Brick and mortar universities may soon become an outdated concept in technical education if a proposal mooted by the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) finds its way through the government.

Based on the idea that online universities—real universities accessed through the Internet—can enrich science and engineering education by expanding the range of experiments that students are exposed to during the course of their education, the IITs have proposed setting up of virtual universities along with Internet laboratories to meet the demands of an increasing number of engineering students across the country.

According to the proposal—mooted by IIT-Madras director M.S. Ananth and being developed by IIT-Delhi director Surendra Prasad—online laboratories will be set up in the first stage to help students who are already benefiting from the HRD ministry-funded National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) project to do lab experiments as well.

The labs are likely to be integrated with NPTEL in the advanced stages and later developed as part of virtual universities. Unlike conventional laboratories, Internet laboratories can be shared across a university or across the world.

“There is a proposal to set up a virtual university, which is in the planning stage. We want at least 500 courses to be ready and uploaded on NPTEL by then. Universities in their present form may not be able to cope up with the increasing number of engineering students. IITs are discussing the matter. The proposal also includes virtual labs on the web where a student of NPTEL will be able to carry out experiments equivalent to lab experiments,” Dr Surendra Prasad, IIT-D director said.

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