IITs To Increase 5% Total Student Intake From 2017

From the next academic session, the Indian Institutes of Technology will increase their total student intake by 5%. In a recent meeting of Joint Admission Board, the decision to increase the number of students from 10,572 in the current academic session to 11,000 seats in the next year was made. The JAB is the highest decision-making body of IIT JEE Advanced and the meeting was attended by all the chairpersons of all the 23 IITs.

The increase in 528 seats was accepted by all the 23 IITs, however, several of the older institutions were apprehenisve as they would not be able to immediately increase the intake with their current infrastructure.

All the centrally funded techincal and management institutions have also agreed upon to admit 10% more foreign students additional to the present total strength.

"We are in no position to admit extra students despite the government wanting each IIT to increase intake," said a senior IIT-Kharagpur official.

"Even if we build accommodation, classrooms and other infrastructure from government funding, it takes many years to build world-class laboratories which offer state-of-the-art facilities," the official said.

However, in a recent meeting, Project Vishwajeet was taken up by the HRD Ministry, where the mission of this project is to fast forward 7 IITs in Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras, Roorkee and Guwahait into top global academic rankings. [What are steps taken by the HRD Ministry as part of Project Vishwajeet? Read here the complete story.]