Stop Opening of Engineering Colleges like Chemist Shops:Says academician Prof.Pritam B. Sharma’s Book Path to Excellence

  

Unbridled mushrooming of engineering colleges like “Chemist shops” is despairingly blighting national goal of producing engineers of excellence and quality in India, reveals a well-researched book- “Path to Excellence” by academician Pritam B sharma who calls for a thorough review of the policy before it is too late.

Driven by a quest to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), the regulatory system in the country allowed “mushrooming” of engineering and technology colleges and deemed universities, thinking that the engineering colleges are like chemist shops required in every nook and corner of the nation, the book mentions.

They overlooked that the engineering institutions are required to attract best of talent both in students as well in its faculty community …. “But for the crazy policy makers and regulators responsible for assuring quality this was not the agenda as they primarily focused on achieving an accelerated increase in GER from almost 9% in 2006 to almost 22% as of now, says the author who is the President Elect of the Association of Indian Universities, AIU, the apex body of the universities in India.

It is a matter of grave concern the much of this increase has been achieved by setting up poor quality Institutions and adding seats in already poor performing institutions. He notes it is the genesis of the utterly low employability of graduates.

He wondered the self-financing institutions, rather than taking advantage of freedom from shackles of bureaucracy, riveted their eyes on maximizing the intake rather than maximizing quality.

 The world class universities such ad MIT, Harvard ,Stanford and Carnegie Mellon have risen to the highest esteem despite having being established and private research universities .Nothing could prevent India’s privately managed engineering and technology institutions to shape as centers of excellence in education cum research universities and rise to level of world class universities in few years, Dr Sharma, Vice Chancellor of Amity University ,said.

He had been the founder VC of Delhi Technological University, Founder VC of Rajiv Gandhi Technological University besides wearing many other coveted caps in the field of academics. He was also the former Professor of IIT, Delhi.  

Despite such a low employability rate (around 25 per cent as voiced Industry Associations), India continues to be a prime attraction for manpower development and for outsourcing business and services for many advanced countries. Although 25 per cent of the graduating engineers are of good quality, yet they account for almost four to five times the total engineering graduates produced by American Universities as a whole.

 India produces as many as 1.2 million graduates in its engineering program as against America’s total annual out turn of engineering graduates of 2,37826 ( as per WEF ,2015).

 Airing concerns that large quantum of unemployable or under employable graduates shall erode the credibility of India’s Technical education, the writer says the time to act is now, or else, the poor quality    syndrome of great many engineering institutions shall cripple country’s technical education for good.

Finding glaring disparity between leading technical institutions such as IITs and other engineering colleges, he said Products of leading institutions were being reorganized across the world for their quality and employability.

He said there was an impressive growth of higher technical education in the country like IIT –5 (1990) to 22 (2015); IIM 4 (1990) to 13(2015); SCHOOL OF PLANNING AND ARCHTECTURE 1(1990) TO 5(2015); STATE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITIES 1(1990) TO 40(2015) etc.,  

Suggesting five vital connects for quality relevance and excellence in higher education to revitalize higher education system, he advocates for connect to knowledge network, connect to industries, connect to the society, connect to national and global Professional societies and Connect to peer groups. He described it as “ Panchamrit strategy” for five fold growth of quality, relevance and entrepreneurship in the country’s Tech. Education.