These institutes are among the top-ranked engineering colleges in India and have one of the lowest acceptance rates for engineering institutes, of around 1 to 2 percent. In 2020, National Institutional Ranking Framework ranked twenty four NITs in the top 200 in engineering category.[4] The language of instruction is English at all these institutes.[5][6] As of 2021, the total number of seats for undergraduate programs is 23,997 and for postgraduate programs 13,664 in all the 31 NITs put together.[7][8]
History
REC Allahabad was converted into NIT Allahabad in 2001.
During the second five-year plan (1956–60) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. The Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) were established by the central government to mimic the IITs at a regional level and act as benchmarks for the other colleges in that state. The admission used to be highly selective. Students topping the respective state's 12th board exam could be admitted at the REC of their state. Thus, 17 RECs were established from 1959 onwards in each of the major states. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. The government opened 9 RECs in 1960, 2 on average in each region, as follows:
These were large-sized institutions judged by the standards then prevailing in the country. The considerations that weighed in this decision were:
A large-sized college would be more efficient than the equivalent small colleges, the proposed colleges have to meet the additional requirements of the country as a whole and for that purpose should have to function on an all-India basis. Therefore, the smaller they are in number and the larger in size, the better, and for the same reason their location is important from an all-India point of view.
The RECs were jointly operated by the central government and the concerned state government. Non-recurring expenditures and expenditures for post-graduate courses during the REC period were borne by the central government while recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses was shared equally by central and state governments. They were considered to be the best government engineering colleges after the IITs in India even before their upgrade to National Institutes of Technology.
The success of the technology-based industry led to high demand for technical and scientific education. Due to the enormous costs and infrastructure involved in creating globally respected Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), in 2002 Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) Minister Murli Manohar Joshi decided to upgrade RECs to "National Institutes of Technology" (NITs) instead of creating IITs. The central government controls NITs and provides all funding. In 2002, all RECs became NITs.
Bihar Engineering College, Patna (estd. 1886), third oldest engineering college in India, was converted to NIT Patna in 2007.
The upgrade was designed along the lines of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) after it was concluded that RECs had potential as proven by the success of their alumni and their contributions in the field of technical education and that they were on par with the IITs. Subsequently, funding and autonomy for NITs increased, and they award degrees that have raised their graduates' perceived value. These changes implemented recommendations of the "High Powered Review Committee" (HPRC). The HPRC, chaired by R.A. Mashelkar, submitted its report entitled "Strategic Road Map for Academic Excellence of Future RECs" in 1998.
By 2005, MHRD issued NIT status to 3 more colleges, located at Patna (Bihar Engineering College, a 110-year-old college), Raipur (Government Engineering College), and Agartala (Tripura Engineering College). Based on the request of state governments and feasibility, future NITs are either converted from existing institutes or can be freshly created. In 2010, the government announced setting up ten more new NITs in the remaining states/territories, leading to a total of 30 NITs. This would lead to every state in India having its own NIT.
With the technology-based industry's continuing growth, the government decided to upgrade twenty National Institutes of Technology to full-fledged technical universities. Parliament passed enabling legislation, the National Institutes of Technology Act in 2007 and took effect on 15 August of that year. The target is to fulfill the need for quality manpower in the field of engineering, science, and technology and to provide consistent governance, fee structure, and rules across the NITs. The law designates each NIT an Institute of National Importance (INI).[9]
The Parliament of India on 1 August 2016 passed a bill to establish the 31st as well as the newest NIT, NIT Andhra Pradesh, on a day members of parliament of the ruling Telugu Desam Party from the state staged a protest to demand special category status. The National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research (Amendment) Bill, 2016 was passed by Rajya Sabha by voice vote. The bill was passed in Lok Sabha on 21 July 2016.[10]
Institutes
NITs and locations, sorted by date of establishment[11]
Nominee of the Department of the Higher / Technical Education of the respective state government.
Head of another technical institution in the region or an eminent technologist to be nominated by Central Govt.
Director, IIT (in the region) or his nominee.
Nominee of the UGC not below the rank of a Deputy Secretary.
Nominee of the AICTE not below the rank of an Advisor.
