National Institutes of Technology (India)

This article is on the National Institute of Technology in India, for the chain of for-profit colleges in the United States, to go National Institute of Technology (United States).

National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are premier colleges of engineering and technology education in India. They were originally called as Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs). In 2002, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, decided to upgrade, in phases, all 17 Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) as National Institutes of Technology (NITs), on the lines of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). These institutes are rated just next to the IITs in terms of student quality, research and placements. There are currently 19 of them, the latest being NIT, Raipur. The Cabinet, at a meeting presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, approved the proposal to introduce the National Institutes of Technology(NIT) Bill 2006 in parliament to bring 19 such institutions within the ambit of the act. Their locations are deliberately scattered throughout the country with the government norm of an NIT in every major state of India for regional development. The individual NITs after the introduction of the NIT Act will function as an autonomous technical universities and hence draft their own curriculum and functioning policies.

History

During the second five year plan (1956-60) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. To ensure enough supply of trained personnel to meet the demand for these projects, it was determined to start Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), at the rate of one per each major state, which can churn out graduates with good engineering merit. Thus, seventeen RECs were established from 1959 onwards in each of the major states. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. All the 18 institutes now offer degree courses in various branches of engineering and technology, with facilities for postgraduate and doctoral programs. The entire non-recurring expenditure and expenditure for post-graduate courses in the RECs are borne by the central government. As regards in the REC system the entire recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses, the same was shared by the central government and the state government on 50:50 basis. However after becoming NITs the entire funding is managed by the centre now. The decision to establish NITs was prompted by the following reasons:^[1]

To establish a second tier of institutes to provide quality education to a large number of students.
To pacify every state demanding an IIT.
To have a low-cost alternative to IITs.
To upgrade good technical colleges.

Recent Changes

Since 2002, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, have upgraded, in phases, all the 17 Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) as National Institutes of Technology (NITs), on the lines of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) as it was decided that these college have immense potential as proved by the success of their alumni and contributions in the field of technical education. Their annual funding has been increased, they have been provided with more working autonomy and have been granted deemed-to be-university status to award their own degrees which raised the quality value of graduates in the knowledge sector. This was the result of the recommendations of the High Power 1998 Mashelkar Review Committee. With the flow of more funds NITs are expected to take on IITs to become the best technical institutes. Already all NITs have started showing great improvement in terms of Admission Process, Administration Structure, Placements and Research.

National Institutes of Technology Bill 2006

With Indian technology industry booming like never before, the government has decided to upgrade 19 National Institutes of Technology into full-fledged technical universities.A bill will be introduced in the May session of the Parliament which shall enable NITs to become centres of excellence like IITs and help fulfil the need of the country for quality manpower in the field of engineering, science and technology and to provide similar governance, similar fee structure and similar rules in all the NITs in the country.

Once the bill is enacted, the societies governing the NITs will cease to exist and the institutes will be placed directly under the administrative control of the HRD ministry with the boards of governors heading affairs. The chairperson of the board will be appointed by President of India, who will also be Visitor to each institute. The ministry will also have a say in the appointment of the Director and Deputy Director of each institute.

The NITs have been asked to prepare a vision document on what they could do in the next 25 years. Individual institutes will be permitted to start new courses to cater to the needs of the local industry and wind up unpopular conventional courses. Focus will be on nanotechnology and biotechnology. Plans are afoot to start integrated courses in science and technology alonwith dual degree programmes both at undergraduate and postgraduation levels.

NITs have been told to increase the student intake in the next five years, with the number of students being doubled to that of the existing strength. The MHRD Ministry plans to increase the number of research fellowship, with as many as 60 to 70 being granted to each institute to enable students to concentrate on new topics of interest. Existing laboratories and libraries will also be upgraded. The NIT Bill is the second law for technical education institutions after the Indian Institutes of Technology Act of 1961.

