IIT's in India

The Indian Institutes of Technology popularly known as IIT’s, are a group of 23 (as on 21st May, 2018) Autonomous public institutions of Engineering and Technology established as Institutes of National Importance by the Parliament of India. The first was set up in Kharagpur in 1951 followed by IIT Bombay in 1958 and IIT Madras and Kanpur in 1959. Whereas IIT Delhi was established in 1963 and the latest addition was done in 2016 when six new IITs in Tirupati, Palakkad, Dharwad, Bhilai, Goa and Jammu were approved through a 2016 bill amendment along with the conversion of ISM Dhanbad to IIT.

These highly rated institutes are governed by the Institutes of Technology Act, 1961 which has declared them as institutions of national importance and lays down their powers. As far as the organizational structure of the IIT’s is concerned The President  of India being the ex officio Visitor of the IITs and is at the top of the administrative set up of the IIT’s  assisted by IIT Council  comprising  the minister-in-charge of technical education in the Union Government, the Chairmen of all IITs, the Directors of all IITs, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, the Director General of CSIR, the Chairman of IISc, the Director of IISc, three members of Parliament, the Joint Council Secretary of Ministry of Human Resource and Development, and three appointees each of the Union Government, AICTE, and the Visitor.

Registrar being the chief administrative officer of the IITs overviews the day-to-day operations of these 23 institutes of higher education situated in different parts of India. The List of which is given below in the chronological order of their Foundation.

Although each of the above IIT’s is an autonomous institution yet they are linked to one another through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration process. The Minister of Human Resource Development is the ex-officio Chairperson of IIT Council. As of 2017, the total number of seats for undergraduate programmes in all IITs stands at 11,032. The admission to these UG courses is done through a  very competitive Joint Entrance Examination known as JEE (Advance) in common parlance. This exam is held on the yearly basis usually in the month of April-May to select around 10,000 undergraduate candidates every year from amongst approximately 3,50,000  aspiring candidates to provide admission in various branches of Engineering and Technology.

IITs also award other graduate degrees such as M.Sc in Maths, Physics and Chemistry, MBA, etc. Admission to these programs of IITs is done through Common Admission Test (CAT), Joint Admission Test for M.Sc. (JAM) and Common Entrance Examination for Design (CEED). IIT Guwahati and IIT Bombay offer undergraduate design programmes as well.

Whereas admission to the post-graduate level program that awards M.Tech., MS degrees, and the doctoral programme that offers PhD in engineering is administered by the older IITs. M.Tech. and MS admissions are done on the basis of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). 

Because of the Autonomy given to all the IITs  these autonomous universities draft their own curricula, and are among those few institutes in India that offer degrees in technology (B. Tech.) at the undergraduate level in lieu of the Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degrees awarded by most  of the other Indian universities and Engineering Institutes. 

IITs are also the members of LAOTSE, an international network of universities in Europe and Asia. LAOTSE membership allows the IIT’s to exchange students and senior scholars with universities in other countries.