The Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) are a group of higher education institutions in India that focus on information technology, computer science, electronics and allied disciplines. They were established by the Government of India to meet the demand for skilled professionals in the information technology sector and to support research and innovation in IT-driven fields.
| Type | Public technical institutes |
|---|---|
| Focus areas | Information technology, computer science, electronics, communication |
| Country | India |
| Governing legislation | IIIT Act, 2014; IIIT (PPP) Act, 2017 |
| Administered by | Ministry of Education, Government of India |
| Categories | Institutes of National Importance (designated IIITs) |
The IIITs operate under three different funding and governance models. The first model consists of fully centrally funded institutes set up directly by the Government of India. The second consists of institutes established under the Public–Private Partnership (PPP) model, jointly funded by the central government, the respective state government, and industry partners. The third comprises a small number of older institutes that pre-date the standardised models and operate under their own arrangements, such as the IIIT at Hyderabad and the IIIT at Bangalore, which function as autonomous state-supported institutions.
The earliest institutions using the IIIT name were set up in the late 1990s, with the Indian Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad established in 1998 and the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore established in 1999. These were created as autonomous, not-for-profit institutes with state government and industry support, and served as reference models for later expansion.
Following the recognition that information technology education needed wider geographical reach, the central government began establishing additional IIITs from the mid-2000s onwards. The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, founded in 1999, was among the first centrally funded institutes and was later granted the status of a deemed university and subsequently of an Institute of National Importance.
Two principal Acts of Parliament govern most of the IIITs:
Each IIIT is headed by a Director and is governed by a Board of Governors, with overall coordination by an IIIT Council chaired by the Union Minister of Education. Admission to undergraduate B.Tech. programmes is conducted through the Joint Entrance Examination (Main), with seat allocation through the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA). Postgraduate admissions typically use the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) and institute-level processes.
Academic programmes commonly offered include B.Tech. and Integrated M.Tech. degrees in Computer Science and Engineering, Information Technology, and Electronics and Communication Engineering, along with M.Tech., M.S. by Research, and Ph.D. programmes. Several institutes additionally offer specialised courses in areas such as artificial intelligence, data science, cyber security, VLSI design and computational linguistics.
A series of IIITs have been set up across states including Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Examples include IIIT Sri City, IIIT Guwahati, IIIT Bhagalpur, IIIT Naya Raipur, IIIT Vadodara, IIIT Sonepat, IIIT Una, IIIT Ranchi, IIIT Dharwad, IIIT Kottayam, IIIT Bhopal, IIIT Pune, IIIT Senapati (Manipur), IIIT Kalyani, IIIT Lucknow, IIIT Kota, IIIT Tiruchirappalli and IIIT Agartala.
The IIIT system is intended to complement the older Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) by focusing specifically on information technology and producing trained manpower for the IT industry, research laboratories and academic institutions. The PPP model in particular sought to involve industry directly in technical education, aligning curricula with applied needs and ensuring that institutes were distributed across regions of India that previously lacked specialised IT institutions.