The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : How good is engineering education?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 04, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

How good is engineering education?

R. Chandrakanth

The level of unemployment among the graduates is related to the size of intake The spurt in the number of engineering colleges has led to a weak focus on infrastructure and a shortage of faculty

CHENNAI: The growing demand for technical education in the 1980s and 90s resulted in the mushroomimg of technical institutions across the country.

The intake capacities shot up like never before, especially after the government permitted private sector investments in self-financing mode.

The number of engineering colleges increased from 157 in 1980 to 1,346 in 2004, while the number of polytechnics increased from 101 in 1951 to 1,244 in 2004.

The increase in demand arose as a result of higher enrolments in the high schools and the aspirations of increasing number of first generation learners for higher education as a means of upward social mobility and economic security.

In permitting the growth of self-financing institutions then, the criteria were not defined in a manner to encourage the emergence of high quality institutions with reasonable control over their management practices.

If some of them reached levels of acceptable quality, it was more by individual initiatives than by a national policy design.

Commercialisation of education became rampant with the collection of capitation fees as a regular practice despite some States attempting to curb them through laws.

The rush for starting new technical institutions assumed highly undesirable political and unethical dimensions. For academic purposes, these institutions were affiliated to various general universities or to the specially constituted Technological Universities in some States.

As most of them were family controlled, large portion of the various fees collected by them were unaccounted for. Yet many of them invested liberally in infrastructure and academic facilities.

Institutions started by State governments languished for want of adequate funds and teaching staff.

Hence the development of government institutions was hampered even though the overwhelming preferences of the students for government institutions continued because of their reputation.

The non-availability of adequate number of competent teaching staff began to emerge as a serious problem during this phase, seriously undermining the quality of technical education.

This alone should have alerted the policy makers to undertake an introspection of the policies for the growth and quality of technical institutions.

On the other hand, the situation was allowed to escalate in an uncontrolled fashion with much steeper increase in the number of institutions and their intake capacities.

Higher studies

From the data of the National Technical Manpower Information System (NTMIS), it is estimated that out of the total number of graduates in a given year about 10 - 15 per cent enrol for higher studies in India or abroad; three to six per cent either get jobs outside India or are not interested in any employment and about two to three per cent are apprentices and trainees.

Thus, only 80 to 85 per cent of the total graduates come into the job market. It is estimated that the total absorption in the country, 80,000 in 2003, would increase to 1,70,000 in 2007, while at the same time, unemployment would increase from 62,000 in 2003 to 1,40,000 in 2007.

Serious implications

Many serious implications regarding the viability, quality and credibility of the Indian technical education system have started to emerge.

The most serious ones relate to shortage of teachers.

Having come into existence by one means or the other, the institutions are pleading their inability to employ adequate number of qualified teachers as required under the norms of the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

Another serious implication relates to unfilled capacity in these institutions, which tend to keep shuffling the admission capacity between disciplines year by year, leading to unhealthy practices in the tenure of teachers and inadequacy of the necessary academic infrastructure.

Due to the proliferation of engineering colleges, there is a sharp decrease in the number of students seeking admission to polytechnics, which are facing survival problems.

Survival at stake

Many wish to convert the polytechnics to engineering colleges.

The aggravation of the unemployment situation for the trained technical manpower has serious social and economic implications. The level of unemployment among the engineering graduates is related to the size of intake.

As a result of high unemployment levels, many graduates tend to accept lower paid jobs incompatible with their qualifications.

Fat salaries

The jobs tend to get undervalued while the fat salaries enjoyed by a few tend to get highlighted and the plight of the vast number who remain jobless for considerable time after graduation goes unnoticed.

(Source: Ministry of Human Resource)

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