The Hindu Business Line : Kerala IT Mission initiative to support PG and Ph D students

The State Cabinet has sanctioned Rs 2.10 crore to support 200 post-graduate and 10 Ph D students under the Special Post-graduate Education Expansion Drive in IT initiative.

Sankar Radhakrishnan

Thiruvananthapuram, July 2

A scheme drawn up by the Kerala State Information Technology Mission to expand the number of post-graduate programmes in information technology (IT) and IT-related subjects in Kerala has been approved by the State Cabinet.

In its meeting on Wednesday, the Cabinet sanctioned Rs 2.10 crore to support 200 post-graduate and 10 Ph D students under the Special Post-graduate Education Expansion Drive in IT (SPEED-IT) initiative. The amount has been sanctioned for disbursement in the current academic year.

SPEED-IT is intended to encourage more students in Kerala to do post-graduate programmes in IT or IT-related subjects, Dr Ajay Kumar, Secretary, Information Technology, Government of Kerala, told Business Line. Students selected for a post-graduate or Ph D programme in an IT-related subject under SPEED-IT will receive a scholarship from the State Government. While Rs 2.10 crore has been earmarked for this year, the Government is open to increasing funding for the initiative in the coming years, he added.

Industry sponsorship

In time, the IT Mission also plans to involve the IT industry in the initiative and get the industry to sponsor students for specific courses, he revealed. The plan is to earmark around 20 per cent of the seats available under SPEED-IT for sponsored candidates. However, industry involvement in the initiative is expected only in a couple of years.

The initiative will be in addition to all existing funding programmes and will not upset them in any way, Dr Ajay Kumar emphasised. Scholarships will be available only to students specifically admitted under the SPEED-IT programme, he pointed out.

A special high-level committee will be set up to work out the guidelines for the initiative.

The committee will chalk out the procedure for disbursing scholarships and the criteria for selecting students, Dr Ajaykumar said. The actual process of selecting students will, however, be left to individual colleges participating in the programme, he added.

Dr Ajay Kumar acknowledged that it is not possible to suddenly hike the number of IT-related post-graduate seats in Kerala. The All India Council for Technical Education has approved the commencement of at least 10 new, IT-related post-graduate programmes in Kerala this year, he said. Some or all of the places in these new courses could be set aside for students under SPEED-IT, he added.

Colleges, however, will not receive any special incentive to expand post-graduate programmes to accommodate students under the SPEED-IT initiative, he said. Instead, colleges will be allowed to charge reasonable fees to meet the expenses of the expanded programme. These fees will in turn be covered by the scholarships that the students will receive, he added.

Currently, the plan is to give post-graduate students a scholarship of around Rs 8,000 a month and Ph D students between Rs 14,000 and Rs 18,000 a month, he said. The Government would like to increase the number of students enrolled under SPEED-IT based on the response the initiative evokes, he added.

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