Indian Government to open five new IITs and few more IIMs
The next academic session will see five new IITs in full function. The IITs will come us in Chattisgarh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Jammu.
From the Economic Times
“We have already written to the state to identify two sites before the site selection committee of the Ministry visits the states and submits the reports.
“However, we plan to start the new IITs from temporary campuses from the next academic session as has been the case with the earlier IITs,” officials said.
The new IITs were announced by the Narendra Modi government in the Budget to fulfil one of its promises of providing an IIT in each state in the country. So far 16 IITs are functioning across the country.
Media is bursting with discussion whether this is a step in right direction. While one view is that it takes years to build a fine institution – IITs and IIMs built in hurry could compromise the quality of these institutes.
The other criticism is that the government should first focus on building quality of Primary and High Schools because education first starts in these schools.
Plus, one other view is IITs and IIMs are good because they are so few in number and it is extremely difficult to get admissions into these institution. So, isn’t the whole purpose defeated, if every state had an IIT?
Change.org has a petition by IITians, requesting the government to improve the research and other things in the existing IITs rather than focusing on opening more branches. The eight new IITs that were opened since 2009 are still struggling. Some departments still don’t have faculty members , research facility is non-existent. Student-morale is down .
The existing 16 IITs have 10,500 students studying . From the next academic year another 500 seats is estimated to increase with the opening of 5 more new IIT.