Next year’s Joint Entrance Examination for admission to the 15 IITs will be held on April 10 and the pattern of the test will remain unchanged, the Joint Admission Board decided today.

The board, which oversees the entrance test, met at IIT Kanpur and decided to stick to the current pattern for 2011 as a panel of IIT directors, set up to revamp the system, had not yet submitted its report.

IIT Kanpur will be in charge of JEE 2011.

“The existing pattern of the entrance will be followed next year also. Special care will be taken in the preparation of question papers to ensure that there is no scope for any confusion,” an IIT director told.

However, students will have to answer questions in the same subjects — mathematics, chemistry and physics — as in JEE 2010 and in the same format.

The IIT-JEE was in the news this year for misleading instructions. Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had to intervene and the Joint Admission Board had to devise a special formula to evaluate the papers.

“Normally, our questions are foolproof. This year there were certain problems because of printing errors. We have learnt from our mistakes and such mistakes will not be repeated,” the director added.

The government wants to change the JEE format and replace it with an aptitude test. A committee headed by IIT Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya is preparing a report on the proposed evaluation system, which plans to give more importance to Class XII board marks.

“The new format has not yet been finalised by the committee. After the committee submits its report, the government will take a decision on it. Maybe, the new system will be effective from 2012,” the director said.

This year, about four lakh students had taken the test for a shot at the 10,000 seats the IITs offer.

The IITs at present depend completely — 100 per cent — on grants awarded directly by the HRD ministry, unlike IIM Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta, which are virtually independent.
A model being finalised may for the first time allow the IITs to themselves fund up to 50 per cent of their financial needs.
The funds can be generated through a combination of gradual fee hikes backed by scholarship schemes, greater collaboration with industry and government on revenue-generating projects and tapping alumni.

It is rare for a student planning to pursue his studies in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) to participate, or get selected for the International Biology Olympiad (IBO), let alone win a medal for the country, said the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE). This year, however, for the first time, a student joining the IIT Kanpur’s physics department, has not just represented India at IBO, but also won gold for the country.

Sahal Kaushik, the youngest student to have cleared the IIT’s Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) with an all-India rank of 33, secured gold at the 21st IBO 2010 held in Changwon, Korea.

Kaushik has also represented India at the Asian Physics Olympiad for two consecutive years, winning silver in 2009, and bronze this year.

“Students planning to join the IITs or other engineering institutes don’t participate in biology Olympiads. They are averse to biology since they view it as a subject involving rote learning. Kaushik’s achievement is thus rare and special,” said professor Vijay Singh, national coordinator, science Olympiads. HBSCE is the nodal centre for all science Olympiads.

Concerned over a large number of IIT graduates not pursuing research and teaching within the country and instead going abroad for higher education, Vice President Hamid Ansari on Saturday underlined the need for qualified and motivated faculty.

Delivering the 41st convocation address at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, Ansari called for introspection over the brain drain and emphasised the need for curriculum reform, faculty development and innovation to retain and attract good faculty.

He pointed out that less than one per cent of IIT undergraduates in the country went on to do a Masters or PhD programme within the IIT system. Fewer than 15 per cent of those graduating from IITs moved towards teaching or research, in India or abroad.

“In terms of international grading of academic output based on publications, citations of faculty, and patents applied for and granted, we fare poorly in comparison to even some developing countries.

Only IIT, Mumbai and IIT, Delhi find a place in the 2009 Times Higher Education ranking of 50 engineering and information technology institutions”, he said.Quoting the US National Science Foundation, Ansari said that students from India and those of Indian origin accounted for over one-third of all foreign engineering students in the United States in 2009.He urged engineers to create technological innovations and promote development.

The country’s image of being backward in research got a face-lift on Friday when the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, awarded 179 doctorate degrees, a 100% increase in a span of eight years.

“While we had 771 PhDs on the rolls in 2001-2002, this year the number was 1,681. We are on course to achieving our target of 2,775 PhD students in training among the country’s 9,350 by 2018-19. An interesting aspect of our PhD output is that around 65% of our PhDs are in the engineering disciplines,” said Devang Khakhar, director of IIT Bombay, during the 48th convocation ceremony of the institute.

“We can soon expect a substantial increase in the number of PhDs graduating from convocations like these, but the efforts need to be backed by a more comprehensive research and development infrastructure, which will have to a combination of technology incubation cells, innovation and entrepreneurship cells, and a research park,” said Anil Kakodkar, chairman, board of governors, IIT Bombay.