An alumnus of the institute from amongst alumni in education/industry to be nominated by Board of Governors.
Two representatives representing large, medium and small scale industries to be nominated by Central Government.
One Professor and one Assistant Professor of the institute by rotation.
The Director serves under the Board of Governors and is the school's chief academic and executive officer. Academic policies are decided by its Senate, which is composed of some professors and other representatives. The Senate controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations, and results. Senate committees examine specific academic matters. The teaching, training, and research activities of various departments of the institute are periodically reviewed to maintain educational standards. The Director is the ex officio Chairman of the Senate. The deputy director is subordinate to the Director. Together they manage the Deans, Heads of Departments, Registrar, President of the Students' Council, and Chairman of the Hall Management Committee. Deans and Heads of Departments in NITs are administrative postings rather than career paths. Faculty members serve as Deans and Heads of Departments for limited periods, typically 2 to 3 years, then returning to regular faculty duties. The Registrar is the chief administrative officer and overviews day-to-day operations. Below the Head of Department (HOD), are the various faculty members (professors, assistant professors, and lecturers). The Warden serves under the Chairman of the Hall Management Committee.[16]
The National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research (NITSER) Act, 2007 was enacted by the Parliament of India to declare India's National Institutes of Technology as Institutes of National Importance. The Act received the assent of the President of India on 5 June 2007 and became effective on Independence Day, 2007. The Act is the second law for technical education institutions after the Institutes of Technology Act of 1961.[17][18]
The Council of NITSER is the supreme governing body of India's National Institutes of Technology (NIT) system. The Council of NITSER consists of chairmen, directors of all NITs along with the government nominees from various sectors with the Minister of Education as the Chairman of the council. The Council of NITSER is the highest decision-making body in the NIT fraternity and is answerable only to the Government of India. The Council of NITSER is expected to meet regularly and take steps conducive for maximum growth of the NITs as whole in the near future.[19][3]
The NITs along with the IITs receive comparatively higher grants than other engineering colleges in India. Average NIT funding increased to ₹100 crores ($15.4 million) by the year 2011. On average, each NIT also receives ₹ 20-25 crore ($3-3.8 million) under World Bank funded Technical Education Quality Improvement Program (TEQIP I and TEQIP II). Other sources of funds include student fees and research funding from industry and contributions from the alumni. The faculty-to-student ratio in the NITs is between 1:7 and 1:9. The cost borne by undergraduate students is around ₹ 250,000 (~$3600) per annum.[20] After students from SC and ST categories, physically challenged students will now be the beneficiaries of fee waiver at the NITs in India.
The various NITs function autonomously, and their special status as Institutes of National Importance facilitates the smooth running of NITs, virtually free from both regional as well as a student politics. Such autonomy means that NITs can create their own curricula and adapt rapidly to the changes in educational requirements, free from bureaucratic hurdles. The medium of instruction in all NITs is English. The classes are usually held between 8:30 am and 5:30 pm, though there are some variations within each NIT. All the NITs have public libraries for the use of their students. In addition to a collection of prescribed books, the libraries have sections for fiction and other literary genres. Electronic libraries allow students access to online journals and other periodicals through the AICTE-INDEST consortium, an initiative by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.[21] Students also have access to IEEE documents and journals.
The academic policies of each NIT are decided by its Senate. This comprises all professors of the NIT and student representatives. Unlike many western universities that have an elected senate, the NITs have an academic senate. It controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations and results, and appoints committees to look into specific academic matters. The teaching, training and research activities of the institute are periodically reviewed by the senate to maintain educational standards. The Director of NIT is the ex-officio Chairman of the Senate.
Stringent faculty recruitment and industry collaboration also contribute to NIT success. Faculty other than lecturers must have a DTech and relevant teaching and industry experience. Existing faculty who do not meet these criteria enroll under a Quality Improvement Programme (QIP) at IITs and IISc.
