Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 26, 2006



The Indian Institutes of Technology are a group of seven autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education established by the Government of India. These institutes were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to underpin India's economic and social development after independence in 1947. IIT Kharagpur was the first IIT to be established, in 1951. Each IIT is an autonomous university, linked to the others through a common IIT Council, which oversees their administration. They have a common admission process, using the Joint Entrance Examination to select around 4,000 candidates a year. About 15,500 undergraduate and 12,000 graduate students study in the seven IITs, in addition to research scholars. The success of the IITs has led to the creation of similar institutes in other fields, such as the National Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institute of Information Technology. (more...)

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