IIT-Delhi looks to promote more foreign students

To focus on attracting more international students through overseas entrance exams, scholarships

Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-Delhi) has slipped six places to the 185th position in the recently released Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings. Although IIT-Delhi scored well on academic reputation, as its citation per faculty was higher than its Asian competitor National University of Singapore (NUS) with its individual departments being among the top 100 schools, it lost marks on international students and faculty.

The rankings were primarily based on six indicators: Academic reputation, employer reputation, student-faculty ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty and student ratio. IIT-Delhi deputy director M Balakrishnan concedes that the institute fell in the rankings because of inadequate international students, faculty and requisite infrastructure on the campus.

"Around 40 per cent weightage in the ranking is about perception of the institute, its campus and infrastructure," says Balakrishnan.

Since its inception in 1961, IIT-Delhi has not undergone any major expansion. And, its campus is no match for the state-of-the-art universities in Asia such as NUS, a relatively newer competitor established in 1980, which was ranked 12th in the world and first in Asia in the QS Ranking. In fact, 35 universities in Asia were ranked above IIT-Delhi.

More than the perception, these universities are judged on their strength of international students, international faculty and academic reputation. According to IIT-Delhi, one of the reasons for its relatively poor ranking is the lack of scholarships awarded to international students. This is unlike the US National Science Foundation, which funds the foreign national to undertake research on its soil.

For instance, currently all the 80 foreign students in IIT-Delhi are being supported by their respective countries or external agencies. As a step towards improving on these parameters, Balakrishnan says they would be suggesting the Ministry of Human Resource Development, which has launched an ambitious programme called Vishwajeet, which means to conquer the world, last month to improve global ranking of all IITs, to encourage foreign students to study in India.

Balakrishnan says from next year, the government will hold Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering for admission into master and doctoral courses and Joint Entrance Examination for undergraduate courses in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia, among others. The government believes it will take another two-three years for IITs and their courses to become popular in these countries.

While all IITs are taking steps to increase foreign student participation, these institutes face a major challenge on the teaching side. IITs continue to face problems in terms of hiring international faculty, as they can't afford to pay higher salaries for foreign faculty and cater to their needs for accommodation and lab requirements.

"When IITs are unable to fill even the existing posts with Indian faculty, how can they hire foreign nationals who command higher salaries? Foreign nationals prefer developed countries over developing ones for a variety of reasons," says an IIT-Delhi professor who did not wish to be named.

The current recruitment process is slow and retirement of professors has further added to the problem. According to some news reports, around 2,600 faculty posts are vacant across all the IITs. IIT-Delhi, which has one of the highest faculty-student ratios of 1:18 among the older IITs, alone needs 300 teachers.

In addition, the number of seats in all IITs have gone up following the implementation of other backward class quota between 2008-09 and 2010-11, upsetting the faculty-students ratio. Currently, 72,000 students are enrolled in all the 23 IITs and there was a fresh proposal to add more seats by 2020.

This not only calls for increased recruitment of domestic and foreign faculty at IIT-Delhi, along with other IITs, but also boost the faculty strength through higher intake of PhD scholars.

Going forward, it is here that the older IITs such as Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur and Bombay would go for increase in seats at the PhD level. Although the government has found a short-term solution by allowing PhD scholars to teach at IITs, it still has to provide more funds for the infrastructure to go up the ladder in global rankings.

KEY CONCERNS

• To suggest MHRD for govt level steps in attracting foreign students
   
• To increase PhD seats for better research output and global perception
   
• Pins hope on entrance exams of GATE, JEE being conducted overseas
   
• Rues lack of scholarships for foreign students for research on Indian soil
   
• Finds challenge in recruitment of domestic, foreign faculty amidst rising seats

Source: IIT-Delhi