Education Minister Asks IITs To Adopt ‘One IIT-One Thrust Area’ Approach
Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' chaired the 54th meeting of the Council of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) today, February 22, via video conferencing. The minister urged IITs to adopt the ‘One IIT - One Thrust Area' approach based on local needs.
The members of IIT council also recommended to undertake rationalisation of IIT staff to a lower number. This came up as part of the discussion on digital transformation using Blockchain, AI, ML, and Cloud Computing at IITs. It was recommended to constitute a task force to review the use of technology at all IITs and also to accelerate the deployment of digital tools.
Education Minister asked IITs to develop the Institute Development Plan as envisioned in NEP 2020 to improve the mobility of faculty between institution and Industry. The mobility of faculty members and industry experts between technical institutes and industry will promote collaborations between industry and academia, he added.
Earlier, a committee was constituted under the chairmanship of K Radhakrishnan, Chairman, Standing Committee for IIT Council for suggesting recruitment of faculties in IITs (Industry interaction and mobility of faculty).
On the basis of the recommendation of the Chairman of Standing Committee for IIT Council, four Working Groups were constituted on the following issues related to NEP-2020:
Group-1: Graded Autonomy, Empowered and accountable BoG and Director
Group-2: Grooming distinguished academics for the directorship of IITs
Group-3: Reform and restructuring of the Academic Senate
Group-4: Innovative funding mechanisms
The reports of these groups and also of a new group that will work on faculty development will be presented in a meeting to be chaired Union Education Minister.
The Council also put up for consideration a suggestion to arrange an online IIT research and development fair to showcase the quality research work being done by IITs to showcase the research and development work of IITs to the industry. This may be followed by a physical fair after the normalization of the present situation.
Highlighting several initiatives undertaken by the government, Mr Pokhriyal mentioned approval of funds to improve the overall infrastructure of the 4 IITs at Madras, Delhi Kharagpur and Bombay. He spoke about making IITs multi-disciplinary institutions for holistic growth in all disciplines of education, without losing its main focus on Scientific Research and Technology Development.
The Minister called upon IITs to make full use of the recently announced scheme National Research Foundation. He hoped IITs will strive to achieve the global rankings by 2022, the 75th year of India's independence.
Minister of State for Education Sanjay Shamrao Dhotre, and Secretary, Higher Education Amit Khare were also present in the meeting. Mr Pokhriyal congratulated heads of all IITs for successfully continuing the academic session COVID-19 pandemic and for their contribution in combating the pandemic by way of new scientific research.