IITs to Mentor Other Engineering Colleges in India
In the recent IIT Council meeting it was decided that the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will be mentoring five engineering colleges each in order to improve the quality of education in those colleges. The project is expected to begin in the next three months.
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) council is planning to give the responsibility of training five local engineering colleges each to all the 23 IIT Colleges in India. The only point of concern which the IIT council has it that the third generation IITs which commenced operations a few years ago are still struggling to cope up with the old IITs with respect to infrastructure, teachers & mentors.
The prime reason behind this initiative will be to cater to the problem of admission downfall in the undergraduate engineering colleges following which a large number of colleges are being forced to shut down. With this idea, the plan is to give topmost priority to education quality and ultimately increase the standard and quality of engineering education in the country.
During the 52nd meeting of IIT Council which was held on 21st August 2018, it was decided that all the 23 IITs will be mentoring at least 5 local colleges in their vicinity in order to improve the quality of education. This initiative will be a part of the Quality Improvement Program (QIP) of the IITs which will encourage and support joint student activities, open lectures, research projects and also assist in increasing the number of Ph.D. faculty members in the local colleges.
Mr. Pradeep Mathur, director of IIT Indore said that the IITs are already ahead of the other engineering colleges in the country in terms of infrastructure, research labs and quality of the faculty. So, now the focus will shift to enhance the teaching techniques and sharing of resources at these IITs.
According to reports, the IITs will have to be very careful while selecting the colleges. Further, they will be allowed to mentor more than 5 colleges depending on the eagerness of the respective institute to improve their education quality. The colleges will be selected on the basis of their geographical proximity.
The first batch of mentoring program will commence in the next three months, as the need to have a proper mechanism and to decode the parameters of selections is necessary, said V Ramgopal Rao, director of IIT Delhi.
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He also said that some of the third generation IITs still lack the proper labs and mechanism while some of them can rely on the experienced faculty members that were recruited recently.
The third generation IITs like IIT Goa, IIT Bhilai and IIT Jammu are still trying to cope up with the old IITs.
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Mr. BK Mishra, director of IIT Goa said that the institute might lack the same level of infrastructure compared to the old ones, but the mentoring program will be more about building the capacity of other colleges. The institute further assured that they will be able to deliver significantly with the help of the excellent faculty and aid in raising the standards of overall academic level of other colleges.