What ails NIT-C?

Skewed administrative and academic policies, decline in standards of teaching and learning delivery system and poor evaluation mechanism are leading to the consistent fall of the National Institute of Technology, Calicut, (NIT-C) in the ranking of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) by the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

At the national level in the engineering colleges category, the rank of NIT-C, slipped to the 50th position from the 44th rank from last year. A year before, its rank was 35th. Time was when the institute was ranked number one among the NITs and was the ninth best engineering college in the country. Today the situation is different with many NITs at Tiruchirappali (11th), Rourkela (15th), Surathkal (21st) Warangal (25th), Kurukshetra (44), Visvesvaraya NIT Nagpur (31st) and Durgapur (47th) overtaking the NIT-C.

An analysis of the NIT-C's functioning revealed that it faced an acute shortage of staff with 50% of the teaching faculty placed on ad hoc basis. The intake of 900 plus students for B.Tech. course each year, possibly the highest among the NITs and amendments made to the grading system to increase the pass percentage of students have also been attributed to the lowering of the standards of the institute.

The falling academic standards has also started reflecting yearly hiring. Recruitment companies normally expects the students to score at least 40% in the tests conducted by them during the placement process. However, this percentage had dismally come down although the number of recruiters had increased with each passing year, an HR firm said.

The ranking system of NIRF uses different parameters — teaching, learning and resources; research and professional practice; graduation outcomes; outreach and inclusivity and perception. The finance resource and the utilisation score were also less for NIT-C when compared to others NITs, the Students Affairs Council, said.

Despite the setback, NIT-C figure on the list of three colleges among the 100 best engineering colleges in the country. However the others — Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology [23rd (last year 28th)]. and the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram [75th (last year 93rd)] — have improved their positions.

Pointing out that there is room for improvement, NIT-C director Sivaji Chakravorti told The Hindu on Thursday that the institute had scored less in the outreach and inclusivity in which the sub parameters were on percentage of students from States, other countries and women.

“About 70% of our students are from other States and 27% of students are women. However, we will examine the methodology used for this particular parameter,” Dr. Chakravorti said, adding that the NIT-C gave utmost priority to research and development.