Admission Procedure

The admission to undergraduate programs of all NITs is done by the prestigious All India Engineering Entrance Examination popularly known as AIEEE. In addition to the NITs, a host of other well known national level reputed institutes like DCE and NSIT (both in Delhi), IIITs , SPA Delhi and BIT Mesra accept students from this examination. The examination is objective by nature and is conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education, New Delhi popularly known as the CBSE which also conducts the well known CBSE-PMT for admission to MBBS courses in medical institutes all over the country. More than 4 lakh students annually appear for the around 7000 seats in the B.Tech and B.Arch(offered by a selected NITs) courses in all the NITs put together.

The admissions into the postgraduate programmes are made through various other exams, like

Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE)-for admission to M.Tech courses in the various NITs. However these institutes may also conduct a separate individual examination followed by an interview for admission to these courses. It is also planned to introduce dual-degree courses in both science and technology in emerging areas in the forthcoming sessions.
NITs MCA Common Entrance Test(NIMCET)- for admission to MCA courses offered by the CSE department of respective NIT. As of 2005, this national level exam was attempted at by more than 14,000 candidates for the roughly around 400 seats offered by all the institutes put together and is conducted by a participating NIT every year by a policy of rotation.
A common entrance examintion for admission to the MBA and M.Sc courses offered by some of the NITs has been finalised to be conducted from the 2007-2008 academic year.This exam will be on the basis of the highly competetive CAT conducted by the IIMs.
Separate examinations/interviews are conducted by each NIT for admission to their coveted M.Tech(Research) and Ph.D programmes

Education

The National Institutes of Technology receive adequately higher grants as compared to the other engineering colleges except the IITs. This has translated into superior infrastructure and better faculty in the NITs and consequently higher competition among students to gain admissions into the NITs. The reputation of NITs as centres of excellence gained acceptance in industry as well as academic institutions as the standard of education and quality of NIT students was consistently better than most of other colleges in India. This has led to the establishment of a so called brand name for the institutes . Various nationwide educational surveys over the past years rated most of the NITs over other colleges except for the IITs and a select other institutions confirming their eliteness in the field of technical eduction. The various NITs after their upgradation from being a REC function autonomously, sharing only the entrance tests between them. They are soon to be provided with a special status of Institutes of National Importance after the clearance of NIT Bill facilitating the smooth running of NITs virtually free from both regional as well student politics. The autonomy in education meant that NITs can set up their own curricula and hence make it easier for them to adapt rapidly to the changes in educational requirements. The medium of instruction in all NITs is English.

All the course schedules are divided into semesters with evaluation on the basis of the credits system, with proportional weighting of subjects based on their importance. For each semester, the students are graded on a scale of 0 to 10 based on their performance throughout the semester. Each semester's evaluation is done independently and then the weighted average over all semesters is used to evaluate the cumulative grade point average (known as CGPA or CPA). The NITs like the IITs are also planning to start a special academic program known as the Dual Degree. It is an intergrated graduation and postgraduation program that completes in a total of 5 years rather than 6 years in the conventional BTech degree followed by an MTech. The main reason behind starting this program was that NITians generally complete their undergraduate studies from NITs, but either don't do MTech at all or prefer to do it from IITs, IIsc or from a foreign university. In order to encourage them into research work as is done by MTechs, and by their suucces in the IITs this integrated program is planning to be introduced as a part of various new courses in NITs.

Factors behind Success

The NITs are considered fairly successful institutions compared to other engineering colleges in India, behind only the IITs and a select few others according to a number of educational surveys. One of the contributing factors behind the success was their autonomous status as RECs under the university system, and after the introduction of the National Institute of Technology Bill (2006), they are expected to become full fledged centres of excellence like the IITs in specialzed areas of engineering, science and technology. The NIT Act, on lines of the IIT Act, will ensure that the NITs get special privileges. The Bill lays the foundations for them to keep evolving as world-class institutes. The autonomy ensured by the Act will mean that the NITs will be able to implement changes quickly in order to keep up with changing scenario in the academia and the industry in particular and the society in general. Student politics has also been regulated by strictly monitoring the electoral process for the student bodies of these institutes.