With severe faculty shortage dogging the education sector, by a conservative estimate, India needs around 8,000 additional faculty members with doctoral degrees.

The first comprehensive review of IIT Bombay’s PhD programme is also scheduled to be completed this year. “The report will have great impact on our research culture and doctoral programmes,” said Khakhar.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairman and managing director of Biocon and the chief guest, asked the passing out students to be job creators and not job seekers. “Look at what we have done today with the Commonwealth Games. Instead of showcasing our talent and technological prowess, there has been complete chaos and failure in trying to deliver a world-class product. That’s where we need to make a difference,” she said.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) cannot start medical schools without a nod from the scam-tainted Medical Council of India (MCI), the law ministry has decided.

The decision comes as a big blow to the premier engineering institutes’ expansion plans. Earlier this week, the law ministry had rejected the HRD ministry’s demand to allow the IITs to launch medical schools without the MCI’s intervention. The decision casts a shadow over a $50 million project signed by IIT-Kharagpur with University of California, San Diego, last year to set up a 750-bed state-of-the-art hospital and research centre at the IIT. The need for MCI approval is now specifically mentioned in amendments to the Institute of Technology Act – which governs the IITs – approved by the law ministry.

The HRD ministry could place the amendments before Cabinet next week and introduce the amendments during the ongoing session of Parliament. “The IITs will seek MCI approval for setting up educational institutions for medical education and for granting degrees in medicine,” the HRD ministry has written in response to the law ministry’s rejection, in the Note for the Cabinet.

The law ministry’s decision – taken after the health ministry opposed the HRD ministry demand – may have graver long-term repercussions for the IITs, sources warned. The amendment – allowing the IITs exemption from MCI approval – “would have given the necessary freedom to innovate and bring changes in the medical and healthcare delivery system”, a source said.

The IITs are interested in cross-stream collaboration with engineering medicine through their medical schools – a challenge that the MCI might not appreciate – is the HRD ministry’s concern.

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, used its ‘rural’ location to justify an illegal and secret quota it kept aside for staff wards for over four decades, twice rejecting calls from within the IIT community to scrap the reservation. The quota was critical to retain teachers who other institutions — including other IITs — were trying to poach, the IIT Kharagpur Board of Governors (BoG) argued as justification.

On monday it was exposed how India’s oldest IIT secretly blocked 25 per cent seats in its popular five-year science programmes for hand-picked nominees, even as others had cleared the IIT Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE).

At least one student beneficiary of this quota is at present a faculty member in the chemistry department at IIT Kharagpur.

The quota was started before the IIT-JEE was born in the mid-1960s and continued till 2005 when it was suspended and then abandoned the following year.

But the illegal quota was challenged internally by critics in 1988, and the IIT decided to phase out the illegal reservation — a decision it backtracked on.

The IIT BoG decided on November 30, 1988 to ask the Institute Senate “to work out the modality for phasing out the existing BoG quota system for admission to 5 year science courses progressively”, meeting minutes show. The Senate consists of administrators and teachers.

But the IIT did not phase out the quota and was again challenged by others win the IIT community in 2003. However, the BoG decided — at its meeting on January 13, 2003 — to continue with the quota.

“IIT Kharagpur, being located in rural surroundings, deprives its faculty and staff of advantages that other IITs offer their employees such as good school and college facilities,” the BoG argued.

The Board said it was “because of this (that) a number of faculty left IIT Kharagpur and joined other institutions”.

The BoG also decided staff wards don’t need to appear for IIT-JEE to benefit from the quota and authorised the Director and Senate to work out modalities for admissions to the quota.

The faculty forum of IIT Kanpur and a senior IIT Kharagpur professor have slammed a blueprint for admissions reforms drafted by Institute directors, exposing deep divides within the premier institutions and pitting teachers against administrators. The rejection of their blueprint by the faculty also leaves the IIT directors sandwiched between criticism from their colleagues and the HRD ministry, which is also uncomfortable with the reform draft.

The IIT Kanpur faculty dismissed the blueprint prepared by a panel, led by the Kharagpur Institute’s Director Damodar Acharya, as unsubstantiated in a resolution passed at a meeting on July 14.

