IITs Contemplating Allowing Off-campus Students

In order to increase the student strength of IITs to 1 lakh till 2020, HRD Ministry has proposed to wave off the condition of students staying in hostels. The proposition will be considered by the IIT council on August 23, 2016, and a decision will be made whether to allow off-campus students or not.

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Course strength of all levels including B.Tech, M.Tech and research will be increased. The 23 IITs will have a strength of over 72,000 students. The plan is to increase 4,000 seats in B.Tech as compared to the 10,000 seats that are currently present. This increment will be applicable to all IITs uniformly.

As per sources, the strength has not yet been increased as there is a shortage of hostel facilities in IITs. Hostels that were supposed to be expanded for the OBC category students, introduced in 2009 have not been incorporated yet.

The institutes plan to solve this problem by arranging hostels and residential areas outside the campus. This problem can be solved if the rule of compulsory hostel stay is removed so that local students can study from home. The teaching facilities are adaptable to the increase in number.

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The idea to introduce a National Aptitude Test that will help shortlist candidates for single entrance test for admission to IITs, NITs, etc. was earlier shelved by the IITs. The plan will be discussed again. The idea was discarded by the MHRD as ministry's department of school stated that rural students will be at a disadvantage in tests like National Aptitude Test.

Project `Vishwajeet' is another topic of discussion that the IITs will be addressing. The project aims to get the top IITs, namely, IIT – Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Madras, Kharagpur, Guwahati and Roorkee into the top 100 global universities by 2018 and top 50 universities by 2020.