‘UGC should stop treating BITS like any other technical college’

PANAJI

: University Grants Commission (UGC) needs to treat

BITS Pilani

institutes differently from other technical colleges as they are institutes that have achieved excellence on par with Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), Union defence minister Manohar Parrikar said on Sunday at the annual convocation ceremony of the BITS

Pilani KK Birla Goa

Campus.

“UGC lists BITS

Pilani

institutes along with other little-known technical colleges in the country. This needs to change and I will speak to the authorities to bring this change in the status accorded to BITS Pilani institutes. They are as good as the IITs. May be a person who has attended a technical institute can bring about this change,”

Parrikar

said, delivering his address as the keynote speaker at the ceremony.

Chairman of

Aditya Birla Group

and chancellor of the institute, Kumar Mangalam Birla, was also present at the event.

This year, 785 students from BITS Pilani KK

Birla

Goa campus received their degrees at the ceremony. Of these, 405 students received bachelors’ degrees, 169 were awarded dual degrees, 30 earned postgraduate degrees and 12 were awarded doctorate degrees.

Addressing the students, Birla said, “You are privileged because the education you have received is among the best our country offers... No more than 10% of those who complete high school have access to university or college education in India... This privilege places an obligation on you to be aware of the responsibility you have to better the world around you and reach out to those who are not as fortunate as you have been. So think beyond yourself.”

The institutes’s vice-chancellor

Souvik Bhattacharyya

said the Goa campus has begun admitting international students and has taken in 18 students from other nations this year.