Another factor that has contributed to the fresh lease of success of the NITs is the stringent faculty recruitment procedure and their renewed industry collaboration. The procedure for selection of faculty is more stringent compared to most of the other colleges offering similar degrees. Faculty for any post apart from that of lecturers are accepted only if they have a PhD degree and have relevant teaching/industry experience. A lectuer may however join with a master’s degree but is appointed only on a contract basis until he manages to earn a doctorate within a stipulated period of time or else he looses his job. In contrast to this a typical college in India, would employ postgraduate students with or without experience as senior faculty. The NITs after their upgradation have a relatively better interaction with the industry as compared to their REC days.

Student Life

All the IITs provide residential facilities to its students, research scholars and faculty inside their campus. The students live in hostels (sometimes referred to as halls) throughout their stay in the NIT. Most of the students have single accommodation though a sizable number of students have to live in double or triple rooms also. Every hostel has its own common room and provides mess and internet facilities to its boarders.

All the NITs have their Central and in some cases even their Departmental Libraries for the use of their students. In addition to a collection of prescribed books, the libraries also have literary section for fiction and other literary genres. The electronic libraries allow student to access online journals and other periodicals through the AICTE-INDEST consortieum. The NITs also have high-speed LAN and internet connection infrastructure helping students to do their assignments online (wherever applicable) and some even have facilties for video conferencing with the others catching up to these changes quite fast under theWorld Bank funded TEQIP scheme. Technical seminars by experts are organized from time to time in all NITs by faculties and researchers from organizations like IITs, IISc, Foreign Universities and Research Labs.

Students in various NITs have to compulsarily choose between National Cadet Corps (NCC), National Service Scheme (NSS) and National Sports Organization (NSO) in their first years. The choice for later years vary from one NIT to the other. The National Cadet Corps (India) is the Indian military cadet corps. Most NITs encourage student to take up NCC in the first year to instil in them a sense of patriotism and discipline. The NSS is another national organization that strives to reach out to the needy population of the country through its volunteers by organizing camps at regular intervals of time. Both the NCC and NSS hold a camp at the end of the first semester. The NSO is a national level sports organization that strives to improve the quality of sports talent in the country by providing coaching facilities to budding athletes. All the NITs have playgrounds of various sports including Cricket, Football, Hockey, Volleyball, Lawn Tennis, Badminton, Athletics, and Swimming pools(in a few) for aquatic events. Usually the hostels also have their own mini sports grounds.

All the NITs have their own students' council elected through an election among the students. The students are represented in the NIT Senate and other forums through the Vice President of the Student's Council, elected through the elections. The election process in IITs is quite unlike the other colleges. Formation or affiliation to political parties is strongly discouraged. Poll graffiti, rallies and processions are also not allowed. Use of loudspeakers for election purposes is also banned.

Inter NIT Sports Meet and Youth Festivals

All the NITs compete in a variety of sports held under the purview of the Annual Inter NIT Sports Meet and in a variety of Inter-University Sports Meets. The competition is organized every year individually for a particular or a group of sports by one of the twenty NITs by a policy of rotation. The award consists of a running shield that is passed over to the winning NIT every year. Separate events for boys and girls are organized .

Each of the NITs also conduct a separate annual technical/management and cultural festival that are able to attract a lot of students from the nearby colleges.The main motivating factor for the conduct of these festivals has always been the “Share and Learn” funda of the NITs apart from the big cash prizes for the various events namely the ones involving robotics, programming and paper and model presentation.The celebrity nights during the Cultural festivals have celebs of both national and international fame performing live within the institute campus to a large crowd both from within and outside the institute. These festivals are organized by a student group within each institute, and typically last 3 to 4 days. All the money required for the organization of these events are sourced from sponsors of the event, and if required the remainder from the students of the institute. The institute remains closed during these festivals to allow better participation of the students.

