NITK Director Interview: At 22%, we have maximum girl students among NITs

Shiksha got a chance to interact with Director, NITK Surathkal, Prof Karanam Umamaheshwar Rao, wherein he discusses the factors he focused on to improve their overall rankings, new courses and more. Read the complete interview below.

The National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK), also known as NITK Surathkal, had recently been in news for securing 10th spot in engineering institute rankings and 32nd position in the overall rankings in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF 2021) released recently.  The institute obtained a cumulative score of 64.19 out of 100 and has improved its performance over 2020 by 2.89 points. In 2020, it was placed 13th in the engineering institute rankings and 33rd in the overall rankings. In fact, NITK Surathkal and NIT Tiruchirappalli are the only two NITs that have found a place in the top 10 list of engineering institutes. 

Shiksha got a chance to interact with Director, NITK Surathkal, Prof Karanam Umamaheshwar Rao, wherein he discusses the factors he focused on to improve their overall rankings, new courses and more. Read the complete interview below.

Q. NITK Surathkal ranked 10th in engineering and 32nd in the overall rankings in the NIRF 2021. Which factors led to the achievement?

A. Nothing has happened all of a sudden. This has been a long and collective effort. When I took the charge as the Director in July 2017, NITK was at 23rd rank in engineering. Before joining here, I was with IIT Kharagpur for over three decades as a faculty. I had studied in detail about the parameters and how IIT Kharagpur had been performing against the other NITs which have really been ranked above. That gave me a clarity about the parameters that can be doable. We identified some of the salient parameters that could directly influence our rankings. We focused on the number and quality of publications, financial resources and utilisation such as creating facilities for students, which include laboratories, libraries, etc, and faculty-student ratio.

Apart from this, I renamed the campus placement section to career development centre. The purpose of renaming the centre was to give the required training to the students before they take the placement on campus and to introduce them to various companies through the lectures given by their representatives/personnel. We are not preparing students for one particular company. We focus on all parameters that a company would like to see in a student like their communication skills, basic engineering skills, behavioural skills, performing skills, etc. We also encourage our students to go for higher studies abroad and have a connect with the institutions. We also organise programmes to develop continuous contact with our alumni through our career development centre.

We also focused on perception. Perception is something which is still enigmatic for me. The reason is that I have put in a lot of efforts in the facelift of the campus like maintaining the campus well, trying to create a dynamic and informative website, improved facilities on the campus by creating children’s park, recreation club but that didn’t really give as much as I really thought. Perception is one part where we are trying to improve our visibility across the country and the world. Also, NITK is the only institution in India that has taken HEFA (Higher Education Funding Agency) loan from the government to the tune of Rs 80 crore for developing central research facility at the institute. We are paying back the loan at 10 per cent rate of interest annually from what we are generating through various research projects.

Q.  NITK Surathkal has just introduced a new four-year BTech course in artificial intelligence. What is the admission criteria, seat intake and fee structure for the course?

A. We do not have any programme which is not through the national selection. A student has to obtain a valid JEE Main score to get admission in four-year BTech artificial intelligence course. We will take 60 students for the course and fee structure would be the same like regular four-year BTech courses.

Q. Industry interaction is being stressed by the AICTE and companies that recruit. What are the steps being taken by the institute in this direction?

A. COVID has put down the spirit with which we were really taking up industry interaction. From this academic year, we have started self-financed PG programmes which are tailor-made for the industry. We have also got clearance from Board of Governors (BoG) for the self-financed research programme for inviting industry executives and trying to have a regular contact with the industries to deliver lectures to the students.

Q. Can you please share details if the institute has collaborated with universities in India or abroad?

A. We have a very big list of collaborations. We have signed agreements with IIT Bombay, IIT Madras and many foreign universities in Japan, South Korea, Germany and the United States. Apart from this, NITK is offering many programmes in various disciplines through the Government of India’s Global Initiative for Academic Networks (GIAN) programme.

Q. Does the institute help students with internships? If yes, how?

A. Career is not just picking up a job from any company coming on the campus. We are encouraging students to take up internships as early as in second year through our career development centre and pre-placement offers come out of internships. Many big companies retain candidates by offering them pre-placement offers during internship.

Q. What is the proportion of male to female enrolment at NITK Surathkal? What steps have you taken to increase the enrolment of girl students at the institute?

A. I think among all NITs in the country, NITK has the highest number of 22 per cent undergraduate girl students on the campus. But I think the government’s requirement is close to 25 per cent. The enrolment of girl students in engineering institutes can increase if we open more circuit departments in the sense that any engineering discipline with computer science or electronics or IT or artificial intelligence as girls have a very clear choice.

Q. Are you planning to introduce any new courses in the coming future?

A. We plan to introduce a five-year integrated programme in programming and data structures, basic physics integrated programmes. We are also planning a three-year Bsc programme in programming and data structures in line with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 with exit options. But starting a programme is a slow process. It goes through various alterations.

Q. Many colleges have decided to conduct the new academic session in hybrid mode. How are you planning to approach the upcoming academic session?

A. We are open to hybrid mode of teaching and learning, but we want to go slow and steady and step by step. Right now, we have just allowed research scholars on the campus and by the end of this month, we would be allowing BTech third year students to attend offline classes, but students will be given a choice between online and offline learning. We are taking calculative steps in opening the institution.

Q. Many colleges and universities are extending a helping hand to those students who have lost one or both of their parents to COVID. Are you planning to give any fee concession/waiver to such students?

A. Fee is one thing which is not in the hands of the institution. So, what we have are hostel, general maintenance, mess and miscellaneous expenses. There is a great drop in these expenses. Also, we can’t tinker with the tution fee.

Q. What would be your message for future engineering aspirants in terms of choosing a college?

A. I leave this decision to parents. Today, everything is digital. Students and parents should first go through the website, check everything be it placements statistics, academics, rankings, admission process, courses, fee structure and then come to a conclusion.

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