No permanent foreign faculty for IITs !!

In a major setback to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) plan, the Ministry for External Affairs (MEA) has rejected a proposal to liberalise visa norms to allow foreign teachers to take up permanent posts at the IITs.

The MEA has refused to change the rules under which each foreign faculty member at the IITs needs to re-obtain a work visa every five years, top government and IIT sources have confirmed to HT.

Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal had on September 11, 2010 announced the plan to allow the IITs to fill up to 10% of their permanent teaching posts with foreign faculty.

The proposal -first reported by HT on September 2, 2010 -was approved by the IIT Council -the highest decision making body of the IITs -and is aimed at reducing a massive faculty crunch plaguing the IITs.

But the MEA's refusal to allow foreign faculty to join with visas of longer duration than five years means that the IITs will not be able to offer permanent posts to foreign faculty.

“We will need to continue to offer contractual appointments something we wanted to, and quite frankly, need to change,“ an IIT Director said.

Each IIT is facing a faculty crunch between 15 and 40% with a total of over 1,000 faculty posts vacant across the premier engineering schools. The Institutes have over the past year however received a number of applications from foreign faculty, including Persons of Indian Origin (PIOs) keen to teach at the IITs. The IITs are arguing that permanent posts would help them lure the best of foreign teachers.
Source: No permanent foreign faculty for IITs

Sibal rejects steep fee hike for IIT students !!

There will be no steep fee hike for the students of the Indian Institutes of Technology, according to a decision taken by the IIT Council on January 21.

Chairing the IIT Council meet here, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal rejected the Anil Kakodkar committee proposal for five-fold increase in fee for undergraduate programme of the IITs.

The Kakodkar committee, set up by the government in October 2009 to study the roadmap for the autonomy and future of the IITs, had recommended that the fee be raised from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 to Rs 2.5 lakh per annum.

As the committee report came for discussion at the 42nd meeting of the IIT Council Sibal rejected the fee hike proposal saying “such a hike would prove a deterrent to a large number of IIT aspirants,” a ministry official said. The Council asked the committee to rework the fee structure taking into account the aspirations of all sections. During the meeting, Sibal announced setting up 50 research parks at a cost of Rs 200 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan period.

Under the programme, industry will undertake research on various subjects with the support of experts from the IITs.

The research parks have been proposed to be set up on public-private-partnership (PPP) model. One such research park has already come up in Chennai.

The meeting took note of the fact that credit-based practices were being followed by the IITs to promote students from one semester to the next, and agreed that academic bodies of the IITs should consider acquisition of credits as a criteria for students and granting of degrees to bring uniformity.

The issue came up following submission of Dhande committee report on uniform and homogeneous criteria for promoting students in the IITs.

Kanpur IIT director Dhande, who headed two committees, presented reports on a “uniform criteria for promoting students from one semester to the next in the IITs and on the “requirement of infrastructure for research”. Both reports have been accepted. Each IIT at present has its own criteria for promotion.

The Council decided that a panel for visitor’s nominee for a particular department would be created which all IITs could use for faculty selection. “This will ensure timely selection of professors,” the Council noted.

It also decided that the appointment of directors should be through advertisements so that a wider base was created.

“It was decided that in principle approval may be granted for setting up an institute in Mauritius with the help of the IITs,” an official said.

At the meeting, a presentation was made on adopting cyber security as part of the curriculum for the IITs. So it was decided that a committee be set up to develop a roadmap for the future and give a report in next three months.
Source Sibal rejects steep fee hike for IIT students

NITs demand pay parity with the IIT faculty !!

The National Institutes of Technology have demanded pay parity with the faculty of the Indian Institutes of Technology under a proposed salary regime that will enable them to compete for top teachers.

NIT directors rejected a differential pay structure between their institutes and the IITs proposed by a central pay panel at a meeting with Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal last week, officials said.

The meeting was slated as a courtesy call on Sibal, HRD ministry sources said. “But it transformed into a forum for the directors to demand that their faculty are not ready to accept lower pay than the IITs,” an official said.

The demand follows recommendations of the pay panel for Central technical institutes, headed by former Indian Institute of Science director Goverdhan Mehta. It suggested continuing with the different pay structures.

The IITs have traditionally enjoyed better pay for their faculty than the NITs and other top Central engineering institutions, including four Indian Institutes of Information Technology.

But the NITs, which also hold the tag of “Institutes of National Importance” like the IITs, argue that the government must no longer discriminate between different institutions it funds.

“Jawaharlal Nehru University may have a better reputation than some other central varsities, but the same pay scales hold for all Central universities. There is no reason why the system should be different in technical education,” an NIT director said.

The NITs also argue that lower pay scales prevent them from competing with the IITs for top teachers, propelling them into a “vicious cycle” where they can never hope to catch up with the IITs in quality.

The NITs had asked for equal pay during discussions with the Mehta committee on the salary review, according to the panel’s report.

Panel members point out that their report has recommended a hike in pay for faculty of all institutes, including the NITs. “It is natural for people to differ in their opinions on our report, but we believe we have given teachers across all institutions a wonderful deal,” Mehta said.

Another member argued that the different faculty structures at the IITs and the NITs make it “impossible” for their pay structures to be common.

The IITs have a four-tier faculty structure, with lecturers at the bottom of the rung followed by assistant professors, associate professors and professors.

source NITs demand pay parity with the IIT faculty