KIIT-Bhubaneswar Aims At Five-Fold Increase In Intake Of Foreign Students

Bhubaneswar: KIIT University, which has been accorded the Institute of Eminence (IoE) status, is looking at leveraging its position by raising the intake of foreign students by five-times and infuse more resources towards R&D and innovation.

The IoE tag will not only give KIIT academic and financial autonomy to transform it into an institute of international repute but will also provide it with the freedom to recruit faculty from abroad and enter into collaboration with the foreign higher educational institutions without government approval.

“As of now, we have 750 foreign students on our campus. But we are targetting a strength of 4000 in the coming years. The aim is to get more students from Europe and the continent of America. The IoE status will help us to achieve our objectives,” KIIT founder Achyuta Samanta told reporters here. The overall student strength at present stands at 30,000.

Samanta said this while addressing the media to announce the Letter of Intent sent by the HRD Ministry on September 4 about the IoE tag. He hailed it as a big achievement, not only for the institute but for the entire state of Odisha. KIIT is the only Odisha-based institute and among the 10 private universities in the country to get the IoE tag.

The UGC had on August 2, finalised a list of 10 public and as many private institutes for the IoE status. The objectives of the scheme, among others, are:

• To help IoE-rated institutes in providing higher education leading to excellence and innovation in branches of knowledge that are deemed fit at the post-graduate, graduate and research degree levels and award degrees, diplomas and other academic distinctions.
• To be rated internationally for teaching and research among the top 100 institutes in the world over time.

Samanta said enhanced resources will be earmarked for R&D activities in keeping with the IoE norms. The progress made by IoE institutes would be reviewed every two-three years by the Centre. “We are hopeful that in the next few years, we would be among the top 500 universities globally”.

He thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for conceptualising the IoE scheme and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for expressing faith and trust in KIIT with the IoE tag.

“KIIT is just 22 years old as an institution for professional education and 15 years old as a University. It was founded in 1992-93 as a vocational training centre in a rented premises with a seed capital of only Rs 5000. Despite being a very young university, it has secured an impressive position in various global university rankings.

“KIIT has been giving importance to quality education, research and development since its inception. As a result, it became possible for KIIT to achieve this success. It is a matter of pride not only for the students, staff, faculty and guardians of KIIT Deemed to be University but also for Odisha,” Samanta said.