Engineering A Crisis

Context: Constant tampering of curricula without giving students knowledge of the basics, a deficit in industry-instruction link continue to be the bane of country’s technical education.

Issues with engineering education in India:

• Softening of subjects: While the private entrepreneurs in the mid-Eighties were creating demand for engineering, the management agenda of various universities and colleges jettisoned important courses.
• For e.g. instead of metallurgy, electronics and IT, subjects like materials, applied physics and thermodynamics became dispensable.
• Lack of quality: At its peak in 2014-15, AICTE-approved institutes had almost 35 lakh seats, mainly due to the increased employment opportunities in the country.
• There were no takers for at least 51%  of the 15.5 lakh seats in 3,291 undergraduate engineering colleges in 2016-17.
• These reports laid bare the regulatory gaps, poor infrastructure, lack of qualified faculty and the non-existent industry linkage that contributed to the abysmal employability of graduates from most of these institutes.
• Fifty-four new colleges were approved for the academic year, 2021-22 in backward districts. However, this was done without a study on employment opportunities in those districts before approving them.
• Other quality issues: Lack of an adequate number of quality teachers, the inability of the management to make adequate investments in a dynamic environment, lack of employment opportunities, shelf life of skills coming down with every technology-related intervention and constant experimentation with curriculum.
• Lack of industry-instruction link: Not a single industry body, be it CII, FICCI or ASSOCHAM, has managed to effectively inform the education planners on the growth in different employment sectors.
• There is no independent body to advise AICTE on this vital aspect.
• Issues with flexibility: A constant fiddling with the curriculum, reducing total credits, giving multiple choices in the name of flexibility, dispensing with mathematics and physics at the qualification level, teaching in local languages may all be good arguments, but one must assess their utility.
• An IT-heavy curriculum in every specialisation is not called for.
• Reducing total credits has not only reduced the rigour of engineering education but also meant a loss in jobs for several faculty streams.

Way Forward

• Proactive rather than reactive: Institutions must proactively define the practising elements of education. 
• Assured quality: The need of the hour is to create a truly autonomous quality assurance body at an arms-length from the government, manned by eminent persons both from the industry as well as academia.
• The corrective measures for these shortfalls are technology-intensive, are experiential, and need investments in teaching.