All the NITs follow the credits system of performance evaluation, with a proportional weighting of courses based on their importance. The total marks (usually out of 100) form the basis of grades, with a grade value (out of 10) assigned to a range of marks. Sometimes, relative grading is done considering the overall performance of the whole class. For each semester, the students are graded on a scale of 0 to 10 based on their performance, by taking a weighted average of the grade points from all the courses, with their respective credit points. Each semester evaluation is done independently and then the weighted average overall semesters is used to calculate the cumulative grade point average (CGPA).
Undergraduate education
The Bachelor of Technology (BTech) degree is the most common undergraduate degree in the NITs in terms of student enrollment. The BTech course is based on a 4-year program with eight semesters, while the Dual Degree and Integrated courses are 5-year programs with ten semesters. In all NITs, the first year of BTech and Dual Degree courses are marked by a common course structure for all the students, though in some NITs, a single department introduction related course is also included. The common courses include the basics from most of the departments like Electronics, Mechanics, Chemistry, Electrical, and Physics. At the end of the first year, some NITs offer an option to the meritorious students to change departments on the basis of their performance in the first two semesters.[22] Few such changes ultimately take place as the criteria for them are usually strict, limited to the most meritorious students. Few NITs also offer 5-year Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) and 4-year Bachelor of Science (BSc) degrees.
From the second year onwards, the students study subjects exclusively from their respective departments. In addition to these, the students have to take compulsory advanced courses from other departments in order to broaden their education. Separate compulsory courses from humanities and social sciences department, and sometimes management courses are also enforced. In the last year of their studies, most of the students are placed into industries and organisations via the placement process of the respective NIT, though some students opt out of this either when going for higher studies or when they take up jobs by applying to the companies directly.
14 NITs, including NIT Allahabad,[23] NIT Bhopal,[24] NIT Calicut,[25] NIT Hamirpur,[26] NIT Jaipur,[27] NIT Jalandhar,[28] NIT Kurukshetra,[29] NIT Rourkela,[30] NIT Silchar,[31] NIT Karnataka,[32] NIT Warangal,[33] NIT Durgapur,[34] NIT Tiruchirappalli,[35] and NIT Agartala[36] have separate departments or schools of management offering master's degrees in management or business administration. Additionally, NIT Arunachal Pradesh also offers an Online MBA program and an M.Tech. in Appropriate Technology and Entrepreneurship, which is perhaps the only one among the NITs.[37]
Bachelors-Masters dual degrees
The NITs also offer an unconventional BTech and MTech integrated educational program called "Dual Degree". It integrates undergraduate and postgraduate studies in selected areas of specialisation. It is completed in five years as against six years in conventional BTech (four years) followed by an MTech (two years). Integrated Master of Science programs is also offered at few NITs which integrates the Undergraduate and Postgraduate studies in Science streams in a single degree program against the conventional University system. These programs were started to allow NITians to complete postgraduate studies from NIT rather than having to go to another institute. NIT Rourkela and NIT Agartala have such system.
Doctoral degrees
The NITs also offer the Doctor of Technology degree (D.Tech.) as part of their doctoral education program. In it, the candidates are given a topic of academic interest by the professor or have to work on a consultancy project given by the industries. The duration of the program is usually unspecified and depends on the specific discipline. DTech candidates have to submit a dissertation as well as provide an oral defence for their thesis. Teaching Assistantships (TA) and Research Assistantships (RA) are often provided. The NITs, along with IITs and IISc, account for nearly 80% of all engineering PhDs in India.[38]
Campus life
NITs provide on-campus housing to students, research scholars, and faculty members. Students live in hostels, also known as halls, throughout their college life.
Faculties and researchers from IITs, ISM and IISc organize occasional technical seminars and research labs.
Some NITs individually conduct elections to elect student body a general secretary and vice president. These representatives are generally responsible for communicating with the college management and media, organising festivals, and also for various development programmes in their college. Some NITs (such as NIT Rourkela, NIT Surat, and NIT Nagpur) have recently adopted online voting process. The committee which monitors the flow of funds has a student body representative. This committee also includes the chairman of board, an MHRD representative, and NIT professors. Due to some disturbance in the voting process, student elections were stopped in 2008 in SVNIT, Surat. They were, however, resumed in 2015 and are continuing hence.
