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IITs will offer free coaching for JEE students

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will offer free tuitions to students across India to help them crack the joint entrance examination (JEE) for admission to the elite engineering schools—a test billed as one that only the best and brightest can crack.

The IITs aren’t saying so, but the move will potentially hurt India’s multi-billion-dollar coaching industry, a large portion of whose intake is made up of IIT aspirants.

Beginning in January, the IITs will provide tuitions through dedicated direct-to-home TV channels and the Internet to students of Classes XI and XII aspiring to join the institutes.

“We know what kind of conceptual understanding is lacking in a sizable portion of aspirants. Through our coaching we shall clear those and make them IIT-ready,” said V. Ramgopal Rao, director of IIT-Delhi.

Tuitions for the JEE will be offered in physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will prescribe the problems that students would have to solve, Rao said.

“We are starting from January 2017, which will give students ample time (for over four months) to prepare for JEE,” he added.

IIT-Delhi is in charge of the project, which is being implemented by all the older IITs (Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Chennai, Kharagpur and Guwahati). Some Kendriya Vidyalaya teachers have also been enlisted in the exercise.

Rao said the human resource development ministry is supporting the exercise, which would be interactive, helping students ask questions and seek clarifications.

Professors will record at least 200 hours of lectures in each subject. For regular problem-solving exercises, a key component of the JEE preparation, IIT students will chip in as teaching assistants for free.

Coaching schools have been accused of preparing students for the entrance test without making sure their understanding of fundamental concepts is clear. Earlier this year, the coaching industry came under the scanner after Kota in Rajasthan, seen as the biggest coaching hub in India, witnessed nearly a dozen students commit suicide under pressure to perform.

The offer of free tuitions is expected to attract an encouraging response from IIT aspirants, around 1.2 million of whom appear for the JEE main stage every year. Only 150,000 are short-listed for the JEE advanced stage for selection to the IITs. India has 23 IITs which admit around 10,000 students every year at the B-Tech level.

IIT KHARAGPUR celebrates an eco-friendly, pollution less and smokeless Diwali.

Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated all over India in different ways and with different rituals but with the same essence. It represents the victory of good over evil and of light over darkness. But somehow, in our enthusiasm to beat the darkness, we tend to submit ourselves to fireworks and it's toxic smoke every Diwali.
However, IIT Kharagpur has taken a stand to celebrate an eco-friendly and pollution-less Diwali. Illumination is a cultural festival that is organised by IIT Kharagpur, where students join forces to light up the entire campus.
Illumination has been celebrated for decades now and every year the students build panels and make rangolis and light them up with thousands of diyas. Chandan Karwat, who has been photographing Illumination tells HuffPost India, "IIT Kharagpur is spread over some 2200 acres has around 10,000 students. All these students reside in our residence halls. And every year students of these 21 halls compete to decorate the campus. The preparations start a month before Diwali. Everything is done by students, no labour or no help is involved."
Karwat says that the panels or chatais erected reach upto 20-25 ft high. Last year, one of the chatais was 32 ft. And not only the panels, students make rangolis as well. One of the rangolis last year was included in Ripley's Believe It Or Not because it would appear to be of different designs under differently-tinted lights.
Karwat mentions, "Diwali has become a festival of smoke instead of light. So, to regain our old tradition IIT Kharagpur is encouraging a smokeless Diwali. During Illumination, lights are put off for 2 to 3 hours and only diyas light up the campus." He also adds that since every hall purchases around 40,000 diyas, they are also helping the diya-making industry.

Here are some pictures available which are celebrated in previous years 

IIT-KHARAGPUR Developes tool to prevent train collision

Train journeys could soon be safer as scientists of IIT Kharagpur have successfully tested a new tool for electronic railway interlocking system which prevents trains from colliding into each other. The tool suite is developed by the Computer Science and Engineering Department of the institute in collaboration with Research, Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) and Service Improvement Group (SIG) of the Indian Railways.

Prof Pallab Dasgupta, lead researcher of the project, said since errors in the application logic of interlocking systems
may have catastrophic consequences, this development has potential to minimise the chance of such errors. “In the proposed approach, the yard layout is used as a reference for automatically generating a list of safety properties, which are then proven on the application logic using back-end model checking tools. The generation of the formal properties is specifically tailored to the combination of relays used in that yard,” he said.

The tool has already been successfully tested in several railway yards, Dasgupta claimed. The Indian Institute of Technology researchers said this project has the potential to be further extended to study and develop optimum traffic operation plans, alternative plans for emergencies.

