New IITs v/s Old NITs

By Debarati Majumder

Based on the JEE Main and Advanced 2017 scores and ranks, admission is offered to different academic programs at  the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), ISM (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad, Indian Institutes of Information Technology( IIITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the GFTIs (Government Funded Technical Institutes).

However, qualifying in either JEE Mains or JEE Advanced examinations does not guarantee admission in any of these colleges.  Each college / academic program has additional eligibility requirements along with the category wise intake capacity.

This year, the Seat allocation for academic programs offered by 92 colleges will be done jointly through JoSAA (Joint Seat Allocation Authority) for the academic year 2017-18. The process of joint seat allocation will likely commence through a common web portal from June 15, 2017.

Understand Joint seat allocation for IITs, NITs, IIITs & GFTIs. Also, check out the Engineering Institutes Admitting Students Through Joint Seat Allocation 2017 here!

Till the JoSAA counselling begins, let’s discuss and solve the confusion regarding which set of college is better – The new IITs or the Old NITs.

According to what I believe, IITs are superior than NITs being different in the following ways:

Global Recognition of Brand IITs:  IITs have always featured in the global chart of engineering colleges from India whereas NITs do not appear in the same list.

Better Student Quality in IITs: Higher cut-off marks during selection process at IITs draw better quality of students in IITs rather than NITs. Superior student intake results into excellent placement for IITians.

Better Faculty in IITs : IITs have one of the best engineering faculty in India. However IITs established recently, are undergoing a terrible shortage of faculty. IIT-Hyderabad has a requirement of 85 faculty members while it currently has 74 faculty members.

IIT-Bhubaneswar has total 50 faculty members against its requirement of 62 members. Owing to this serious concern, most IITs have already started aggressive communication campaigns across the country to reach out to post docs and graduate students of top universities worldwide. NITs have also been facing shortage of quality faculty for a while now.

Stronger Academic Collaboration in IITs : IITs undertake greater number of projects with esteemed institutions like ISRO, DRDO, BARC etc.  NITs research work is not at the same magnitude of IITs.

Better Infrastructure at IITs: IITs have better Infrastructure with spacious campus, good research labs etc. The popularity of IITs among Engineering aspirants is highly driven by its educational and college environment. The ambience of IITs campus is both inspiring and vibrating with perfectly planned and aligned layout for the whole campus, libraries, and hostels.

NITs are definitely second to IITs in terms of infrastructure. They also have great computing facilities.

Better Placements at IITs: Top Notch companies prefer IITians over NITians and also salaries offered are well differentiated. Going through last 5 years placement records of both, the average pay package offered to any IITian (B.Tech) is anywhere between Rs 43,750 and 48,000 monthly compared with average pay package offered to any student from NIT in (B.Tech) which is anywhere between Rs 40,000 and 42,000 monthly. However, there is a lot of variance among the salary packages depending on ability of candidates and academic performances.

Conclusion:

The Indian Institutes of Technology remain a top brand, but their standing as centres of excellence can no longer be stated as convincingly with inclusion of new IITs. The brand has also taken a hit with the increase in the number of IITs. There is a definite distinction between the “new” and “old” IITs.

The demographic dividend and our target of achieving 30% enrolment in higher education till 2020 implies that we should not have just some IITs in order to cash in on IIT brand name. The lack of domestic competition has resulted in depreciation in the output of the IITs both in terms of research output and overall grooming of the students. The core industry demands have remained low which has resulted in engineering students from IIT & NIT ending up as investment bankers and management consultants. The big packages that IITians bag every year is just one side of the story.

The other side of the story is the IITs enjoy media publicity images for the proliferation of entrepreneurs out of IITs. Overall, brand IIT, though still on a high pedestal, is on the way downhill. We need to make NITs more strong in terns of faculty, infrastructure and placement so that NITs give IITs a run for the much applauded IIT BRAND.

Take a look at the list of IITs and NITs below:

Indian Institutes Of Technology (IITs):

1. Indian Institute of Technology BHU
2. Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar
3. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
4. Indian Institute of Technology Chhattisgarh
5. Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
6. Indian Institute of Technology Dharwad
7. Indian Institute of Technology (ISM Dhanbad)
8. Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
9. Indian Institute of Technology Goa
10. Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati
11. Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad
12. Indian Institute of Technology Indore
13. Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur
14. Indian Institute of Technology Jammu
15. Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
16. Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
17. Indian Institute of Technology Madras
18. Indian Institute of Technology Mandi
19. Indian Institute of Technology Palghat/Palakkad
20. Indian Institute of Technology Patna
21. Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
22. Indian Institute of Technology Ropar
23. Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati

 National Institutes Of Technology (NITs):

1. National Institute of Technology Agartala, Tripura
2. Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology , Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh
3. National Institute of Technology Arunachal Pradesh
4. Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh
5. National Institute of Technology Calicut, Kerela
6. National Institute of Technology, Delhi
7. National Institute of Technology Durgapur, West Bengal
8. National Institute of Technology, Goa
9. National Institute of Technology Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh
10. Malviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, Rajasthan
11. B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology Jalandhar, Punjab
12. National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur, Jharkhand
13. National Institute of Technology Kurukshetra, Haryana
14. National Institute of Technology, Manipur
15. National Institute of Technology, Meghalaya
16. National Institute of Technology, Mizoram
17. National Institute of Technology, Nagaland
18. Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology Nagpur, Maharashtra
19. National Institute of Technology Patna, Bihar
20. National Institute of Technology Puducherry
21. National Institute of Technology Raipur, Chhattisgarh
22. National Institute of Technology Rourkela, Odisha
23. National Institute of Technology Sikkim
24. National Institute of Technology Silchar, Assam
25. National Institute of Technology Hazartbal, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir
26. Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology Surat, Gujarat
27. National Institute of Technology Karnataka
28. National Institute of Technology Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu
29. National Institute of Technology, Uttrakhand
30. National Institute of Technology Warangal, Telangana
31. National Institute of Technology Andhra Pradesh

About the author:

Debarati Majumder is a Post Graduate in Biotechnology combined with a degree in Education from University Of Calcutta. She previously worked with Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India.