In 2004, a committee set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) under the chairmanship of Prof. P. Rama Rao (former Secretary, Department of Science and Technology - DST) to review the functioning of the Indian Institutes of Technology. I believe the committee submitted its report sometime in 2005, though I have not been able to locate it online. A recent issue of Current Science had a commentary by Prof. Vijay Arakeri (professor of mechanical engineering in IISc) on the committee's report.
The Current Science commentary summarizes some of the key findings and recommendations of the review committee on academic issues. Some of the statistics startled me: did you know, for example, the IITs award more masters degrees (3675 in 2002-03) than bachelors degrees (2275 in the same year)? Here's another:
...the method of calculation of credits is not the same for all the IITs. Similarly, ... the grading patterns are not alike across the IITs.
As they say, do read the whole thing [pdf].
6 Comments:
How does one get hold of an offline copy?
Hi As:
I just have no idea how one can get a hard copy; if I had access to it, I myself would have written something about it!
I'll try and email your colleague, Prof Arakeri. I guess he does have access to it.
The original report is available at http://www.iitk.ac.in/infocell/iitk/newhtml/reviewcom.htm
Nayagam: Thanks for that tip-off. However, I am not able to download the individual chapters (pdf files).
Sorry, I didn't know that the pdfs were not accessible outside IITK.
Abi: I've mailed the pdfs to you. There are 17 chapters along with 5 files containing list of tables etc.
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