Is IIT losing its brand value?

Is IIT losing its brand value?:

Is IIT losing its brand value?

Posted Date :08/08/2013

With the government increasing the number of seats and institutes, it seems that the IITs are losing their brand value. Recently the director of Super 30 Anand Kumar opined that there are about 700 seats which have found no takers.  He suggested that the focus should be on improving the infrastructure and good faculty. Super 30 targets students from poor families who cannot fund their education.  This year about 27 of the 30 candidates from the coaching centre cracked the highly competitive Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) this year. This year two exams, the joint entrance examination (JEE) "main" followed by the JEE "advanced was conducted. Only top 150,000 candidates (including all categories) from the JEE "main"  qualified to appear for  the JEE "advanced" examination. Source:Indian Colleges

In defence of the new engineering admission process

In defence of the new engineering admission process:



The JEE 2013 results have occasioned many stories about students suffering as a result of the new entrance system. But we should not lose sight of the big picture and why it was important to reform the old admission process.

First, let's remember what the previous system meant for students and parents. At a personal level, my first realisation of the devaluation of school education came more than a decade ago when my son asked me if he could stop attending school classes and instead concentrate on coaching classes for the IIT-JEE exam.

The situation since then has only worsened. In many states it is a common practice for parents to wean their children from schools as early as in class VII to put them onto the coaching assembly line. Seamless tie-ups between coaching outfits and schools tackle mundane issues like attendance. All this appears worthwhile because entry into IITs is seen as a fortune-turner for the family, a dream helped along by flashy headlines about pay packets offered to graduates. But this middle-class dream comes at a huge cost to students and society at large.

Traditionally, most of the boys and girls who crack JEE lack adaptability and depth of knowledge. Many of them may not have seen a lab, nor attended any humanities or language classes or participated in sports. Further, with expensive coaching classes becoming almost a necessity, the decks get really loaded against those who can't afford such classes - like those from rural areas and girls (who are often not considered worth the extra expense of coaching classes).

A recent Assocham survey points out that a majority of middle-class parents have been spending one-third of their monthly income on private tuitions and coaching classes! Further, the size of India's private coaching industry is likely to touch Rs 2.39 lakh crore annually by 2015, which is more than double the Plan allocation for higher education for the whole of the 12th five-year Plan!

Alarm bells about the ineffectiveness of the previous admission system were first raised by the IITs themselves. IIT Madras, for example, underlined a poor connect between the performance of students in the IITs and their rank in the JEE, as compared to a positive correlation with the performance of students in the school boards. Not really a case of "Don't fix it if it ain't broke." 

Source:Times of India 

Nod given to IIT-H project with Japan

Nod given to IIT-H project with Japan:

It is expected that the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad shall be getting a huge push regarding research facilities in the next few years as the cabinet committee on economic affairs has at last approved a partnership project along with the Japanese Government last week.

It is likely that there should be value addition through discussions between academics and experts from industry and teachers and students of Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad.

The path for this collaboration was paved when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had visited Japan earlier in 2013.

As a result of the project, there would be various basic infrastructure facilitiesand sprucing up the institute in the years to come.

It is also believed that due to the project there shall be increased cooperation betweenIndia and Japan, which ofcourse, increases the importance of the project.

Source:Indian Colleges

CA results 2013 declared: Mumbai student tops exam

CA results 2013 declared: Mumbai student tops exam:



The results of the CA intermediary exam results 2013 have been declared. Sakshi Sanjay Gupta from Mumbai has topped the exam.

Sakshi has topped the exam with a score of 81.14%.

Himanshu Nemichand Agrawal from Surat and K N V V Upendra from Vuyyuru  shared the second position with a score of  80.71%.

Ronak Bhaphna of Vadodara secured 79.86% in the test to come third.

Approximately 1.24 lakh candidates appeared for the Group 1 exam.

Only 19.44% cleared it. The pass rate in the Group 2 test stood at 14.83%.  About 1.12 lakh students appeared for the Group 2 test.

Source:Indian Colleges

CM wants JEE anomalies set right

CM wants JEE anomalies set right:

CM wants JEE anomalies set right

Posted Date :01/08/2013

HYDERABAD: Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Tuesday urged Union HRD minister M Pallam Raju to help students from Andhra Pradesh who appeared for JEE-2013 by giving directions to his ministry to compute the 20 percentile score of all candidates who appeared in the board examination in all subjects, irrespective of the stream. In a letter to the Union minister, the chief minister pleaded for review of the entire gamut of issues pertaining to the present admission procedure to engineering colleges including the suggestion for abolition of weightage to class XII marks and to select students based on all India competitive exam.  The CM said the procedure should be fair, transparent and rational and should not give room for any kind of doubt or misgivings among candidates. He said the revised pattern of JEE, 2013, conducted by CBSE, for admissions to engineering colleges is causing considerable heartburn among students in Andhra Pradesh. Giving examples, the CM pointed that 40% weightage being given to marks secured by students in class XIIth for NIT admission is giving rise to anomalous situations. "For instance, two students from Andhra Pradesh stood 1st and 2nd in the country in the JEE (Main). However, after according the 40% weightage, they did not figure even in the list of top 300 selected candidates," the CM pointed. The chief minister said that whatever be the merits of the normalization policy, it's neither rational nor fair if a student scoring more marks in both the class XIIth exams and the JEE (Main), awarded a lower rank than those who get less marks in both. Similarly, the CM pointed out that in the IIT entrance examination, the top 20 percentile of the XIIth class examination at 91.89 per cent for Andhra Pradesh is the highest in the country, while the lowest is as low as 56.2 per cent. "As a result, many students from AP who cleared the JEE (Advanced) and got good ranks have not become eligible to join the IITs, as they obtained less than 91.89 per cent marks in the class XIIth examination," CM said and added that this is highly discriminatory. Source:Times of India

IIT Bhubaneswar yet to take a 'concrete' shape

IIT Bhubaneswar yet to take a 'concrete' shape:



BHUBANESWAR: Inordinate delay in construction of its permanent campus, vacant seats and shortage of faculty members has reduced IITBhubaneswar (IITBBS) to just another engineering college. Institute director MadhusudanChakraborty, however, asserted that the city IIT is on the right track to meet the mandate for which it was created.

