Mumbai to soon have an IIM, Union cabinet approves Bill to upgrade NITIE

“The NITIE is now one step away from becoming an IIM. A final approval from the Parliament is yet awaited. Soon after that, work will begin toward rearranging academics to offer courses in line with the IIM and other aspects,” said a senior faculty member.

The NITIE was formerly known as the National Institute for Training in Industrial Engineering. It was established by the government of India in 1963 with the assistance of the United National Development Programme (UNDP) through the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to create skilled professionals. Funded by the government of India under the Ministry of Education, the NITIE offers postgraduate courses in various management and industrial engineering fields.

Located on the banks of Vihar Lake in Mumbai’s Powai locality, the NITIE boasts a picturesque campus already getting ready to welcome the new prestigious status of an IIM. A plan for the infrastructural shift of the NITIE’s campus spread across 63 acres of forested hilltop near Lake in Mumbai’s eastern suburbs was already in motion for a couple of years.

Projects such as new hostels, staff quarters, renovation of old classrooms and lecture halls, strengthening of the boundary wall and beautification of the campus were started with funding under the Higher Education Funding Agency (HEFA).

The institute’s performance in the NIRF ranking has also shown an ascending graph. Four institutes from Mumbai made it to the top 10 in the country under various categories of the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2023, declared in June. After being ranked 12th in 2017, the NITIE has consistently improved the NIRF ranking. After jumping into the top 10 institutes with rank 9 last year, it was ranked seventh this time.

En route to becoming an IIM, the NITIE had recently changed its admission criteria slightly to ensure gender diversity on its campus. Candidates with a Master of Science (MSc) in mathematics and statistics were declared eligible for admission to Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDIM) offered by NITIE, which admitted only engineers until now.

The institute also set up chair professorships only consisting of women faculty members intending to set role models for female students, like a few Indian Institutes of Technology (IIITs).