The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) talks about filling such gaps, and forging links between industry and academia to mobilise funds.
The data for BTech seats across the country is a reason for hope. The All India Council for Technical Education’s (AICTE) approved intake for undergraduate engineering and technology courses for 2024-25 shows a nearly 19 per cent increase from 2021-22, when the total number of seats touched the lowest in a decade. The uptick comes after a year-on-year decline in intake for most of the past decade. This was also a period when reduced demand forced several colleges to shut down. The slump, as underlined by an investigation in this newspaper in December 2017, had much to do with the deficiencies of the institutions and the AICTE’s failings as a regulator and enabler. The analysis had revealed that most colleges were dogged by corruption and did not have facilities — proper laboratories, trained teachers — to nurture talent. The AICTE has clarified that the increase in the number of seats is contingent on the institutions fulfilling infrastructure and faculty-related requirements. It should guard against lapsing into the old ways.
The engineering profession in India is riddled with paradoxes. The country produces one of the highest numbers of engineers in the world. Yet, report after report has pointed out that most Indian institutions do not provide state-of-the-art skills. Even the most conservative surveys estimate that about 30 per cent engineering graduates do not have a job — in fact, last year, then NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said that this figure is as high as 48 per cent. Most institutes do not provide practical training that should be fundamental to an applied science such as engineering. That’s why they have failed to provide a springboard for the Centre’s entrepreneurial projects such as Make in India. A part of the problem also stems from low investment in research and development (R&D). India’s R&D expenditure to GDP ratio of 0.7 per cent is very low compared to developed economies — South Korea, for instance, spends more than 5 per cent of its GDP on R&D.
The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) talks about filling such gaps, and forging links between industry and academia to mobilise funds. The AICTE’s latest mandate to institutes to start courses in new technologies — AI, robotics, data sciences and cyber security — is in line with the policy’s vision of turning engineering colleges into nurseries for industry. The challenge will be in helping them recruit quality faculty. A beginning can be made by tapping into the expertise of top institutes such as IITs to train teachers of smaller colleges. In the long run, the AICTE should find ways to give effect to the NEP’s recommendation of setting up training institutes to update teachers’ knowledge.
