Engineering Education in India: Part -I

 Engineering Education in India: An introspection and recommendations

1. AICTE has constituted a committee for preparing short and medium-term perspective plans for engineering education in India.

2. This committee has collected data on engineering capacity and enrolment trends across India and deliberated on available reports on technologies, jobs, skills, and engineering education trends of the future.

3.  Committee could identify gaps-areas and issues to improve     

        (a): Enrolment

        (b): Employability of engineering graduates

        (c): Capabilities of faculties

        (d): Quality of pedagogies.

4. The strength of the knowledge drive-economy of a country depends on the level and utilization of advanced technology and networking through globalization

5.  Engineering education plays a key building role while ensuring success in the knowledge and innovation-driven economy and problems of a country.

6. While appreciating phenomenal work done so far in disseminating engineering education, there has to go a long way to meet the explosive demand and aspiration of the people of this country to make it self reliance and prosperous

7.  Based on studies and analysis done by experts int he engineering education following recommendations have been made to address various issues in engineering education in India:

    (i): Capacity utilization, i.e., capacity vs. enrolment, is presently only about 50%  ( as per 2017-2018 data).   To improve the quality of existing engineering education, the proper measures should be taken instead of opening a new programme. The new programmes which are already in the pipeline and infrastructure available can be started; however, no new programme should be started unless a review is done after every two years. 

    (ii): Capacity utilization should be a key criterion for ranking accreditation and affiliation

    (iii): Traditional Engineering branches such as ME, EE, ECE, and Civil have only 40% capacity utilization, whereas computer engineering, aerospace, and mechatronics have 60% capacity utilization, so existing traditional engineering branches should be modernized in emerging technologies for example for ECE, it should move towards Robotics, Electric Vehicle, Drone Technology, AI and ML, etc.  Committee recommended that no additional seats should be approved in the traditional engineering branches unless they convert into emerging branches with the potential of improving their capacity utilization.

    (iv): Immediate interventions are recommended to improve the quality of teachers in emerging technologies through programs like QIP, academic-industry linage, hands-on training in industry visits, etc. 

    (v): There should a mandatory certificate/diploma/degree in education for every teacher in the engineering department to improve the pedagogies

    (vi): There should be an efficient utilization of MOOC courses both in core and elective domains

8. Efforts should be made for employment generations

9. Institutions should build proper project management capabilities around research like I-STEM is doing

10. Academic institutions have to continuously monitor the future skills requirement and make suitable changes to contents and pedagogies so that the graduating students have the right capabilities for the job in demand.

11. Period Industry feedback for technology degradation should be done

12.  Impact of teaching methods and identify the best methods of executing course work and apprenticeship. There should be a good linkage between apprenticeship with pedagogies.

13. There should be compulsory apprenticeship activities in the engineering education

14. At least two industry representatives should be part of the academic advisory board in the institute.

15. It is recommended that there should be a national knowledge functional hub in the engineering education institution.  It should look into the local industry ecosystem requirement so that accordingly workforce should be prepared.

16. Tinking lab, Innovation lab, incubation centers, etc. should be established, and students should be encouraged to design thinking and practical approach to learning

17. Engineering education should meet the demand of the emerging software industry, health care and medical services, semiconductor industry, AI, IoT, mobility, analytic and cloud, blockchain, robotic, quantum computing, data science, cyber security, 3D printing, and design, AR/VR, etc.

18. Emphasis should be on multi-disciplinary courses such as computational biology, biotechnology, biomedical, mechatronic, space and aerospace, agriculture and environmental studies, etc.

19. Students should be interfaced with real-life socio-economic problems, and they should be made aware of how to solve these problems using technology.

20. Open-book examinations should be introduced to improve the cognitive level of students wherever possible. 

Ref: Engineering Education in India