Monday, Oct 06, 2008
The industry is changing dynamically, and academia has to rise to the challenge, feels AICTE former Chairman R. Natarajan

On the sidelines of the National Summit on Quality in Education, hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry(CII)-Institute of Quality, former Chairman of the All-India Council for Technical Education R. Natarajan shares his perspective about the state of technical education.

What are the main issues in technical education today, vis-À-vis quality of institutions and graduates who pass out every year?


There are two dimensions. Given the character of institutes of excellence in the country, what do the numerous other institutes do to raise themselves to their level. But more importantly, how does one give the student this character of employability.

With the intake of engineering colleges standing at around 6.5 lakh today, what needs to be done to rise to this rapidly changing dynamic?

Yes, the situation calls for dynamic solutions. There needs to be greater industry-academia collaboration.

Autonomous universities and colleges should have more industry people on their advisory boards.

How much of a difference could be brought in by tightening accreditation standards and enforcing more regulation? Today, have the yardsticks of accreditation changed?

In terms of accreditation, yes, the yardsticks are fast evolving. It is not only about infrastructure and basics anymore. When we started the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) to look into this matter, it was different. Today the requirements are rapidly changing.

Overall development goals, as opposed to giving accreditation to single departments, industry-institute understanding, employability of graduates — the yardsticks may have changed. For instance, there is the Washington Accord, which looks at graduate attributes such as skills-sets, adaptability, HR skills and so on. In addition to traditional methods, accreditation experts must look at these attributes.

Students in “core” courses often complain that there is too much infiltration of information technology (IT) in their syllabus? Speaking of the industry-academia collaborations, do they run the risk of turning counter-productive?

Where our industry stands today, it should not prove counter-productive. In the U.S., engineering is not an attractive course now, so they are trying to project it as a professional liberal arts degree, which gives you the freedom to branch off into anything you want. However, we are far from that stage. It is wrong to assume that everything you need to know has to be in the curriculum.

Today, there are all kinds of supplementary courses. The University Grants Commission (UGC), for instance, has job-oriented courses. We need to make our students employable and everything from electives to supplementary courses should help them sharpen their skills.

The country today needs 1.6 lakh engineering teachers, and only 50,000 are available, and even fewer are well qualified. How can this be changed?

One must understand that pay-scales offered by the industry can never be matched by academic institutions. The more affluent and reputed academic institutions are able to help teachers supplement their salary in legitimate ways.