The Indian Railways, through RDSO, has awarded 12 research projects to IIT Kharagpur’s Centre for Railway Research in the area of analysis and design of rolling stock, infrastructure, operations and maintenance. Several of the products and technologies are being field tested at various facilities of Indian Railways apart from lab testing at IIT Kharagpur.

The next step would be to further develop the products and technologies with an industrial partner for production, the experts said. Explaining the technology, Dasgupta said they have leveraged analytical tools used for verification of VLSI (very large scale integration) circuits to develop formal verification logic for railway interlocking systems. Railway interlocking is a critical signalling system that prevents trains from conflicting movements by only allowing one train to take a particular route which has been locked for it.

'IIT-Hyderabad, the First to Offer 3D Printing Tech Course'

After functioning from a small campus for a few years, the newly-established Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H)has recently shifted to a highly sophisticated new campus at Kandi Village in Medak district. Though established just a few years ago, it is doing well on industry-academic collaboration. It was also the first institute in India to introduce a course in additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology. IIT-Hyderabad director UB Desai, in an exclusive interview with Express, shared his views on the recent trend in academic-industrial collaboration and the changing picture of technical education in India.

All IIT campuses have their own unique features in terms of infrastructure and architecture. How different is the new campus of IIT-Hyderabad from other IITs?


Since it has been built recently, we are lucky to use all available advanced technology to make it more accessible and eco-friendly campus. All the constructions on the campus are green buildings. The basic structure of buildings allows natural light and a good amount of air to keep it cool.

The buildings are easily accessible to differently-abled students. We have allotted 40 rooms in hostel buildings exclusively for them. I can proudly say ours is one of the most disabled-friendly campuses. We are accommodating more than 2,000 students in our hostels. Now the new campus is completely functional. All the classrooms, labs and faculty quarters have been shifted to the new campus in the very beginning of this academic year.

IIT-H was the first in India to introduce a UG course in additive manufacturing technology. Will it introduce a PG course too in it?

The UG course has received a good response in the first year. Around 200 students from all branches took the course. Now it is part of the regular courses for all UG courses. If there is a demand, we will consider making it a mandatory course at UG level. But there is no plan to introduce a special M.Tech course in it.

IITs have decided not to disclose the highest placement packages offered to students. Why?

It was a common decision taken in deference to the request of parents and some  recruiting companies. It is learnt that fat salaries at a very young age have been creating unnecessary issues for these students. So we have decided to keep the individual statistics confidential. But other details like average salary of a batch, number of job offers and the number of companies that visit the campus to offer placements will be announced.

Along with ISB and NALSAR University, you are part of the Telangana government’s incubation centre T-Hub. Will IIT-H start its own incubation centre in future?

The idea behind incubation centres is to encourage start-ups by students. We already have an entrepreneurial cell for this purpose. T-Hub is a much broader idea. Educational institutes can only have sector-based incubation centres. Our recently-launched Centre for Healthcare Entrepreneurship (CHE)is one such idea. Here, we encourage students to come up with ideas and help them develop business plans out of them.

There is a move to set up an incubation centre for aerospace and defence manufacturing at IIT-H. How important will be IIT’s role in that project?

The incubation centre for aerospace is a much bigger project. It is still a proposal. We are yet to begin the designing of framework. It will take some time to take shape. I think it is too early to talk about it.

IIT-Bombay student, volunteers clean up skywalk

What started as an academic project for Saloni Mehta, a Masters student from the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at IIT-Bombay , materialized into a real-life one last weekend. Mehta, along with her friends and about 50 volunteers associated with the institute, gave a facelift to an unused skywalk outside the IIT-B main gate connecting to the other side. The team spent over 15 hours on Saturday and Sunday cleaning the skywalk and painting it.
At the beginning of the year, when she was assigned the project to find why people are not using skywalks, she realised the one outside their very own campus remained unused due to the stench, filth and poor lighting. "I was studying the human behavior on why skywalks are not used and I thought at least the dirt and stench should not be the reason for not using it. People prefer waiting for the traffic to clear and then cross the road, risking their lives," said Mehta, adding that the junction witnesses traffic throughout the day . With this in mind, she sent off a mail to everyone on the campus and about 50 people came out to support her initiative, school students, professors, IITians, alumni included. From a class IX student to an engineer who graduated from the institute in 1969, all were present for the skywalk facelift drive

IITs are going to be increased student intake from next academic year 

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) will implement a 5% increase in their total student intake from the next academic session. 

