NIT board of directors decide to permit students to complete their final year in the IITs

Updated on: Tuesday, January 08, 2013

Students of Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology (MANIT) along with other NITs in the country may soon have the opportunity to complete their final year in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) after its board of directors decided to permit NIT students to complete their final year in the IITs.

However, the degree would be awarded by the NIT the students hail from.

The proposal has been placed before the meeting of the standing committee headed by HRD minister M M Pallam Raju on Monday.

When contacted, MANIT's director, Dr K K Appu Kuttan said, "It is a good move which would help students. After clearance of the proposal, students in MANIT studying in the 7th and 8th semester can opt to study in any IIT. It will be a big opportunity to the bright students."

"Students will be selected on the basis of their academic performance in the past three years. This will be on the basis of recommendations from the teachers who will evaluate their research potential and understating of the discipline besides academic excellence," Kuttan said.

Once identified, the students will be admitted to an IIT and will complete their B Tech degree. Students of all branches will have the benefit from the move, he said.

The suggestion to allow final year students of NITs to undertake studies at the IITs was made by the Anil Kakodkar committee in its April 2011 report titled 'Taking IITs to Excellence and Greater Relevance'. Kakodkar had suggested that while intense efforts had been made to attract IIT graduates into the PhD programme, it was also necessary to attract students from other top engineering schools.

"The NITs, along with some of the better engineering education institutions, should become important feeders of quality graduates into post-graduate and research programmes, including at the IITs," the report stated.

The Kakodkar report recommends that the IITs should aim to take in 2,500 doctorate-seekers every year. The bigger idea is to scale up the count of PhD students from less than 1,000 per year now to 10,000 by 2020-'25.

Welcoming the move, students of MANIT said it will be a big opportunity for the bright students.

NIT board of directors decide to permit students to complete their final year in the IITs

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