IITs to admit day scholars, allow PhD enrolment after BTech

NEW DELHI: The IITs will open their doors for “non-resident” students, with a goal to increase their number of seats to 100,000 by 2020.

The country’s top tech institutes have around 72,000 students in their undergraduate, postgraduate and doctorate courses, and all of them stay in hostels. But the IIT Council, the highest decision-making body of the institutes, decided on Tuesday to admit day scholars who can study from home or stay in a rented place outside the campus.

Another aim is to put research on the forefront, for which students will be allowed to do a PhD right after BTech, deviating from the practice of permitting only postgraduates to do doctorate programmes. Besides, a prime minister’s fellowship of `60,000 a month for five years will be given to around 1,000 students to do research in IITs.

“IITs are our modern temples. Bright IITians prefer to go abroad to do research because they get fellowships and better facilities,” said human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar, who presided over the meeting.

“We want to provide facilities in IITs so that research could be carried out in India. We want to convert brain drain into brain gain,” Javadekar said.

The plan is to increase the number of seats by 10,000 a year until 2020 by admitting non-resident students. Ideally, there would be an increase of 4,000 seats in undergraduate courses and 6,000 in postgraduate and PhD seats.

The 23 IITs in the country will assess their infrastructure and faculty strength to decide how much more students they can admit without stressing resources.

Officials said a number of students will be allowed to study as day scholars, without hostel accommodation. Such students will have to find accommodation outside the campus, or travel from home if their institute is located in their hometown.