The Hindu Business Line : BITS to set up three more campuses

The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani would establish three more campuses in addition to the existing three in the next five years and simultaneously the strength of all the three institutes, at Pilani, Goa and Dubai taken together, would rise to 8,000 in the next two years from the present 4,000.

The Chancellor of BITS, Pilani, Mr K.K. Birla said this at the formal inauguration of the Goa campus. The institute would soon set up a campus in Hyderabad for which it has acquired 200 acres of land from the State Government. Mr Birla said that when that campus becomes fully functional, the total student strength of BITS, including all its other campuses, would rise to about 11,000.

Mr Birla said the institute opened its Dubai campus in 2000 to "promote education abroad and foster goodwill between India and the Gulf countries." The campus has 900 students and the number is expected to touch 1,500 soon. Today some students from Bangladesh and Pakistan also study at the Dubai campus, he said. Besides campus training, Mr Birla said, around 10,000 students were receiving education of a high order through off-campus and collaborative programmes. He said five years down the line, "our roll strength will rise to over 30,000 turning out 7,000 graduates, 90 per cent of whom will be engineering graduates".

BITS is also conducting several research and development programmes. The Pilani campus houses many research laboratories in all areas of science and engineering.

"At BITS, Pilani we have increased the number of students from 2,500 to 4,000 and we allocated about Rs 30 crore from our own funds for this expansion plan," he said.

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