The Indian Institutes of Technology are likely to have the additional role of accreditation and assessing agency soon, with the IIT Council meet in Mumbai on Friday expected to discuss the possibility.
Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar threw ample hints about this at an event here a few days back.
“On 28th the IIT Council will meet. We told the IITs you too can become accreditation agencies. There is NAAC... If there are four-five agencies for accreditation, it is good. There will automatically be a competition and that will be good,” he had said at the consultation meet of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council.
“I don’t know how much NAAC people accept it. But it is not a bad thought. If we want to reach each institute and assess them properly, we need more wherewithal and therefore [we should] build three-four more institutes which will also become assessing agencies.”
“There should be a new system of accreditation [and] that is our effort. Inspection is important as we get to know looking at data what is the truth,” the Minister had said minutes earlier.
Centre’s guidelines
The IIT Council meet comes at a time when there is concern over suicides in the institutes. This, too, may come up for discussion at the meet.
The Centre had, after the Rohith Vemula suicide at the Hyderabad University, sought to create a set of guidelines to ensure that students are not driven to the extreme step.
They were expected to include steps such as mentoring and counselling of students.
Increase in seats
The IIT Council had last year given its in-principle approval to an increase in seats in the IITs, with a vision to touch one lakh seats by 2020. This, however, is subject to each IIT’s preparedness.
Recently, the IITs agreed to add some seats temporarily to increase the representation of women to 20 per cent.
The Council may undertake some stock-taking on these points too.
