Couldn't clear IIT? You may get a chance

If you failed to get into an IIT, you may soon have a chance to get an IIT equivalent degree through a virtual university, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 28, 2007, 21:48:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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If you failed to get into an IIT, you may soon have a chance to get an IIT equivalent degree through a virtual university if you have appeared for IIT Joint Entrance Examination (JEE).

The HRD Ministry is working on proposal to put in place India’s first virtual IIT Technical University, where students who have appeared in JEE and have taken admission in engineering colleges, can opt for this course along with the regular engineering course. “Having two engineering degrees is not prohibited under law,” a ministry official said.

The virtual university, the HRD ministry officials say will improve the employability of the engineering graduates, which, according to a NASSCOM report, is very low about 20 per cent of the four lakh engineering graduates. “We want to improve the knowledge level of non-IIT engineering students to that of IIT students,” an official explained.

The ministry with the help of IITs has got a concept note prepared, which says that IIT B.Tech and M.Tech courses should be made available on the internet and the examination should also be conducted through the ministry’s portal – Sakshat.

Former IIT professors would deliver online lectures on the IIT courses. Then, the students would do experiments in the labs with the help of the college faculty. The students, who take admission, will be required to appear for similar examination as the one for IIT students and they would be graded in the pattern similar to the one followed by IITs.

However, the students will get more time to clear the examination and once that is done, they would be awarded with a degree of IIT virtual university, the official said.

To ensure that he virtual university can deliver results, the government wants that only those who have appeared for IIT-JEE examination and students in M.Tech courses should be admitted. Later on when the virtual university gets established, all engineering students, irrespective of whether they are have appeared JEE or not, can be allowed admission, he added.

But, putting the university in place will take some time, the ministry officials said. “We will have to get financial approval and after that the method of course delivery of IIT level and monitoring of students’ performance will have to be prepared,” an official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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