Fixing what's not broken: Don't meddle with IITs, experts tell UGC

Even before the controversy surrounding Delhi University’s Four-Year Undergraduate Programme simmers down, the University Grants Commission (UGC) is once again at logger-heads with Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) over their course material. [caption id=“attachment_1680095” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Indian Institute of Technology. Agencies[/caption] In its latest move, the commission has sent a directive to the IITs asking them to “align their courses and degrees with the ones recognised by the UGC.” According to this report in The Indian Express, members of the Anil Kakodkar committee, which was formed to maintain the autonomous status of the IITs, have lashed out at UGC and have asked for  the premier institutions to be “left alone.” This move by the UGC is bound to trigger a row as the IITs insist that they were set up under a separate Act of  the government and are therefore not governed by the UGC Act. “IITs are governed by an Act of Parliament. The intention was to give maximum autonomy to them. The IITs are the best educational institutes in the country at this point and they should just be left alone. It is entirely up to them to decide how they want to move forward. They are completely out of the ambit of the UGC and what is happening now isn’t right,” Anil Kakodkar, noted nuclear scientist who headed the committee, told The Indian Express_._ Constituted in 201o by the Union HRD ministry to recommend autonomy measures so that IITs could scale greater heights, the 11-member Kakodkar committee is miffed by the UGC move. “The sense of the committee was that IITs have complete academic autonomy. But what is happening now seems to be a counter-indication which we didn’t see then. To use a saying, why fix what isn’t broken,” Kakodkar said_._ In another order, the apex education regulator has also told the IITs that UGC’s approval is mandatory for opening or fixing the tenure of new degree programmes. This has drawn protests from IIT Kharagpur. The order means that if, for instance, an IIT wants to start a four-year undergraduate course, it will need the prior approval of the education regulator. Currently, 16 IITs across India function as “apex institutions for engineering education and research” under the HRD ministry. According to another report, the director of IIT Delhi, R K Shevgaonkar, has said the notification concerning aligning of courses has not been received by all IITs and has been sent to select institutes. The report said: “The UGC notification did not come up for discussion during the directors meeting with the President on August 22, 2014, but Shevgaonkar emphasised that if at all the UGC has an issue, it must take it up with the IIT Council and not write to all institutes individually.” Another committee member, T V Mohandas Pai, slammed UGC for trying to interfere in the “smooth” functioning of the IITs. The report in The Indian Express quoted him as saying: “The UGC should just keep off IITs as well as other top 15 per cent of the higher educational institutes in the country. The track record of the UGC is hardly great, it isn’t as if it has the brightest minds to be able to tell others what to do. The IITs have done very well left to themselves, their management has been great.”