IIT Increases Student Intake for 2017 Across All 23 Institutes

The older IITs, however, seem a little reluctant to incorporate this change owing to the lack in infrastructure.

The Indian Institutes of Technology are all set to increase their intake by five percent in the upcoming academic year. According to a report by The Times of India, there has also been an increase in the intake for foreign students.

The country’s premier engineering and tech schools have also decided to admit foreign students by up to 10 percent of the revised figure, over and above the total student strength.

Times of India

The number of students is to be increased from 10, 572 to 11,100 in 2017. The decision was taken at a meeting of the Joint Admission Board (JAB), the highest decision making body of IIT-JEE (Advanced).

In terms of foreign students, this is what a source said:

It means roughly another 1,000 students of foreign origin may find a seat in IITs over and above the 11,100 figure.

These revisions are expected to be made in all of the 23 IITs, but the older ones might take some time to implement these changes owing to lack in infrastructure. They expressed their hesitation at the lack of preparation for the change.

We are in no position to admit extra students despite the government wanting each IIT to increase intake. Most of the seat increase has taken place in the newer IITs, which offer more courses than last year and have expanded their intake. At the older IITs, there is a serious space crunch. Even if we can 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 to students. And we would not like to compromise on providing quality education.

A Senior IIT-Kharagpur official

(With inputs from The Times of India.)