Time to end proliferation of engineering colleges
The growth of technical education in India has fulfilled the aspirations of a large number of students and parents. At the same time, it has introduced a high degree of distortion in the types of institutions, the quality of their content, teaching-learning processes, adequacy of infrastructure and faculty.
Unfortunately, there has been a mindless expansion of the technical education system with a detrimental drift in the form of engineering colleges. The number of engineering and technology institutions increased from 157 in 1980 to 5,194 in 2012. The approved intake jumped from about 4.75 lakh in 2007-08 to 10.66 lakh in 2011-12. The intake per million population increased sharply from 152 in 1993 to 888 in 2011. Of these, about 85 per cent are in unaided private sector. In Andhra Pradesh, of 900 technical institutions, 763 are unaided. Tamil Nadu has 852 self-financing technological institutions out of a total 955 colleges (both as per AICTE data).
A vast majority of students coming out of these colleges, which act more like coaching centres for prescribed syllabi, lack the true qualities expected of an engineering graduate and hence are unemployed or severely underemployed. Every year, the nation is accumulating lakhs of young people with shattered dreams, feeling frustrated by the injustice meted out to them by the engineering education system.
In the past, the demand was outstripping the supply and it was a sellers’ market due to availability of fewer seats. The situation, however, is rapidly moving towards a buyers’ market. There are vociferous demands on the affiliating universities to publicly display the performance rankings of colleges. The job market is changing in new ways so that the craze for any one discipline is misplaced. Thus, we witness large-scale unfilled capacities in most engineering colleges. Some are closing down or selling them. Many colleges exert pressure to lower the admission criteria which contributes towards larger accumulation of unemployable graduates. Some have agents in other states to recruit students on commission basis, sometimes admitting goonda elements.
It is a sign of hope that recently the Madras High Court has drawn attention to the adverse impacts of the expansion. It has asked the Centre why it should not appoint an expert body to analyse problems of engineering education, revisit approval norms, standards of teaching, unfilled seats in colleges, employment prospects and to suggest remedial measures to improve the quality of education.
The court also directed the Central government, AICTE and others to answer questions regarding the growth of engineering colleges in different states since 1980, vacancies in admission capacity since 2000, year-wise number of graduates, and their placement data. It has asked why the AICTE did not stop approving new engineering colleges in view of large-scale unfilled seats and less employment opportunities. For now, the AlCTE has decided not to permit any new institutions in 2014 following strong representations from major states that have experienced acute shortfall in admissions.
During the past decade, India also witnessed major expansion in the high-grade technical institutions such as the IITs, NITs and IIITs. Their total intake capacity is less than a lakh, constituting about 10 per cent of the intake capacity of the Indian technical education system.
The growth in engineering colleges has not been guided by any discernible policy. There have been several concerted efforts to bring some order and logic to the growth and quality of technical education system. These have not gone anywhere due to opposition from vested interests. Since, the market structure is undergoing rapid transformation in India, projection of technical manpower requirements based on market demand only will not be possible at this stage. However, it should be possible to evolve satisfactory empirical approaches to plan the growth of technical education at least for the next five to 10 years.
Profspt@gmail.com
The writer is the chairman of board of governors of IIT-Kanpur