Flexible Credit- Based System for IIT-Kharagpur Students

The esteemed engineering institution, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur has proposed an all new ‘credit-based system’ that would enable the students the much required flexibility to complete their courses in a shorter/longer time span. The students can now complete their four year B. Tech course in three-and-a-half year time. Every student would get a ‘pre-specified credit’ depending on which the student can have the flexibility to end his course in his own pace. The students who are fast-paced and are willing to complete their course earlier, can do the same by six months through the help of the credits they earn in their previous semesters. On the other hand, those who are willing to go for a year-long internship and come back to finish the remaining course can do the same later on. The proposed planning to begin the modernization of the institute’s undergraduate and postgraduate programs, in phases is from 2016.

Those students who opt for their own ventures during study or those who are willing for a long internship to avail extra benefit of the industry exposure would be greatly helped by this model. This could add to their chances of employability and enhance their qualifications while being in the process of completing the course from the institution.  

Presently the courses in IITs are bound by number of years and are divided into six-month- long semesters which binds the students to complete the course in a stipulated time period. But this new system can break the barrier and help dilute the rigid complacency in the courses and allow the students to complete the courses in upto eight years.

After studying the best practices of top 20 universities in the world, the team of professors from the IIT Kharagpur has finally devised this pattern of credit-based system that would allow ‘room for everyone’. IIT Kharagpur has also proposed to start student mobility across all the IITs, so that every IIT student can get an option to spend a particular course period in any of their chosen IIT in the nation.