Some institutions that “are below IIT Kharagpur are also superseding” the oldest IIT in the country and “this is a cause of concern”, IIT Kharagpur director V.K. Tewari said at the institute’s 71st foundation day programme.
If the institute does not improve its performance, “then the junior, second-generation, third-generation IITs will supersede us”, Tewari said in his speech.
To attract brighter students, India’s oldest IIT on Wednesday introduced the Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar Scholarship, which will cover the tuition and hostel expenses of an IIT Kharagpur student if he or she is among the top 100 on the JEE-Advanced merit list.
Students have to crack the JEE-Advanced to gain entry into any of the IITs.
“This is the first IIT of the IIT system in the country. Now where have we reached? I was just going through our performance. In fact, about five years back, we were at 281 in the QS ranking. And we are 280 now. Our position in the last year or so, I think now we are sixth in the line and we find that some of our people (institutions) who are below us, are also superseding us. This is a cause for concern,” Tewari said.
The London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) released the QS World University Ranking 2022 in June.
Three Indian institutions — IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi and IISc Bangalore — feature among the top 200.
IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur, ranked 255 and 277, respectively, are ahead of IIT Kharagpur.
The Kharagpur institute had ranked fifth under the engineering category in the NIRF, a ranking exercise carried out by the education ministry, in 2020.
Tewari said the institute had to focus more on areas like citation and patent, and attract bright teachers and students to improve its standing.
“Otherwise, other people, other junior IITs, the second-generation, third-generation IITs will supersede us. Therefore, we have to have strategies and methodologies,” Tewari said.
The Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar Scholarship will be rolled out in the 2021-22 academic year and will cover the entire expenses of a student. Apart from the tuition and hostel fees, it will cover miscellaneous costs like relocation and personal expenses.
The scholarship will have an out-of-pocket allowance, leaving the student free to focus on studies, an official of the institute said.
The annual tuition fee is Rs 1 lakh for students whose family’s annual income is above Rs 5 lakh.
In addition, a student has to pay a hostel establishment charge of Rs 15,125, a hostel overhead charge of Rs 12,000 and other charges each semester.
“We are going to help you with each and every penny of your expenditure. We want achievers here,” Tewari said.
In recent years, only a few students among the top 100 on the JEE-Advanced merit list have been opting to study at IIT Kharagpur.
Metro has reported that only three of the top 200 students who had cracked the JEE-Advanced in 2017 had opted for IIT Kharagpur. The situation has not changed much.
The website of the seat allocation authority, which conducts counseling for admission to the IITs, says the ranks for admission to the computer science and engineering programme at IIT Kharagpur last year were in the 180-293 range in the general category. The ranks for the same programme at IIT Bombay last year were between 2 and 66.