Academically Weak Students Will Be Allowed To Leave IIT After Second Semester

New Delhi: IIT students who are academically weak and unable to cope with the syllabus, will be allowed to exit the course after the second semester itself with a degree certificate.

The IIT Council, which met here on Friday under the chairmanship of HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, cleared a proposal in this regard.

Individual IITs will decide the modalities for the exit scheme, said a statement issued after the meeting. The students can be given a B.Sc degree on exit.

At present, students enrolled in undergraduate programmes across all IITs are awarded a B.Tech degree after completing eight semesters or four years. However, students with weak grades drop out midway.

The council also cleared a proposal for the continuation of the weaker section scholarships for slow-paced students for one additional year beyond the regular term of four years.

One of the other major decisions taken by the IIT Council was a uniform fee structure for M.Tech programmes in all the IITs and bringing them on par with the B.Tech programme. Institutes were encouraged to move towards sponsored students and sponsored programmes as per industry requirement.

Other key decisions:

Every IIT will work on improving its research excellence and through that, its national and international rankings. For this, each IIT will come up with its action plan.

For promoting IITs as global education destinations, foreign students – including Overseas Citizenship of India cardholders with foreign passport and have studied abroad – would be provided direct entry to appear in the JEE Advanced examinations.

IITs would prepare a scheme for providing scholarships for bright foreign students to study in IITs. They would also explore the possibility of offering online programmes to students both in India and abroad.

The process of recruiting foreign faculty would be continued by liberalising the current regulatory processes.

To promote excellence in the IITs, all new appointments would be through the tenure track system, under which IITs will have more flexibility in recruitment without insisting for the necessary three years post-PhD experience.

The performance of such faculty members will be reviewed by an Internal Review Committee after three years and by an External Review Committee after the fifth year based on which the decision for their retention or promotion to the next higher grade will be decided.

It was also decided that the first and second generation IITs will not engage faculty members from third-generation IITs before they complete a minimum of two years.

To ensure that students graduating from IITs do not face any difficulty in foreign countries with regard to their degrees not being accredited by the designated authority, the Council decided that an external peer review of IITs will be done by an External Review Committee in the format prescribed by the NBA. Based on the review by the Committee, accreditation will be given by NBA.

Each IIT will identify its thrust areas for specialisation and communicate the same to MHRD within a month. In these areas, they have to set up nation-best research facilities.