IIT Kanpur to increase foreign students' intake, to boost ranking

Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K) is making structural changes, including increasing the intake of foreign students, in the wake of the institute getting low ranking among world's top universities.

There is a belief here that the low ranking is not reflective of the actual academic and infrastructure facilities available on the campus, but more structural and procedural aspects that impede a fair analysis of the ground realities.

For instance, there are only about 34 foreign students in IIT-K of the roughly 6,500 students, which is less than one per cent. This effectively prevents the institute from attaining the status of a global campus - an imperative for any modern educational institution.

The statute prohibits the institute from enrolling foreign students. However, now IIT-K is mulling over ways to admit foreign students through the memorandum of understanding (MoU) route to ensure they could stay for at least three months on the campus for being counted amongst its students.

"We have also signed two MoUs with the National University of Singapore and the Melbourne University (Australia) to offer joint degrees, which we are hopeful of launching soon," IIT-K Global Ranking Committee convener Sandeep Verma told Business Standard .

While, IIT-K was ranked 271st in the QS World University rankings released last month, the institute exited from the list of top 100 of another prestigious rankings, the Times Higher Education University Asia Rankings 2015, although it had figured in the top 100 last year.

In the QS World University rankings, two Indian institutes - Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and IIT-Delhi - were ranked within the top 200 at 147 and 179 slots, respectively. However, IIT-K was declared the best engineering institute in India by the India Today Group-Nielsen Best Colleges Survey for a second year. IIT-Delhi was ranked second.

The IIT-K Global Ranking Committee was constituted as an institutional framework for interfacing with the ranking organisations and providing correct data and statistics.

"Earlier, these organisations picked up secondary data without verifying with us. Since, the global rankings have gained importance in society, the institute now sees these rankings as a measure to compare with the best universities in the world," Verma added.

Under the committee, a set of professors study the mechanism with a view to suggesting rational changes at different fronts so that IIT-K puts the best foot forward. Besides, the institute is taking steps towards developing a better research eco-system, so that more quality research work emerges and such papers are published in international journals of repute.

IIT-K's B V Phani said the matrix of rankings itself was sometimes unfavourable to the institute and not the correct manifestation of the ground realities.

"Besides, we never had the motivation to improve our rankings like the US varsities and as such, IIT-K never looked at it in a professional manner. Now, we have taken it seriously and in a rational manner," he said.

Phani argued two institutes cannot be compared on the basis of mere rankings. "Suppose we compare the average height of Americans and Chinese, then, the average height of the Americans would be greater. But, does that make the Americans more or less efficient or better or worse professionals than the Chinese," he asked.

Phani is also coordinator of SDBI Innovation Incubation Centre at IIT-K. He said IIT-K possessed perhaps the best educational system in India vis-à-vis campus size, faculty, lab testing and prototype development facilities, etc. To some measure, he pinned the blame on the bad infrastructure facilities in and around Kanpur, which still lacks any direct airport connectivity despite being one of the major industrial hubs of Uttar Pradesh.

Meanwhile, IIT-K is keen to improve its teacher-student ratio by inducting more faculties. Against the sanctioned strength of 650 teachers, the campus only has 500 faculty members, including 100-odd PhD students as well.

Individual faculty members have been suggested to contribute towards better research works, publications and academics, so that it cultivates a more positive image of IIT-K.

Spread over 1,055 acres, IIT-K is situated on the Grand Trunk road in Kanpur. It first started functioning in the borrowed building of Harcourt Butler Technological Institute in 1959 with 100 students before flowering into a major educational hub in India.