The intake of students in Indian Institutes of Technology across the country would increase by 54 per cent once the central government gives the green signal for the implementation of the proposed 27 per cent reservation in elite educational institutions, according to Prof Ashok Mishra, director, IIT-Bombay.
However, he made it clear that the number of students under general category would be maintained at the current level.
"Keeping the general category intact, we will increase the number of intake of students," Mishra told the media in Mumbai on Thursday while announcing the Joint Admission Board's decision on the type of examination (Joint Entrance Examination) to be conducted next year on April 8, 2007.
Asked about the infrastructure and the faculty enhancement to cope with the future needs if and when 54 per cent increase of intake of students gets implemented, Mishra said: "We propose to have satellite campuses in Navi Mumbai or some nearby places."
"The Gujarat and Goa governments have also come forward and given a few suggestions and we are looking into it. We will propose these suggestions also to the ministry of human resource development for acceptance," he said.
About the faculty enhancement, Mishra said: "We would like to maintain the faculty/student ratio at 1:9 which is currently a 1:12 and even to maintain the current ratio, we have to recruit 300 faculty."
The immediate solution to this is to increase the retirement age of existing faculty to 65, he suggested. "This is only a short-term measure," he added.
Asked if they are going to recruit any foreign faculty, he said: "Under the current policy, we can only recruit faculties of Indian origin. However, we are trying to propose the recruitment of foreign faculty in our campuses."
