My two cents

I’ve been seeing quite a bit of buzz around financial situation of IITs, particularly about Kharagpur. Business Standard reports that Kharagpur wishes to double the 7000 strong student population within 2010, when I’ll incidentally graduate.

From the article:

At a press conference in Kolkata today, Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of the board of governors of IIT-Kharagpur, informed, “We are going to build 200 new classrooms with a total capacity of 24,000 students. We will also add 200 tutorial classrooms to accommodate 12,000 students.”

Increasing the strength of faculty and students might be a double edged sword, while it means many recieve one of the most acclaimed educations the country has to offer, overcrowding the already strained facilities might not be the best thing.

In my opinion, there are more facilities that the administration has to take into consideration apart from just hostels and living space. The gymnasiums, pools, resturaunts, other recreational activities all are shared resources, which are not taken into consideration when the expansion is taking place.

A lot of other resources are also drawn upon when the size of the populace increases uncontrolledly. Everything from water supply to internet bandwidth is drawn upon, and libraries, clubs, and all other student organizations are choked.

Accomodation is the first priority and building new residential facilities for students and faculty alike in an uncontrolled way can only spell trouble.

Another article says IIT’s are doing a Britney and saying “gimme more!”:

The IIT academic advisory council’s standing committee will shortly make a presentation to the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry on the financial needs of the seven IITs, where it will ask the government for over Rs 160 crore (around 20 crore for each IIT) to facilitate the expansion and research programmes at the seven IITs.

So much for my two cents.