The panel was set up by HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to prepare an alternative to the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) and other entrance tests.

The resolution came on the heels of criticism of Acharya panel’s suggestions by IIT-K computer science professor Rajeev Kumar, who has placed an alternative on his web page.

The panel has suggested replacing the IIT-JEE and other engineering exams with a single National Aptitude Test scrutinising students’ “raw intelligence”. Students will be screened on the basis of their Board marks (70 per cent weightage) and their scores in the NAT (30 per cent), the panel proposed. Institutions like the IITs could take an add-on test for students screened through the NAT before finalising admissions.

But the ministry is opposed to a two-tier mechanism. It will also find it hard to prevent other institutions from creating a similar add-on test.

Kumar in his proposal, has questioned the panel’s argument that scores of students across boards can be normalised to  cover for differences in evaluation levels while calculating eligibility for admissions.

To ensure smooth transition for new students in to campus life, the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) has started an online forum for first-year students. The ‘freshmen forum’ will allow new entrants to post their doubts and queries and get them answered by senior students. The forum, which is an extension of IIT-B’s ‘student mentorship programme’, will come in handy for students even before they actually join the institute.

“All students, who have been allotted a seat at IIT-B, get a notification of their admission. This year along with their acceptance letter, we have sent a letter to all parents informing them about the online forum. The forum will be a platform for freshers to get all their concerns addressed before they join the institute,” said Rahul Srinivasan, coordinator of the student mentorship programme.

According to Srinivasan, who is a final-year student at the IIT-B, the aim of the forum is to ease concerns of first-year students, which range from academic to emotional issues, and also to prepare them mentally to settle down into the IIT environment. “All of us, at some point of time have had similar concerns. So, this platform is extremely useful as the freshers can tap into the experience gained by their seniors,” added Srinivasan.

The query sections in the forum have been divided into several categories – academic, infrastructure (facilities available on/off campus), hostel affairs (rooms, allocation), extra-curricular activities and general doubts.

Each of the queries posted by freshers is answered online by a specific student mentor — a senior student — from IIT-B. “We get several posts related to academics. Students want to know what the rules are for a branch change. Some students don’t like the department allotted to them and are unsure of its future prospects. They want to know if they can opt for the second round of counselling,” said Srinivasan.

And, it’s not just about academics, first-year students are also keen to know about the ‘happening’ places to eat and shop around the campus.“They also want to know about extra-curricular activities on the campus, and ways in which they can get involved with Techfest and Mood Indigo,” said Srinivasan.

According to the new system outlined by the Central Counselling Board (CCB) of AIEEE, students allotted a seat in any round till the first three rounds of counselling will have to take provisional admission. This change practically extinguishes the option that the students so far had, that of moving to a better institute and a branch of their choice even after reporting for admission.

Under the new rules, there is room only for ‘internal sliding’ (movement of position within the institute) that can be availed of, with the option of movement across NITs over. In short, it will leave students trapped in NITs not necessarily of their choice: an irony in an age where there is so much of premium on choice. With results of third round of counselling to come on Sunday, students from all over the country have launched online protests (protestagainstccb.webs.com and entrancecorner.com) demanding a change in the rules so that deserving students get NITs of their choice.

Students have even found a major inconsistency in CCB’s argument that “sliding” will be possible within the institution. “If a student cannot change his institution how will a seat be vacated to upgrade any other student’s branch,” asks one student.

The third flaw being pointed out is that after the fourth round of counselling, not so popular branches in top NITs will still be vacant and these will go to low-ranked students.

Upgradation in the same NIT, students say, can also create a situation of a low-ranker getting a better branch. How? Students explain it through an illustration. Suppose a student with an AIR of 6,500 gets computer engineering in NIT Durgapur and another student with AIR 6,000 gets computer engineering in NIT Allahabad. In case the second student chooses to join any other engineering college like IIT, BITS and others, the vacancy in Allahabad will go to a student within the institute, whatever be his rank, and not to someone with a better rank.

Students feel the flaw can still be rectified. They say there will be a large number of dropout seats after the fourth round of counselling since many students who have got through to other engineering colleges will wait till that round. But the vacancies thus created will not help students who have already taken admission in NITs after the third or fourth round. Therefore, students have demanded open upgradation — from one institute to another. They also want CCB to allow one round of counselling after refunds have been made to those who did not take admission.