Reservation Policy

NITs have been offering reservation for Depressed Classes (Backward Classes) of society. As per the rules of admission to NITs, there exists a reservation of 15% for Scheduled Castes and 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes.No separate reservation exists for Other Backward Classes (OBCs). However, unlike the IITs currently there are no Preparatory Courses for students coming from reservations where the students of the respective NIT have to undertake a exclusive course in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics for an year and are allowed to join the regular course only after they clear their end semster examinations.However in the year 2005, based on the recommendations of an independent panel, the central government led by Congress (I) proposed to implement quota system for Scheduled caste, Schedule tribe minority communities (prominently Muslims) as well as OBCs ( irresepective of their heriditary status and wealth) in IITs, IIMs, NITs , Central Universities and all other secondary educational institutions(for both students and faculty). It was strongly opposed by the opposition led by BJP as "dangerous and divisive".The UPA Government has promised to implement this in 2006 after assembly elections. This would reduce the seats for the general section of the Population to only 50.5%. Also, the primary education provided by the Government to the economically poor is highly inadequate, and this negligence by the Government is the root cause of the problem.

Future

Future looks much brighter than past for NITs.NITs are expected to gain more autonomous powers after the NIT Bill is passed which is expected to be implemented from 2006 academic year. NITs need to concentrate on following things to build a stronger brand name for themselves.

Regular updation of curriculum which provides flexible options for students.
Most of the NITs need to maintain more professional websites which should be updated regularly and which will provide clear information about Institute.
Building a strong network among all NITs and creating NIT family.
Instaed of raising voices for IIT status NITs need to create their own brand which can surpass IIT brand.
NITs are not expected to participate in meaningless,biased ranking surveys which always present a wrong picture.
NITs need to ensure that they offer one of the best UG(Under Graduation)programmes in engineering and even strengthen up their PG(Post graduation)programmes to that of world standards.
Strenghthen up the NIT-IIT network to facilitate faculty exchange and knowledge transfer.
Students should be more choosy while picking up jobs in placement,and should not join mundane regular IT Services jobs.Students should take up more challenging and innovative jobs which are worthy to their degree,Intellectual abilities.
Encouraging entrepreneurs by creating incubation centres and starting inhouse developments and commercialising student innovations.
For IP (Intellectual property)protection there should be seperate department in every Institute to spread and enhance the awareness about IPs among students,Faculty.
Starting new courses which really serve the purpose of industry,academy like disaster management,Environmental sciences etc and stressing on VLSI,Signal Processing and regularly conducting Seminars,Work shops to educate Professionals,Students.
Building a common strong global NIT network which should have say in Institute development programmes and Alumni associations are expected to be more active.
Building a platform where better interaction with the Industry is possible to attract projects from industry and inturn Institute can accommodate students internships,Placements.

List of National Institutes of Technology

Notable alumni

A lot of individual NIT Alumni Associations are active in India and abroad. The NITians are known to be very attached to their alma mater and have contributed in the form of donations to their institute. Plans are also on the anvil to start a PAN-NIT association on the lines of the PAN-IIT network. Despite the great achievements by NITians the NIT brand is somewhat ignored by IIT obsessed media in India most of the times.But with newly found NIT status NITs are no longer expected to keep low profile and by 2010 it is expected to sit equally with IIT brand.This is already evident that all NITs chalked out their vision plans and they are expected to make NIT brand more strong.

Uniqueness

Currently, the student body in any NIT constitutes 50% from the home state and 50% from the rest of India for the undergraduate courses. So, any NIT will have students coming from every nook and corner of the extremely diversified Indian nation with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, dress, language and food habits, making each one of them a Little India in true sense. This is probably the single most important feature of these technology schools, which helps to broaden the horizons of students at the young age.This unique fact makes NIT graduates Most Wannable by head hunters of big Corporations who not only looks for aptitude but also attitude.As the NIT structure attracts best students from all corners of the country the Institute provides perfect platform for Young Engineers to excel not only technically but also gives great opportunity to develop interpersonal skills,leadership and entrepreneur qualities.

References

^ The making of new IITs

External links

[1] The making of new IITs

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