IITs should encourage students to do research: Nuclear scientist

Ahmedabad: Every student should have a choice of concurrent education in all learning domains, said eminent nuclear scientist Dr Anil Kakodkar. "Every student should have a choice of concurrent education and training in all learning domains including opportunities to do so across institutions," he said while delivering a lecture on 'Transforming India Through Quality Higher Education'. The report of Kakodkar Committee on reforms in IIT's is under implementation.

"We should be able to catalyse the process towards student-centric education in a meta-university framework," the former Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission said. Citing a World Bank report on world-class universities, Kakodkar said the institutions should be like magnets to attract more talent at all levels and offer fascinating ideas to work on.

According to Kakodkar, an ideal higher education is one that comprises innovation to address the problem and opportunities in the industry and society and includes research that pushes the frontiers of knowledge, amongst others. Institutes like IIT's, NIT's, IISER's, NISER and IIM's, should progressively become world class and serve the Indian needs, he said.

Dr Anil Kakodkar said that an ideal higher education is one that comprises innovation to address the problem and opportunities in the industry.

"We expect all IIT's put together should produce 10,000 PhD's a year. I feel IIT's should start programmes that can help boost PhD output. Most of the IIT pass-outs do B Tech as they are easily absorbed by industry, but do not prefer PhD," he said.

According to Kakodkar, IIT's come close to 50 in global ranking when compared purely on imparting engineering education, their original mandate, but as they are broadbased disciplines they have to perform better. A committee under his Chairmanship has worked out a detailed report for greater autonomy to IIT's and taking them to world class level. The report is under implementation.

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