Though IITBBS was the first among the eight new IITs to start functioning and got 518 acre (of the total over 900 acre) in February 2009, the construction work is still in its initial stages. A visit to the campus site at Arugul village, on the outskirts of the city, reveals only some internal roads and an 800-seat hostel building are under construction. Only 50% of the work on the boundary wall, which started in March 2009, is complete. National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), whose construction was started alongside that of IITBBS in 2008, is nearing completion at Jatni.

 Sources said the Union ministry of human resources development (MHRD) had approved construction of a building spread over 2,21,000 square metres, but the institute has obtained approval of Bhubaneswar Development Authority for 1,27,000 square metres. The 256th report of the Department Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development of Rajya Sabha, earlier this year, described the progress in construction of IITBBS, along with IIT-Mandi, as "very discouraging".

Twelve out of 160 BTech seats were lying vacant after the first-round of counselling, though institute sources said the same were later filled up. According to data presented by the Union government in the Rajya Sabha on March 22, some seats remained vacant in the institute most of the years.

While there were no takers for seven seats in 2012, eight remained vacant in 2011. Similarly, 11 seats remained unoccupied in 2009. All seats were exhausted in 2010. The total number of seats was 120 all these years, which was increased to 160 this year.

IITBBS sources said there are around 75 teachers against the sanctioned faculty strength of 90. The maximum vacancies are at the middle level (associate professors).

The institute director defended the 'perceived' shortcomings and said IITBBS will strengthen the brand IIT with its very good faculty and interdisciplinary approach of education. "Some seats going vacant don't in any way indicate that demand for IIT has gone down. Some of the very bright students qualify most of pre-admission entrance examinations. A student qualifying for IIT may choose a course in medicine or study abroad or a stream of choice in an NIT. Seat allotted to him is bound to go vacant in the first round of counselling. Only 10,000 students were picked for IIT admission from among 12 lakh who took the JEE (main)," Chakraborty said.

On faculty shortage, Chakraborty said it is a global problem. "Because of comparatively low salary earlier, not too many bright students opted for teaching as a career leading to the current phase of vacuum. The trend is, however, changing," he said.

On slow pace of campus work, he said since the project size is huge, the planning process was bound to take time. "Tender would soon be floated for construction of the administrative building and various schools," he said. IIT construction should not be compared with NISER as the department of atomic energy, governing NISER, has its own construction wing to oversee the building work and its size is much smaller.

Source:Times of India 

IIT JEE:No takers for 217 IIT seats

IIT JEE:No takers for 217 IIT seats:



KOLKATA: IIT may no longer be the last word in tech education. The exalted institute is left with 217 vacant seats even after three rounds of counselling. since they were not lapped up by undergraduate students.

The counselling process came to an end at 16 IITs across the country recently and they have been forced to contend with these vacancies despite their best efforts to fill up the seats.

 And this, despite three rounds of counselling that the IITs have done in their bid to fill up as many seats as possible.

Till a couple of years back, the IITs would hold only one round of counselling since they thought it to be beneath their dignity to keep counselling for such premium seats open for too long. But times have changed. With the number of IITs going up to 16 and that of the seats to 10,000, from 4000 in 2006, the entire IIT undergraduate pedagogy has changed.

While the admission chairpersons at the IITs say that the number of vacant seats has been far less compared to last year, the IIT faculty at the older institutes like Kharagpur, Delhi, Powai and Madras rue the fact that there has been a 'watering down' of IIT education with the Union ministry of human resources development deciding to open the new IITs. Last year the number of vacant seats was 322, while in 2011 a whopping 757 seats remained vacant.

"As the number of IIT seats increased, the post counselling vacant seats became an issue. Till a few years back, we used to have just one counselling but since a large number of seats remained vacant, the MHRD directed us to do three rounds of counselling so that the number of vacancies reduce. And it has worked. This year we only have a little over 200 vacant seats," explained H C Gupta, IIT JEE chairman at IIT Delhi, which organized the entrance exam this year.

The streams where most of these vacancies exist are, mining, metallurgy, architecture, geophysics, chemical engineering and tech courses related to bio-sciences.

"No matter how many rounds of counselling take place, these vacancies are hard to fill would not have been filled up because these subjects are not being preferred by students these days since jobs in these fields are drying up," Gupta explained.

The IITs have a total 9885 seats, of which 9678 could be filled up at the end of three rounds of counselling.

While the rest of the IITs will be able to reveal their individual vacancies on Wednesday evening, at IIT Kharagpur, 1308 of 1341 seats could be filledgot taken. Last year at IIT Kgp, 48 seats remained vacant at the end of the third round of counselling, confirmed the vice chairman of IIT JEE here, M K Panigrahi.

The IITJEE chairpersons of all the 16 IITs will meet in Delhi on Wednesday to compare their final tallies and close the admission process for this year.

From an infallible brand like IIT, this might sound unbelievable. The exalted institutes of tech teaching have 217 seats that have gone abegging because they were not taken by undergraduate students.
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Source:Indiatimes