(Re)Engineering the Engineering Education in India

Last week, University Grants Commission (UGC) India, came up with the new circular stating that there would be no new engineering colleges in the upcoming academic session. Not only this, even the existing colleges would be unable to add new courses or increase the number of seats for the year 2014-15. The UGC's directive got a mixed response as some private engineering colleges welcomed it whereas some institutions want a stay on it.

Well, in my point of view, the moratorium should be seen as a positive step which should be looked as an opportunity to improve the quality of Indian Engineering education system.

According to data from AICTE, the regulator for technical education in India, there were 1,500+ engineering colleges across India, graduating over 550,000 students back in 2006-07. Fuelled by fast growth, especially in the $110 billion outsourcing market, a raft of new colleges sprung up -- since then, the number of colleges and graduates have doubled. The number of graduates coming out of technical colleges increased to over 700,000 in 2011 from 550,000 in FY 2007. India offers the largest pool of technical graduates in the world. However, according to one study, 75% of technical graduates are unemployable by world’s most demanding and high-growth global industries, including information technology. 

The problem is, the Engineering colleges are producing graduates which the industry doesn’t need. So, while many of them are working with lesser capacity than what they actually need (high-skilled labor) many other service companies are absorbing these graduates and investing heavily in (re)training the graduates in jobs they can put them on. But it turns out that the skills that these employees have are not transferable from one company to another. But that doesn’t matter – the next company can invest in training as well. These skills are not something that needs an engineering degree (which is why you shouldn’t be surprised if you see a Diploma holder and an Engineer doing similar jobs).

Why does a company need to (re)train an undergraduate on languages/technologies like Java/J2EE etc when he is expected to know these skills as part of his engineering curriculum?

All these things point out towards one important thing, that India is lacking in providing the efficient and best quality education. The statistics revealed and the solutions provided on them in the International Comparative Study about Engineering Education in South Asia Human Development Sector can be used as better guidelines in improving the scenario. The three important things I found in the study, which can be achieved in a year’s time are as follows:-

• There is large number of engineering institutions in India. The current faculty-student ratio is 1:24 which should be improved to approach the AICTE norm (1:15 among undergraduates and 1:12 among postgraduates). Appropriate regulations on private institutions in this area would help the entire Indian engineering education system improve quality and efficiency.
• The percentage of faculty with PhDs is low in India. If India aims to become more competitive in research outcomes, the number of PhD students and faculty with PhDs needs to be raised. Given that the majority of faculty members have only a master’s degree, providing them an opportunity to upgrade their degrees to PhDs might be a realistic option for improvement over the short to medium term while the government tries to increase the number of PhD students coming out of the system.
• The quality and number of research activities have increased in India, but there is room for more improvement. However, compared with other countries, the number of patents remains low. In particular, the low volume of basic patents indicates the weak capacity of engineering institutions to respond to needs in the market. In addition, the capacity of individual faculty to carry out research activities is not as good as it should be, especially in terms of patents. Leaders at educational institutional should consider expanding their collaboration with industry.

What I feel is, if our country’s education fraternity looks seriously at this UGC’s directive as an opportunity and if the above mentioned solutions are followed, the quality and efficiency of Indian Engineering Education system will definitely improve.

There is need to (Re)Engineer the Engineering Education  in India so that the Nation could become self sufficient and more independent.




Sources: Wikipedia, AICTE,Report on  International Comparative Study about Engineering Education in South Asia Human Development Sector by HRD Ministry, India.

- Prateek Aloni

http://about.me/prateek.aloni 

The views mentioned are personal.

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