PhD at IIT open to BTech students from NITs, no need for GATE

If you wish to pursue your post graduate studies from the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), now you have the chance to turn your dream into reality for IITs have decided to admit third-year B.Tech students from other centrally funded colleges to their doctoral programmes from next year. The initiative is an attempt by the government to improve the quality of research and increase the number of research scholars at IITs.

Students, who end up getting selected for the programmes, will be moved to the IITs in the fourth year and will primarily do courses for a year. As per the official document, each student’s doctoral committee will assign them the courses. The credit earned in the first year of the PhD programme at IITs should have equivalence to the credit needed for the fourth year of the B-Tech programme.

HRD Minister M.M. Pallam Raju, informed that the aim is to admit aroud 10,000 PhD scholars every year in the IITs over a period of time. While, J. Veeraraghavan, a former education secretary with the government of India, said this move will improve the quality and image of NITs as some of their top students can directly get entry into the IIT system.

Requirements:

Earlier, for getting admissions to postgraduate and PhD programmes in the IITs, aspirants needed to have cleared GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering). However, with the implementation of this initiative, students will not be required to crack GATE.

Process of selection:

Step 1: The top 10 percentile of third-year B.Tech students from the 30 National Institutes of Technology (NITs) will be chosen by the IITs for admission to their doctoral programmes.

Step 2: Students who gain admission to the IIT doctoral studies receive their B.Tech degree in the second year of their PhD programme. Students will receive the B.Tech degree by the NIT they migrate from. However, the PhD degree from IITs will be awarded after the students complete their doctoral programme.

Step 3: Students who are found to be poor performers in the first two years risk being sent back to the NITs.

Step 4: Instead of working on an M.Tech project, students should be allowed to start work on PhD projects and get both degrees after completing studies

According to reports, 25% of graduates from centrally funded technical institutes go abroad every year to study further or join industries. Therefore, this plan is expected to stem the brain drain syndrome of students from these top engineering schools going abroad in search of jobs and studies. Besides this, the IITs have also been facing a faculty shortage of between 15% and 20%. Thus, with this plan being implemented and having more PhD pass-outs, there is a bigger chance of IITs getting more fresh teachers.