History of Indian Institute of Technology

IITs, popularly known as Indian Institute of Technologies, are autonomous institutions for higher education in India. Presently, the country runs 23 IITs, and the administration of these highly competitive institutions is taken care of by a common IIT Council that comes under the Ministry of Human Resource Development. As of 2017, the total number of seats in all IITs is 11,032.

For decades, getting into an IIT has been the dream of every engineer, as the institution was formed to train engineers and scientists. The courses provided by IITs are governed by All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), which was established in 1945.

Foundation

The first IIT was established in 1951 at Kharagpur, followed by IIT Bombay (1958), IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur (1959) and IIT Delhi (1961) – all through a foreign collaboration. In 1961, the Parliament passed the Institute of Technology Act, declaring these institutions as establishments of national importance.

Almost three decades later in 1994, IIT Guwahati was established and in 2001, Roorkee University was converted to IIT Roorkee. Between 2008 and 2012, nine more IITs were established and seven came up during 2015-2016.

Admission

The IITs had a common admission process for undergraduate admissions, called IIT-JEE, which was replaced by IIT-JEE Advanced in 2013. The post-graduate level programme that awards Masters of Technology, Masters of Science degrees in engineering, is administered by the older IITs (Kharagpur, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur, Delhi, Dhanbad, Roorkee, Varanasi and Guwahati). Admissions for M.Tech and MS are done on the basis of Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE).

In addition to Bachelor of Technology, M.Tech and MS programmes, IITs also award other graduate degrees such as M.Sc in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, MBA, PhD, etc. Admission to these programmes is done through Common Admission Test (CAT), Joint Admission Test for Masters (JAM) and Common Entrance Examination for Design (CEED).

The medium of instruction in all IITs is English and all these have public libraries for the use of students. The classes are generally held between 7.30 am and 5.30 pm.

Compared to other engineering colleges in the country, each IIT receives higher grants that vary between USD 18-26 million annually. Other sources of funds include student fees and research funding from industry and contributions from former students. The IITs subsidize undergraduate student fees by approximately 80 per cent and provide scholarships to all M. Tech students and Research Scholars.

List of IITs

Name of Institute Short Name State

IIT Kharagpur IITKGP West Bengal

IIT Bombay IITB Maharashtra

IIT Kanpur IITK Uttar Pradesh

IIT Madras IITM Tamil Nadu

IIT Delhi IITD Delhi

IIT Guwahati IITG Assam

IIT Roorkee IITR Uttarakhand

IIT Bhubaneshwar IITBBS Odisha

IIT Hyderabad IITH Telangana

IIT Jodhpur IITJ Rajasthan