Pressure on IITs to improve global rank

New Delhi : The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has asked the Indian Institute of Technologies to come with an action plan to improve the global ranking. The government has been concerned with few Indian academic institutions finding a place in the global lists.

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank chaired the 53rd meeting of the Council of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) at IIT-Delhi on Friday. In the meeting, he asked the institutions to work on the research excellence and with that give their international ranking a boost.

For promoting IITs as global education destinations, foreign students would be encouraged to appear in the JEE Advanced examinations.

Apart from this a scholarship program will also be launched for the students to increase interest in IITs. The process of recruiting foreign faculty would be continued by liberalising the current regulatory processes.

Each IIT will identify their thrust areas for specialisation and communicate the same to the MHRD within a month. In these areas, they have to set up nation-best research facilities.

The Council decided that academically weak students, who are not able to secure the required credits for promotion to the next semester may be allowed an exit option with a degree programme after second semester, rather than being forced out of the programme. Individual IITs will decide modalities for this.

In order to ensure that students passing out from IITs do not face any difficulty in foreign countries with regard to their degrees not being accredited by the designated authority, the Council decided that external peer review of IITs will be done by an External Review Committee.

The living standard with better hostels will enhanced in the coming days.