National Institute of Technology Calicut
The National Institute of Technology Calicut is a public technical university and an institute of national importance governed by the NIT Act passed by the Parliament of India. The campus is situated northeast of Kozhikode, on the Kozhikode–Mukkam Road. It was established in 1961 and was known as Calicut Regional Engineering College until 2002. It is one of the National Institutes of Technology campuses established by the Government of India to impart high standard technical education to students from all over the country. NIT Calicut hosts a supercomputer on its campus, and has a dedicated nanotechnology department.
History
Initial years
National Institute of Technology, Calicut was set up in 1961 as Regional Engineering College Calicut, the ninth of its kind and the first one to be established during the Third Five-Year Plan period. Until the formation of Calicut University in 1963, the institute was affiliated with Kerala University. It was largely due to the efforts of Pattom Thanu Pillai, then Chief Minister of Kerala, that the institute came into being. Prof. S. Rajaraman, the first principal of Government Engineering College, Thrissur was appointed as the special officer in 1961 to organise the college's activities until M. V. Kesava Rao took charge as the first principal of the college. The classes were initially held at the Government Polytechnic at West Hill before it moved to its present campus in 1963. The college started with an annual intake of 125 students for the undergraduate courses, on a campus of.Expansion
The undergraduate courses' intake increased to 250 in 1966, 150 for the first year, and 100 for the preparatory course. The annual intake was reduced from 250 to 200 from the year 1968–69 on account of the industrial recession.After Prof S. Unnikrishnan Pillai took charge as principal in 1983, the Training and Placement Department started organising student campus recruitments. The college moved into the area of information technology in 1984 with the commissioning of multi-user PSI Omni system and HCL workhorse PCs. In 1987 the college celebrated 25 years of its existence, and postgraduate courses were started. The CEDTI was established on the campus the following year.
In 1990 Shankar Dayal Sharma inaugurated the Architecture Department Block and construction of a computer centre was completed. In 1996, the institute's website was launched. The Indian Institute of Management Calicut functioned from the NIT campus in its first few years of existence before moving to its new campus in Kunnamangalam in 2003.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, accorded NIT status to REC Calicut in June 2002 granting it academic and administrative autonomy. It was a lead institute under the World Bank-funded Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme which began in 2002. In 2003, students were first admitted to the flagship undergraduate B.Tech through the All India Engineering Entrance Exam. With the passing of the National Institutes of Technology Act in May 2007, NIT Calicut was declared an Institute of National Importance. The National Institutes of Technology Act is the second legislation for technical education institutions after the Indian Institutes of Technology Act of 1961. In 2007 NIT Calicut raised its annual intake for its undergraduate programme to 570. The annual intake for the undergraduate programme was increased to 1049 by 2011. In 2025, the institute celebrated its 65th foundation day.
Campus
Hostels
NITC is a fully residential institution with 13 hostels to accommodate students. There are around 4500 students in NITC hostels. There are 13 Men's hostels, named by letters A, B, C, D, E, F, PG I, PG II, IH, and the newly formed Mega Hostels and MBA Hostels. The 4 Ladies' hostels : A, B, C, G, and Mega Ladies Hostels, have triple rooms.A and B hostels accommodate 1st-year B.Tech students. II-year and III-year B.Tech students are accommodated in the New Mega Hostel. G Hostel has been reallocated as a ladies' hostel, and female students enrolled in PhD are staying in G Hostel. Final year B.Tech students are accommodated in D, E, F, and PG-I hostels. M.Tech. and MCA students reside in apartments.
The older men's hostels are close to the academic area, while the IH, Mega Hostels, ladies' hostels, and Professor's Apartments are in the residential area of the campus. A mini-canteen was available on the hostel premises, but it has been shut down and is currently unused as per the decision by the administration.
Students are permitted to use their computers in their rooms. All hostels apart from A, B, and MBH2 are well connected through a 100 Mbit/s LAN network to the Campus Networking Center through which internet connectivity is provided for free. Each hostel contains a standard room with cable TV, a daily newspaper, and indoor games facilities.
Each hostel has its mess, and students are allowed to join any hostel mess, except for A and B, which are exclusive for first-year students. The type of food served in the hostel messes is as follows:
- Cosmopolitan: A, B, C, D, E, PG I, IH
- Non-vegetarian: F, G & PG-II
Sports
NITC has a gymnasium, swimming pool, an open-air theatre, an auditorium, and facilities for outdoor sports like tennis, football, volleyball, badminton, roller skating, hockey and basketball. It also has a cricket ground where Ranji Trophy matches have been played.Central Computer Centre
The Central Computer Centre is a central computing facility which caters to the computing requirements of the whole community of this institution. The working hours of this centre is 8 AM to 11:59 PM on all working days except Republic Day, Independence Day, Thiruvonam, Vijayadashami, Gandhi Jayanthi, Vishu, and Christmas.The desktops and servers are connected through Gigabit switches and CAT6 UTP cables. The centre is connected to the campus networking centre with a backbone of 12 Gbps. High-Performance cluster at Central computer center has a 14 node architecture; One master node, 6 GPU Compute node, 6 compute nodes, 1 Xeon Phi node, with 25 Tera Flops computing capability. Central Computing Centre maintains the Debian, Ubuntu and Rocky Linux Mirrors.
Central Library
NITC's Central Library, with more than 100,000 books, is one of the largest technical libraries in India. It subscribes to more than 200 print journals. The institute has a digital library, Nalanda, which houses online resources. Users of the institute and networked institutions can access around 17,000 journals, proceedings, databases, electronic theses, dissertations and online courses at Nalanda. It is part of the Indest consortium, which networks the libraries at technical institutions in India.Technology Business Incubator
The Technology Business Incubator at NIT Calicut was set up with the help of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board. Its objective is to help the development of start-up ventures in electronics and IT.TBI provides workspace with shared office facilities with an emphasis on business and professional services necessary for nurturing and supporting the early-stage growth of technology and technology-based enterprises.Organisation and administration
Governance
Under the constitution of the National Institutes of Technology Act 2007, the President of India is the Visitor to the institute. The authorities of the institute are the Board of Governors and the Senate. The Board is headed by the chairman, who the Visitor appoints. The Director, the secretary of the Board, looks after the day-to-day running of the institute. The Board of Governors has nominees of the Central Government, the State Government, the NIT Council and the Institute Senate.Gajjala Yoganand is the chairman of the Board of Governors. Prasad Krishna was appointed the director of the institute in 2021.