IIT-Delhi to charge less to foreign students

In a bid to increase the number of foreign students in IIT-Delhi, the premier institute has decided to bring down its tuition fees collected from foreign students and make it equal to that paid by the Indian students from next year.

It has also decided to offer 100 fellowships to foreign students, hoping to fill up 25% of the total PhD seats with it in the next academic session.

The premier technical institute, which recently got the Institute of Eminence (IoE) tag from the government, has also stepped up its effort to attract foreign students to improve its position in the international ranking.

IIT-Delhi, which was placed at the 172nd position by the Quacquarelli Symonds in its recent top 500 world university rankings list, had 60-70 foreign students enrolled to PhD programmes and just one student in B Tech this year.

The tuition fee for the Indian students for IIT-Delhi's full time PhD programme is currently Rs 5,000 per semester, while it is Rs 2 lakh per annum for the B Tech programme.

The tuition fee for the foreign students for both the PhD and B Tech programmes are much higher than those paid by the Indian students.

“Our international ranking will significantly improve with increase in the number of foreign students as this is one of the areas where we are losing out,” the institute's director V Ram Gopal Rao told reporters at a press conference on Friday.

Foreign students will be enrolled to the PhD programmes through a written test and an interview held on Skype, while Indian students will be admitted to undergraduate programmes (BTech) on the basis of their performance in JEE (Advanced).

“Though we are keen to have foreign students from all over the world, we are focusing on attracting students from the SAARC countries,” he added.

To increase the institute's research output, IIT-Delhi has decided to set up two new state-of-the-art research parks to promote inter-disciplinary research in various areas as part of its expansion plan.

It is also in process of setting up a first-of-its-kind centre for study and research on electric vehicles with support from the automobile industry.

“One-third of the total faculty strength will be hired from the automobile industry as adjunct faculty,” Rao said.