New IITs: Low student intake, delayed expansion, rising costs, finds CAG

New Delhi: An audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of eight “second generation” Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), all established in 2008-09 has revealed major gaps in their performance including delayed infrastructure creation, low generation of funds and inability to raise the intake of students and faculty.

While they managed to admit just a third of their initial target for student intake in six years, delays in infrastructure addition resulted in capital costs shooting up 135%. Their records on placement and admission of students from marginalised backgrounds remained poor. The audit considers data till March 2019.

The eight are IIT Bhubaneswar (IITBBS), IIT Gandhinagar (IITGN), IIT Hyderabad (IITH), IIT Indore (IITI), IIT Jodhpur (IITJ), IIT Mandi, IIT Patna (IITP) and IIT Ropar (IITRPR).

Here’s what the CAG report says about the eight IITs.

8 IITs: Slow creation of infrastructure

A major problem the new IITs faced was the slow allotment of land. While IIT Hyderabad, Indore, Jodhpur and Patna were allotted land in time, the remaining four were forced to operate from temporary premises even after a decade of the establishment.

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Infrastructure creation at these IITs took place in two phases — Phase I from 2012 and Phase II over the 2014-19 period. By March 2019, the eight IITs’ joint record stood thus: over 30% of the Phase I projects were still incomplete.

Given below is the status of phased construction by 2019.

Construction of infrastructure and facilities such as laboratories and hostels began from 2012 but did not grow as per plan. IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIT Ropar, IIT Gandhinagar and IIT Indore saw significant delays in the completion of projects — 56 months in the case of IITH and 37 months for Indore. The delays caused massive ballooning of costs. According to the CAG report, the capital outlay grew from Rs 6,080 crore to Rs 14,332 crore — an increase of 135.724 % — the project time period more than doubled as well, from six years to 13 years.

IIT Hyderabad

“The non-achievement of targets of infrastructure development in a timely manner affected student intake in all eight IITs, along with the timely installation of equipment and proper fund management,” says the report.

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BTech, MTech, PhD: 33% of target intake

In the first six years of establishment, the eight IITs admitted only 6,224 students against the original target of 18,880 — only 32.9%.

For postgraduate and PhD programmes, vacancies were seen in all eight IITs. This, according to the report, is further impacting the institutions’ ability to attract students. Also, the ministry had permitted an increase in the sanction of faculty positions linked with the increase in students, in a 1: 10 ratio. But despite recruitment, seven of eight IITs had 5 to 36 percent posts vacant. Speedy intake of students was difficult because it would increase the workload on teachers and impact quality.

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Research, innovation at new IITs

The CAG noted that the non-government funded sponsored projects were low in all IITs. Also, though a number of patents were filed, no patents were obtained in five IITs during 2014-19. This indicated the need for improvement in the outcome of research activities.

Also, the representation of students belonging to reserved categories, Schedule Castes (SC) Scheduled Tribes ( ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) in PG and PhD programmes was low in all eight IITs. As per the central reservation policy, 15% seats are reserved for SC, 7.5% for ST and 27% for OBC students.

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As per the report: "In PG courses, the shortfall in SC student intake ranged up to 30 percent (IITGN) and that of ST students ranged between seven per cent (IIT Ropar) and 69 percent (IIT Gandhinagar). Similarly, in PhD courses, the shortfall ranged from 25 percent (IIT Hyderabad) to 75 per cent (IIT Ropar) in respect of SC students and 65 per cent (IIT Bhubaneswar) to 100 percent (IIT Jodhpur) in respect of ST students."

This shows that “the benefits of education at premier technical institutes are not reaching these students”, said the report.

IIT Jodhpur academic bloc (Source: IIT Jodhpur)

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IIT Placements

The CAG report also found that several IITs were struggling with placing graduates in jobs. While IIT Indore managed a placement record of over 95%, five out of the eight IITs had placed less than 75% students over 2014-19.

The table below shows how the eight IITs fared in campus placements over 2014-2019.

“IITGN and IITH need to improve on the placement prospects of their students,” said the CAG report. “MoE [ministry of education] stated (September 2021) that IITP and IITBBS are making efforts to increase the placements of students. However, no specific reply was received in case of [the] remaining six IITs.”

Financial management

The audit further noticed that the IITs were not generating revenues on their own and that the proportion of internal receipts to the recurring expenditure of the IITs was very low. This results in the IITs depending on government grants to meet recurring expenditures.