IITs Seat Expansion Could Be Done In Hybrid Mode: Faculty, Experts Suggest At Post-Budget Webinar – News18

Last Updated:March 07, 2025, 13:12 IST

The five third generation IITs where seats and infrastructure will be expanded over the next five years include – IIT-Tirupati, IIT-Palakkad, IIT-Jammu, IIT-Dharwad and IIT-Bhilai.

The expansion of seats in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), a major announcement made by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during the 2025-26 Annual Budget, could well be in the “online or hybrid mode, since expanding physically is not sustainable”. This is what was suggested during a post-budget webinar held the day before on how to execute the announcements made in the Budget, attended by heads and faculty of these premier engineering institutions.

While presenting her eighth consecutive budget, Sitharaman on February 1 this year announced to expand infrastructure across five newer IITs (established after 2014) to accommodate 6,500 more students. She also announced setting up of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) centre of excellence in education while presenting the Budget for 2025-26.

These five third generation IITs where seats and infrastructure will be expanded over the next five years include – IIT-Tirupati, IIT-Palakkad, IIT-Jammu, IIT-Dharwad and IIT-Bhilai.

The FM also announced that over the next five years, under the PM Research Fellowship (PMRF) scheme, the government will provide 10,000 fellowships for technological research in IITs and IISc with enhanced financial support.

The post-budget webinar titled ‘Investing in People’ was held on March 5 for different themes to create a roadmap for implementing major budget announcements, of which one was ‘Expansion of seats in IITs’, and breakout parallel sessions were conducted for each, which were attended by officials of central and state governments, experts and various stakeholders.

The session on IITs had a panel of heads of the some of these newer IITs, faculty members from leading first generation IITs in science and research, officials from central government and representatives from industry.

‘Expanding physically not sustainable’

Prof Devendra Jalihal, director, IIT-Guwahati, who has also previously taught at IIT-Madras, said that while over the years IITs have been told to increase the number of seats, the problem with increasing the number of seats is that these are residential campuses. “It just means a greater number of hostel rooms, classrooms, more faculty, more housing for them, which becomes an endless cycle and it’s just not sustainable,” he said during the session.

Citing the example of IIT-Madras, he said, on its campus where there used to be just six houses initially, now there are about 100 houses, as many cars and it’s getting too congested. “Even if it’s by way of high-rises, increasing physically is not possible, it means high-density,” he said.

Post-pandemic, Prof Jalihal said, it has been seen that the experience with online education has been tremendous, and it can be experimented with even now.

“I think it’s possible now to look at other interesting ways of increasing the numbers. Our experience has shown both in IIT-Madras and at IIT-Guwahati that it’s possible that the quality of online education both for — undergraduate (UG) in certain disciples and in Master’s programmes —- has been good and that numbers can be quite big,” he said.

However, he added, purely online cannot be the solution since the real education at IITs doesn’t happen in just classrooms, it rather happens in hostels and outside classrooms. “We all know that classroom learning is just a small component of education at IITs. So how do we capture all of that and yet increase the numbers and support online education. There are ways of making this hybrid, like bringing students on campus for some time if not for the whole duration, the same existing infrastructure could be used for larger number of students. With this, I believe it is possible to give students that experience, if not 100 per cent, but to a significant level for sure,” Prof Jalihal said.

Secondly, talking about 10,000 fellowships under PMRF, means 2,000 quality PhDs every year. “My only criticism of that is whether we will be able to find 2,000 quality PhDs year-on-year. The first generation IITs admit around 400 PhDs and IISc does a similar number. Whether people who come for PhDs is because of increased scholarships amount of Rs 70,000-80,000 a month, which is like thousand dollars per month, which even compared to US universities is not less. Whether money alone will get the numbers, this has to be seen and tested,” he said.

Bhaskar Ramamurthi, mentor director of IIT-Palakkad and former director of IIT-Madras, said that the numbers have to be increased while maintaining the quality of education. “Use of new technology like AI can be made to offer courses in hybrid mode, which maybe won’t be the same as a four-year residential programme at an IIT, but it could be a different kind of experience of value and learning,” said Ramamurthi.

‘Need to understand why number of PhDs dropping’

Speaking about expanding research programmes, Prof Ramamurthi asked, “Does everyone have to do a PhD?”

“Certainly, in many disciplines, as years go by, many bright young students are feeling that these 5-6 years of research that go by are taking them out of the fast-moving learning environment. That things are moving fast, and they won’t be in a better position doing a PhD. This thought is crossing many people’s minds. So, we have to keep looking what young students and faculty need to do with their time and effort. We have to rethink if these five-year PhD programmes are the only roadmap or is there any other roadmap. I think it’s important to figure out especially in the context of the way technology is moving, it’s not always happening through labs in academic institutions,” he said.

Adding to it, he said IITs need to use their autonomy to discover new pathways to enable young people to get excited and learn.

“This doesn’t mean we do something sudden and make huge changes in the PhD Programmes, but the very fact that there are not many people coming into the programme for the numbers are dropping shows that we can’t just make lazy assumptions that people just want to make money that’s why they are not coming into research, we have to understand why is it so and if we can weave in different alternatives for the same,” he said.

If IITs use their autonomy to keep discovering new ways of maintaining their quality, discovery, innovation and invention and the deepest possible understanding of the phenomena around them or the technology around at the fundamental level, he said IITs would be in good shape, which should be their focus.