IIT to Open First Overseas Campus This Year
The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is expected to open its first overseas campus this October and if you guessed Zanzibar as the location, you may be smart enough to attend IIT.
According to The Citizen newspaper in Tanzania, the campus will be known as IIT Madras at Zanzibar and will begin with 50 undergraduate and 20 master’s students.
Five professors from IIT Madras visited Tanzania in February to discuss setting up the campus. They met President Hussein Ali Mwinyi of Zanzibar and the education ministers of Tanzania and Zanzibar. Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous province of Tanzania.
“The presence of a world-class institution will do wonders for Zanzibar,” wrote Charles Makakala in an op-ed in The Citizen, revealing details of the new campus.
It’s the first of three campuses that IIT is building outside India, with others coming in Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur.
For its first year, the Zanzibar campus will offer courses in data science and artificial intelligence, Makakala wrote.
Mwinyi is “very enthusiastic” about this project and has “guaranteed IIT the autonomy it needs to ensure that the quality is maintained,” Makakala wrote.
Admission will be based on an entrance exam, a one-month preparation program, and an interview. The first instructors will come from India, but eventually local instructors will be trained.
Beginning this year, IIT will offer 50 scholarships to Tanzanian students interested in pursuing master’s degrees and PhDs at various IITs in India.
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Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
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