The decision to increase the number of students -from 10,572 in the current academic session to 11,100 the next year -was taken at a recent meeting of the Joint Admission Board (JAB), which is the highest decision-making body of IITJEE (adanced). The meeting was attended by the chairpersons of all IITs. 

While this increased number was to be absorbed by all 23 IITs, several of the older institutes said they wouldn't be able to immediately increase their intake with their current infrastructure. The country's premier engineering and tech scho ols have also decided to admit 10% more foreign students, over and above the total student strength. 

“We are in no position to admit extra students despite the government wanting each IIT to increase intake,“ said a senior IIT-Kharagpur official. 

“Even if we build accommodation, classrooms and other infrastructure from government funding, it takes many years to build world-class laboratories which offer state-of-the-art facilities,“

Though the Indian higher education institutions fail to make a mark at the world rankings, the IITs remain one of the few bright spots on the Indian higher education scene. It is the institute’s ability to adapt to the changing times that has ensured that it retains its top billing. Now in the latest such change, the HRD (Human Resource Development) ministry has decided to allow non- resident students in the IITs – a move high opposed by the IIT insiders.

The insiders believe that having day scholars as under graduate students at the IITs would change the complete character of the institutes. One of the major reasons behind this drastic move is the ministry’s endeavour to increase the strength of the IITs to 1 lakh students by the year 2020.

About this decision by the ministry, one of the Directors of the IIT said, "IIT is also about the larger environment of free debate and liberal atmosphere. Moreover, our undergraduate courses are most sought after.” He said that he won’t mind having day scholars at the postgraduate and doctorate levels.

Lack of enthusiasm towards this latest move by the HRD is common across all the IITs. In the battle between the institutes and the ministry, only the time would determine the eventual winner. One can only hope that whatever be the outcome, the students benefit from it.

                                                                                   

IITs and No. Of seats.  

Name of the Institute.           No. of seats. 

IIT Kharagpur.                           1341

IIT Bombay.                                  880
IIT Madras.                                   838
IIT Kanpur.                                   827
IIT Delhi.                                       851
IIT Guwahati.                               660
IIT Roorkee.                                1065
IIT Ropar.                                      120
IIT Bhubaneswar.                        180
IIT Hyderabad.                             220
IIT Gandhinagar.                         150
IIT Patna.                                       200
IIT Rajasthan.                               160
IIT Mandi.                                     120
IIT Indore.                                     120
IIT (BHU) Varanasi.                   1090
ISM Dhanbad.                               740

IIT cut off for SC/ST lowered ,exam fee structure and more seats for foreign students 

 Up to 10% additional seats in each IIT course can now go to foreign students. Casting the enrolment net for foreign students wider, the IITs will now hold their entrance exam at six international centres instead of just one so far.

"Foreign candidates will have to qualify the JEE advanced examination for an IIT seat. The Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) for entry to MTech courses will be held in these six countries as well," said an official. Foreign candidates, however, will not have to take the JEE main examination.

Induction of foreign students will not mean less seats for Indian students. "The 10% intake is in addition to the existing seats available in each of the 23 IITs," the official clarified. Also, 20,000 more candidates will be eligible to write the exam after clearing JEE main, thus taking the total number to 2,20,000.

The examination will be held in six countries outside India — Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, UAE, Nepal and Singapore. The number of foreign students can't exceed 10% of the total seats in each course offered by the IITs and ISM-Dhanbad. There will also be no quota in this category. In another significant change, the cut-off for the aggregate marks in Class XII for SC and ST candidates has been reduced from 70% to 65% in JEE advanced 2017.

"Various interactive features are conceived to make the process of registration, fee payment, result announcement, choice filling, etc, less strenuous. Features like short video tutorial and SMS services will be used extensively to help the candidates," said a senior official.

From next year, candidates who register late for the IIT-JEE advanced exam will be charged a late fee of Rs 500. The registration fee has been increased to Rs 1,200 from Rs 1,000 for girls and reserved category students, and to Rs 2,400 from Rs 2,000 for others. Students from Saarc countries will pay $135 and those from other other countries $270. The late fee for them is $80.

In another change, candidates applying under PWD category with dyslexia must submit a certificate from a doctor specialising in psychiatry and associated with Rehabilitation Council of India (RCI) or Dyslexia Associations. The medical certificate must mention the word 'severe'.