Friday, February 08, 2008

Indian Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (IIEST)

Indian Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (IIEST) are institutes proposed by the Government of India to meet the growing demand for IITs by every state in India. Initially, a group of seven elite universities had been selected for upgradation to the status of IIESTs by the S.K.Joshi committee.The Ministry had short-listed these institutions based on the recommendations made by the S.K. Joshi Committee that suggested the upgradation of select institutions in the country to the level of IITs.As a continuation of the recommendations of the Joshi Committee, a committee headed by M. Anandakrishnan (Chairman of the Madras Institute of Development Studies) was appointed for an in-depth evaluation of seven of the identified institutions for upgradation to the level of IITs.The thrust of IIEST will be for engineering education. The Departments under the Faculty of Science, Social Science, Humanities and Law will be at peril.According to an expert committee appointed by the MHRD, the President will be the visitor of all IIESTs. The five institutions should function as a consortium with an IIEST council, an advisory body for major common policy decisions. The Minister for Human Resource Development will be ex-officio chairman of the council. Each IIEST shall have a Board of Governors chaired by an eminent academic.The Board of Governors shall be the highest decision-making authority of the institute. The President will appoint its chairman. Each institute will have an executive council and an academic council. The institutes will have an individual statute providing for other institutional authorities, their responsibilities and power.All IIESTs will preserve its all-India character in student population through national level admission tests either by adopting the Joint Entrance Examination system or the All-India Engineering Entrance Examination. The expert committee has given a budgetary recommendation for Rs.2,407.86 crore for the five institutions identified for upgrade during 2007-2012.The proposed IIESTs would be created by an act of the Parliament of India. They would be given the status of Institutes of National Importance, on the lines of IITs and NITs by the Indian government. Later, the Government of India selected five institutions for the upgradation.The upgradation would be brought forth initially by introducing two separate schedules in the NIT Act and the act would be renamed NIT-IIEST Act. By virtue of this act the power of authority passes to the Central Government. The institute will be able to have 50% seats reserved for it's domicile candidates. Rest will be based on all India rankings.Gradually as more institutes get the approval, the central government would enact a separate act for the IIESTs. IIESTs would be special in the sense that these would be catering towards post-graduate and research studies exclusively like the IISc differing only in the sense that most of their courses will be integrated in nature. Students selected through UG Competetive exams would be enrolled for dual-degree courses in engineering and sciences. The admission would be through the AIEEE. The state would have a representative in the Governing body. BESU would be the first IIEST to start functioning from the academic year 2008-09. The five institutions have been short-listed based on the final Anandakrishnan report are as follows:

IIEST Varanasi IT-BHU
IIEST Cochin Cochin University of Science and Technology
IIEST Kolkata Bengal Engineering and Science University, Shibpur
IIEST Hyderabad Osmania University College of Technology
IIEST Visakhapatanam Andhra University College of Engineering

1 comment:

Yajna93 said...

How is IIEST, Shibpur going to become great?? an institute where a fresher is ASKED to submit "ragging" allegation against his 2nd year colleagues and even after that fresher, understanding his mistake, withdraws his allegation letter and even though he testifies not having been ragged during the Enquiry, and the Enquiry having been conducted by those very teachers who asked for that allegation inside the fresher's room against UGC Regulation that Anti-Ragging Squad should do the Enquiry, & several such UGC Regulations having been broken ---- where is the tranparency?? Does IIEST, Shibpur not need to follow the sacred Constitution of India and the Honourable Supreme Court of India's definition of 'ragging'???? A drastic change in the local highest administration is desperately required; lip service and tall claims alone won't serve the job