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Any IIT aspirant would find it difficult to be satisfied with an engineering institute that operates within a 2-storey building and that too on the outskirts of the city. However this is the grim reality for the students who are studying in the IIIT Vadodra (IIITV) . The students from the first batch of IITV while recounting their initial days at the campus state that on their arrival at Gandhinagar their orientation was held at the huge auditorium in the vicinity of the college campus. Their happiness and feeling of euphoria knew no bounds when they were greeted by the wide expanse of the auditorium. However that initial feeling was pretty short lived as when they arrived at their real college campus they found that it began and ended within a mile.
Although the institute has received a funding of Rs 16 crore yet it has been able to offer only the most basic teaching facilities to its students over the past three years. The institute has also received assistance from its mentor institute DAIICT regarding faculty and apparatus. IIITV was established on the Public-Private Partnership model just like the other similar institutes. However the students still feel the space crunch in the campus as the existing classrooms can only accommodate half of their batch. There are in total 6 classrooms out of which 2 are large and 4 small. The plight of the students can only be gauged from the fact that 3 batches of students from 2 streams each have to adjust their lecture schedules depending upon the seating space available. Kenneth Tenny, one of the second year students said,” In the last two years, our lectures were scheduled at the convenience of DAIICT professors, and any academic queries were solved by these professors over e-mail. Since most of our faculty is visiting and classrooms are few, a lot of time is spent in adjusting professor convenience and classroom availability. “
A majority of the IIITs that started under the PPP model in 2013 are still operating from the transit campus. In fact for that matter even the newly launched IITs function from a temporary campus in the initial years. But the harsh reality with the IIITV is that in the 3 years of its inception no land has yet been allotted for its permanent campus. On the other hand the MHRD has allotted lands to the other IIITs namely IIIT Guwahati, IIIT Sri City, IIIT Kurnool, IIIT Srirangam, IIIT Kalyani and IIIT Lucknow, as big as 60-70 acres. These institutes have already begun construction and plan to shift to their permanent campus by as early as 2017.
C.P.Joglekar, IIITV registrar said,” In 2013, we barely had 2 classrooms available for the first batch. In the 3 years since then, I have worked with the management towards acquiring more space in the same building.” However as per the present even the washrooms are in poor condition what with the only women’s washroom in the building not even having a lock from the inside.
The institute had only one full time professor and a registrar in the name of faculty some two years back. Although the condition has improved over the years. The institute revamps its facilities with every new batch coming in. Now the institute has 8 experimental laboratories that are basic enough to conduct academic experiments. Mr Joglekar said,” As per the MHRD criteria, IIIT professors need to have a PhD. However, which PhD candidate would want a career without any advanced research facilities?”
Though this might be the reason behind the faculty crunch at the institute but for now the students have lost their patience. The Registrar, however, agrees that there is a long way to go for the institute in order to be at par with the other older IIITs.
