IITs to enrol foreign students, offer medical courses

NEW DELHI - The Indian Institutes of Technologies (IITs) will induct foreigners as students and faculty and will also conduct medical courses, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal announced Friday.

Talking to reporters after a nearly three-hour meeting with the council of IITs, Sibal said the major decisions were taken to bring IITs at par with international institutes and to make them global in every sense.

“It was agreed that the IITs will have foreign students as well as faculty,” Sibal said.

Appointment of foreign faculty could also give a boost to IITs’ plan to enrol foreign students.

The foreign students, whose strength will be capped at 25 percent, will be enrolled in the post-graduate course while foreigners would account for a maximum of 10 percent of the faculty.

“The number of foreign students will be in addition to the Indian students already there,” he said.

The minister said that medicine and medical research courses will be added to the field of IITs.

He said that as the field of medicine involves a large number of engineering techniques, the need for having medicine course at IITs was felt.

“Appropriate amendment in the IIT Act may be considered to enable IITs to offer courses in medicine with the approval from the Medical Council of India,” Sibal said.

The MCI approval will be needed for awarding medical degrees, but it will not be required for research in allied fields.