IITs and Technical Institutes to Scrap Unpopular Courses, Directs HRD Ministry

Mr. Mahendra Nath Pandey, Minister of HRD (State) informed Rajya Sabha that the HRD Ministry has decided to discard unpopular courses offered at National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other centrally funded technical institutes across the country. Mr. Pandey further said that these institutes could introduce new courses based on the requirement of higher education, market opportunity and employability.

The HRD Minister (State) also indicated that all the centrally funded technical institutes that take part in joint counseling need to review the position of vacant seats in the last three years and take steps to revise the number of seats in various disciplines only after considering employment opportunities, infrastructure, future career prospects and national requirements.

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Earlier, the government had rejected a proposal that enables National Institutes of Technology to convert state quota seats to the general category if they remain vacant after the repeated rounds of counselling. Currently, all NITs reserve 50% seats for the candidates who belong to the home state.

In the year 2016, around 3,000 engineering seats remained vacant across 32 NITs, 23 IITs and other centrally funded technical institutes. There were six rounds of counselling and still many seats remained vacant. Out of 3,000 vacant seats, 73 were from IITs and 1,518 at NITs.

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Most of the students who wish to opt engineering as their career, choose courses like Computer Science Engineering, Electronics or Mechanical Engineering. On the other hand, there is also equal demand for IT in engineering. However, streams like Mining Engineering, Petroleum Engineering and others do not have more takers.