IITs, NITs look to drop weak courses

Hyderabad:  IITs and NITs are taking a second look at courses which aren’t much in demand. Unpopular BTech courses and others that are not filled to full strength are likely to be removed or their seat strength reduced from the forthcoming academic year.

The 20-odd IITs and nearly 30 NITs were asked to submit information about which courses were being filled for the last three years. The vacancies were more in NITs than in IITs, but the HRD ministry has decided to take a relook at engineering courses in these tech institutes, rated the best for engineering education in the country.

According to NIT Warangal registrar Dr Y.N. Reddy, students were not showing much interest in joining specialty courses like mathematics and computing, physics, industrial chemistry and applied geology. At NIT-Warangal, courses like metallurgy, bio-technology and chemical engineering were seeing tepid demand. Dr Reddy said Telugu students were not showing interest in joining the new NITs established in the northeast and in Uttarakhand for reasons of distance. Some students preferred to join state engineering colleges in core branches like CSE and ECE based on Eamcet, rather than joining a metallurgy course at any NIT.

The older IITs — like Delhi, Bombay and Madras, do not have ‘vacant seat’ problem, according to IIT-Delhi director Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao. “The HRD ministry asked us about the seats scenario at our institute. Seat-filling is a bit slow in textile engineering, but there is no problem about the other courses,” he said. Experts suggest that common counselling for engineering admissions across the whole country will address the vacant seats problem because a student can seriously explore one option to enroll, so that others get a chance to study.

“Counselling for NIT, IITs, deemed universities, state engineering colleges are held on different dates, giving candidates a chance to explore options and join the course of their choice, and then leave if they get a better option in another college. This is also one of the reasons for vacant seats. A Neet-like entrance test will help streamline engineering study and the efforts of HRD in this regard are commendable,” a senior professor said.