BHUBANESWAR: Faculty crunch, poor implementation of research programmes and inadequate infrastructure are the key reasons behind low performance and ranking of Government-run engineering and technical institutions of Odisha at the national level.
It was revealed in the letters submitted by some of these institutions to the Skill Development and Technical Education (SDTE) department.Though the Government claims to be spending crores of rupees in education sector, the performance of State-run technical institutions has remained poor. This year, not a single state-run technical institute or university found its place among top 100 engineering institutes in the National Institution Ranking Framework (NIRF) India ranking 2019 carried out by the Ministry of Human Resources Development in April.
Many technical universities and institutes, including BPUT, Indira Gandhi Institute of Technology, Sarang, College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneswar and Institute of Management and Information Technology, Cuttack, Government College of Engineering, Keonjhar, College of IT & Management Education, Bhubaneswar and VSSUT, Burla, are not being able to meet the NIRF parameters of teaching, learning and resources, research and professional practice as well as graduation outcome.
The institutes, however, have pointed out a host of issues that exposes why they are failing to compete with other engineering institutes at the national level.
The engineering college in Keonjhar that offers undergraduate courses in seven disciplines has only 19 regular faculty members against the sanctioned strength of 67. Even if 30 contractual appointments are taken into consideration, the facility-student ratio remains 1:32 against the requirement of 1:15. Besides, the institute doesn’t have any advance laboratory for research and it doesn’t offer any postgraduate or PhD programme.
On the other hand, authorities of the College of IT and Management Education in their report to the department have stated that the faculty crunch, which in turn has resulted in non-availability of sponsored research projects or consultancy works, has affected their performance at the national level.
The VSSUT, which managed to get 126th position among engineering institutes in the NIRF ranking, has also pointed out a number of issues affecting its performance.The university’s score has remained poor in terms of research and professional practices due to less number of publications in journals.Officials of the department, however, are yet to respond to this matter.
Poor performers
Keonjhar engineering college has 19 regular faculties against sanctioned strength of 67
College of IT and Management Education has no sponsored research projects
VSSUT’s score has remained poor in terms of research & professional practices