IIT engineers will be allowed entry into PhD to solve faculty crunch

IIT council is scheduled to have a meeting next week, in which the HRD ministry will propose a new research scholar scheme to identify 1,000 bright BTech students from premier engineering colleges, like IITs, to be given direct admission into PhD programmes.

"BTech passouts from IITs who have job experience and are interested in research should be enrolled in PhD," a source told TNN.

The reason behind this step is the increasing faculty crunch that IITs are facing, despite around 2,000 PhDs coming out of IITs each year. "When it comes to hiring teachers, IITs are very selective. The need is to improve the quality of PhD and attract bright IIT students to undertake research," a source said.

Government is also considering hefty scholarships to students who opt for PhD after engineering. "It will not be big enough to compensate the salary a IIT student gets after BTech but it will probably be among the highest," one official said.

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