The Union government said it has no proposal to set up more Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the country and is currently focused on improving the international rankings of the existing institutes. The information was provided by Minister of State (MoS) for Education, Subhas Sarkar in a written response to questions raised in the upper House of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.
Asked whether the government has any plans to set up an IIT in each state of the country, Sarkar said there are a total of 23 IITs functioning in India at present. However, as of now there is no proposal to establish IITs in the remaining states, which includes names such as Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, among others.
Furthermore, with reference to the performance of Indian Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) in the latest QS World University Rankings 2024, MoS Sarkar replied, that the Ministry of Education (MoE) has conducted a series of hand–holding workshops/discussions with HEIs and industry stakeholders in order to improve their visibility in the global rankings.
These workshops and discussions provided mentorship regarding weightage of various parameters in QS ranking process, data submission deadlines, changes in the upcoming ranking methodologies, among other things.
Sarkar further stated that the University Grants Commission (UGC) has taken several initiatives to bring the Indian higher education system at par with global standards. These include guidelines for internationalisation of higher education, regulations on academic collaboration between Indian and foreign HEIs, along with implementation of various recommendations of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
IITs dominated the top 10 positions in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2023. However, in the global QS University index, many of these institutes failed to keep in the top 200.