can get admitted to a program is able to find the money for the fees.
The above is a bare-bone idea and needs to be flushed out with more details. One may look at how honors programs are administered in many US universities to flush out some of the details. See for example Barrett Honors College (ASU).
Entry Filed under: Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri- Khurda area (1),IIT Bhubaneswar,IITs, IISc, IISERs, NISER, IIMs