The first IIT was set up in Kharagpur in May 1950. The next four IITs were established in Bombay (1958), Kanpur (1959), Madras (1959), Delhi (1961) followed by eight new IITs, which has taken the total up to 15.
Regional Engineering College, Warangal (1959) was first among 17 regional colleges to be established in India. These RECs were converted into NITs (National Institute of Technology) in September 2002. REC was a brand. I was the principal of VRCE, Nagpur
(Visvesvaraya Regional College of Engineering), during 1997-98 for a year. The budget was very small and one had to deal with both the state as well as central government.
Now the NIT budget is close to the IIT budget and much more than the REC one and practically under no state government control. Yet there is a
disparity between NITs and IITs.
Several rankings that have come out clearly highlight this. Some of the reasons are that the older IITs are celebrating their golden jubilees. The new IITs, though will take some more time to catch up with the old ones. Rome was not built in a day. Similarly few NITs, specially the ones in south India, are doing very well.
IITs/NITs are known among the premier educational institutions in the world. BTechs from these institutions, especially IITs, are in heavy demand throughout the world. NITs too
will slowly but surely achieve the
same status.
The main problem in higher technical education in India is the shortage of well qualified faculty. Even IITs are facing this problem. Some of the newer IITs are yet to get their own campuses. Infrastructure is also an issue. Most of the NITs, especially in northeast India are facing this problem.
The number of faculty members with a PhD is also painfully low in NIT. In fact, there are not many quality
supervisors. This is also one of the reasons for disparity in IITs and NITs. This also results in having fewer research papers of good quality in more popular technical journals and have fewer number of citations. As compared to IITs, NITs also have lesser number of patents, sponsored research projects, consultancies, transfer of technologies and books published.
We must also look at the difference in the input of students. IITs get their students through the time-tested JEE (joint entrance examination) whereas NITs admit their students through AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination). It’s not hard to come by reports in newspapers with headings that suggest that top AIEEE rankers prefer IITs over NITs. Some of the students who miss IITs also prefer top private universities like BITS Pilani and Vellore Institute of Technology.
NITs were founded to promote regional diversity and a multicultural understanding of India. Therefore in the NIT system, half of the student population in each batch is drawn from the respective state of the NITs and the other half is drawn from the rest of India on a common merit list. But IIT need not accept a specified number of students from any region in India as admission to IIT is based purely on the candidate’s performance in JEE.
“IITs, unlike NITs, have unparalleled training facilities, world-class faculty and to top it all, students at IITs have the opportunity to study with “the cream of India”. IITs definitely have superiority over all NITs in at least the top branches of engineering as far as student quality goes.
As a rule, IITs do not recruit non-PhD faculty. NITs have many faculty members who do not hold a doctorate degree. But of course, the scenario is changing and by 2020, it is expected that all faculty members will be PhD holders.
Apart from the unmatched quality of education one gets at IIT, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved in co-curricular activities that would challenge and nurture every facet of an individual. The same cannot be seen in NIT. Finally, during placements the brand IIT will play its magic.
A recently conducted research has shown that 70 per cent of companies in the Silicon valley has Indian engineers as critical resources and most of them are from IITs.
If you look closely at the corporate world in India too, you can find that many captains of the Indian industry have honed their skills at these venerable institutions. Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh and ITC chief YC Deveshwar have all spent a most important part of their academic lives in the IITs. Life at the IITs has even inspired a best-seller, Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone.
Since the academic environment is very serious and focused, the
question of “What next?” gets addressed early on. Students at IITs decide pretty early on their different career options — whether it is CAT for the MBA route, GRE for the MS route or GATE for the MTech route. These are the three most sought-after options for further studies, if the student is not keen on the several job offers h/she is likely to get before graduating.
IITians positively affirm that even if you don’t get your desired branch or skill-set, attending the institute is worth the experience alone. So all-in-all, a four-year stint at the IITs brings about a world of difference to an individual. Engineers make the world. And engineers from IITs take a larger than the average share of that credit.
For the sake of fairness in comparing NITs with IITs, the former came into being in 2002, so it is better if they are compared with the newer IITs. In future, they will definitely give tough competition to the old IITs as well, when their budget, input and brand will be as good as the IITs that were formed half a century ago.
— dpk0710@yahoo.com