IITs to Allow Students to Study Across Campuses from This Year, Check Details

From this academic year onwards, India Institute of Technology (IITs) will allow students from other campuses to attend classes. Students admitted to other IITs will be allowed to take select courses at other IIT campuses and spend a term away from their parent institute. This is the first formal academic exchange programme within the IIT system. 

As per media reports, the move will loosen the rigid JEE run system, where a single rank determines entry and foundation of the academic experience of students for the next four years in an IIT. IIT Madras Director Padma Shri V Kamakoti mentioned that a curriculum is being mapped across multiple programmes in various IITs, and once matched, students from various IITs can spend a term in another IIT to study some courses and earn credits, which will be transferred to their home institute.

Universities across the world have been collaborating through joint degrees and shared classrooms. Pratap Haridos, Dean of IIT Madras, mentioned that a meeting was held recently for academic deans from IITs, conducted by IIT Madras, where one of the topics discussed was credit transfer and student mobility across IITs, among several other issues. One of the major reasons large-scale transfers have not been permitted was the issue of rank integrity. Students were originally allotted seats based on rank-specific constrains and allowing arbitrary transfers could violate that framework, he added. The decision to allow student movement will now be implemented in a limited, controlled manner. 

Reports confirm that the new framework will also convert campuses operating in parallel into a network, allowing students to move between institutes. Hardidos also added that there is a growing recognition that students increasingly move across locations for internships, training and other academic or professional engagements. In such cases, it will be useful to allow students from one IIT to take a course at another, he added.

IITs are therefore working towards creating a structured mechanism for semester-based mobility among campuses, where students can spend a term at another IIT, earn credits and have them transferred, similar to how semester exchange programmes work in foreign universities.  

It has also been decided that each IIT will decide on how many visiting students can be hosted at any time based on infrastructure and capacity constraints. If there is equal movement in both directions, capacity becomes less of a concern.