Disciplinary committee
The Disciplinary Committee (DISCO) consists of the Director, the student affairs officer, and professors. and reports to MHRD. DISCO regulates student activities and combats student harassment and illegitimate student politics. After a series of harassment incidents, all NITs took strict measures especially to protect first-year students.
Extra-curricular activities
Popular extra curricular activities include National Cadet Corps (NCC), National Service Scheme (NSS), Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE), and annual college festivities. Students at NITs run hobby clubs such as Linux User Groups (LUGs), music clubs, debate clubs, literary clubs, and web design teams. Students also publish campus magazines which showcase student creativity and journalism. The first Linux User group in India, Bharat Linux User Group, was formed in early 1997 at NIT Surat (SVNIT). Students conduct regular quizzes and cultural programs. They also present research papers and participate in national level technical festivals at IITs, IISc and NITs. Most NITs promote entrepreneurship by creating on-campus incubation centers under the STEP program.
All NITs organise annual technical festivals, typically lasting three or four days. The technical festivals are Avishkar (NIT Allahabad), Technosearch (NIT Bhopal), Tathva (NIT Calicut), Terratechnica (NIT Delhi), Gyanith (NIT Puducherry), Aarohan (NIT Durgapur), Nimbus (NIT Hamirpur), Sphinx (NIT Jaipur), TechNITi (NIT Jalandhar), Ojass (NIT Jamshedpur), Techspardha (NIT Kurukshetra), AXIS (NIT Nagpur), Corona (NIT Patna), Aavartan (NIT Raipur), Innovision (NIT Rourkela), Tecnoesis (NIT Silchar), Techvaganza (NIT Srinagar), MindBend (NIT Surat), Engineer (NIT Karnataka), Pragyan (NIT Tiruchirappalli), Technozion (NIT Warangal), Technival (NIT Goa), Morphosis (NIT Mizoram), Cognitia (NIT Meghalaya), Technovya (NIT Nagaland), Addovedi (NIT Arunachal Pradesh), AAYAM (NIT Agartala), Cliffesto (NIT Uttarakhand) and Abhiyantran (NIT Sikkim). Most of them are organised in the months of January or March. Pragyan (NIT Tiruchirappalli) the first student-run organization in the world and the third overall next only to London 2012 Summer Olympics and Manchester United to get an ISO 20121:2012 Certification for Sustainable Event Management.[39] It is also the largest in terms of Sponsorship amounts and also branded as a techno-management festival due to its emphasis on both technology and management.
Sanjiv Chaturvedi, IFS officer who has exposed many corruption cases in Haryana and AIIMS; received the Presidential reference a record four times and the Ramon Magsaysay award in 2015.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is a public technical university located in Powai in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee is a public technical university located in Roorkee, Haridwar district, Uttarakhand, India, headed by Director Ajit Kumar Chaturvedi. It was formerly known as University of Roorkee (1949–2001) and Thomason College of Civil Engineering (1847–1949). Established in 1847 in British India by the then lieutenant governor, Sir James Thomason, it is the oldest technical institution in Asia. It was given university status in 1949 and was converted into an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2001, thus becoming the seventh IIT to be declared. IIT Roorkee has 22 academic departments covering Engineering, Applied Sciences, Humanities & Social Sciences and Management programs with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.
National Institute of Technology Warangal is a public technical and research university located in Warangal, India. It is recognised as an Institute of National Importance by the Government of India. The foundation stone for this institute was laid by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on 1959, the first in the chain of 31 NITs in the country. The institute was renamed as the National Institute of Technology, Warangal in 2002.
Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur is a public technical university located at Shibpur, Howrah, West Bengal. It is recognised as an Institute of National Importance under MHRD by the Government of India. It is controlled by the Council of National Institutes of Technology. Established in 1856, it is the 4th oldest engineering college in India, after the College of Engineering, Guindy, Chennai (1794), IIT Roorkee (1847), and College of Engineering, Pune (1854).
Sardar Vallabhbhai National Institute of Technology Surat, is a public technical university established by the Parliament of India in 1961. It is one of 31 National Institutes of Technology in India recognized by the Government of India as an Institute of National Importance. It is the Anchor Institute for the Auto and Engineering sector and will be training the workforce. The project is also designated as the "Center of Excellence under Technical Education Quality Improvement Program" in water resources and flood management and is supported by the World Bank.
Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur is a public technical university located in Jaipur, India with emphasis on science, engineering and management.
National Institute of Technology Durgapur, formerly known as Regional Engineering College, Durgapur, is a public technical university in the city of Durgapur in West Bengal, India. Founded in 1960, it is one of India's oldest technical universities. It is located in a campus of 187 acres (0.75 km²).
Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology Bhopal is a public technical university located in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is part of a group of publicly funded institutions in India known as National Institutes of Technology. It is named after the Independent India's first Minister of Education, scholar and independence activist Abul Kalam Azad who is commonly remembered as Maulana Azad.
National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, formerly Regional Engineering College, Rourkela is a publicly funded institute of higher learning for engineering, science and technology located in the steel city of Rourkela, Odisha, India. It is one of the 31 National Institutes of Technology in India and has been recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the National Institutes of Technology Act, 2007. It is ranked 16 in the NIRF Rankings 2020 of Indian engineering universities.
National Institute of Technology, Raipur is a public technical and research university located in Raipur, India. Founded in 1956 with two engineering disciplines, the university focuses exclusively on science, technology, engineering, and architecture.
National Institute of Technology Hamirpur is a public technical university located in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, India. It is one of the thirty one National Institutes of Technology established, administered and funded by MHRD. NIT Hamirpur offers a comprehensive curriculum for undergraduate, graduate and doctorate studies in various fields of Architecture, engineering, pure sciences and humanities.
During the second five-year plan (1956–60) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. To ensure enough supply of trained personnel to meet the demand for these projects, a decision was taken to start the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), at the rate of one per each major state, which can churn out graduates with good engineering merit. Thus, seventeen RECs were established from 1959 onwards in each of the major states. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. All the 20 institutes now offer degree courses at various bachelors, masters and doctorate levels in various branches of engineering and technology. The entire non-recurring expenditure and expenditure for post-graduate courses during the REC times were borne by the central government. As regards in the REC system the entire recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses, the same was shared by the central government and the state government on 50:50 basis. However, after becoming National Institutes of Technology (NITs) the entire funding is managed by the center now. REC system served well but as time passed some state governments showed lack of responsibility to take them in right direction. Following the long-standing demand for more Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) the then Minister of Human Resource Development Murali Manoher Joshi decided to upgrade the RECs to NITs. In 2003 all RECs were upgraded to NITs and central government took control to run these Institutes.
The National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Act, 2007 was enacted by the Parliament of India to declare India's National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST) and Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) as Institutes of National Importance. The former Act received the assent of the President of India on 5 June 2007 and became effective on Independence Day, 2007. The National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Act, 2007 is the second law for technical education institutions after the Indian Institutes of Technology Act of 1961.
National Institute of Technology Jamshedpur, is an Institute of National Importance located at Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India. Established as a Regional Institute of Technology on 15 August 1960, it was upgraded to National Institute of Technology (NIT) on 27 December 2002 with the status of a Deemed University. It is one of the 31 NITs in India, and as such is directly under the control of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). It is the third in the chain of 8 NITs established as a part of the Second Five Year Plan (1956–61) by the Government of India.
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India has the largest numbers of engineers as well as the largest number of engineering education institutes and infrastructure in the world. As of 2021, India annually produces one million engineering graduates. India's technical education infrastructure includes 3500 engineering colleges, 3400 polytechnics and 200 schools of planning and architecture.
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National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli is a public technical and research university near the city of Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, India. It was founded as Regional Engineering College Tiruchirappalli in 1964 by the Governments of India and Tamil Nadu under the affiliation of the University of Madras. The college was granted Deemed University status in 2003 with the approval of the University Grants Commission, All India Council for Technical Education and Government of India and renamed as National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli. The university was declared as an Institute of National Importance in 2007 by the Government of India under the National Institutes of Technology, Science Education and Research Act and is one of the members of the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) system, a group of premier Indian technical universities governed by the Council of NITSER.
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