Envisioning the Quality of Technical Education

Prof U B Desai,
Director, IIT Hyderabad

“One of the things that we need to bring into our education system is a lot more emphasis on innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship,and creative design because no engineering development is ever going to hit the market unless creative design goes into it.There has to be a focus in engineering education where we do not simply talk about the pedagogy of education, but instill in our students that they have to be job creators and not job seekers.”


Prof K Lal Kishore,
Vice Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University, Anantapur, Hyderabad

“Technology is changing very rapidly. Knowledge gets doubled in a period of eight years. But it may be even four years. If you take engineering education of four years duration, by the time a student completes his programme, the knowledge may have got doubled and hence, the industry-academia gap”


Prof H A Ranganath,
Director, National Assessment Accreditation Council and Former VC, Bangalore University”Accreditation is the health checkup of an institution. If it is done by the correct diagnostic centre, it gets to know its strengths and weaknesses and other challenges that the body is facing and accordingly initiate remedial measures are taken.Accreditation has dual functions: assessment and reformation.Assessment takes place both by internal quality assurance by the institution as well as the peer team. Reformation happens when institutions are responsive to the suggestions made by the peer team”

Prof V Panduranga Rao,
Director,IMT, Hyderabad Campus University

“The three problems faced by India are: pedagogy or the design of the curriculum, delivery of the pedagogy and the readiness of a teacher to adapt to the dynamic needs of the pedagogy processes”.


Gagan Kumar Dhal,
Principal Secretary, Department of Higher Education, Government of Odisha

“We are keen on digitising the libraries in the state so that there can be proper accounting of the journals, which are purchased and the students will be able to access them. We are coming up with a very comprehensive scheme for the same purpose.”


Prof V S Rao,
Director,BITS Hyderabad Campus

“I want to request the AICTE and other organisations concerned with engineering education to seriously think about the engineering practices, overhauling the curriculum, changing the pedagogy and addressing the problems of the faculty. You cannot transform engineering education without transforming your faculty. Meritorious students should be identified and sent to excellent universities abroad to do research and they should come back and teach in India. Priority should also be given to giving rewards and recognition or educational innovations.”


Prof Dr G Tulasi Ram Das,
Vice Chancellor, Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Kakinada

“A beautiful educational landscape with technology driven solutions is ahead of us. It will make the learning process in the four walls of the classrooms interesting.”


Dr Sanjiv Tokekar,
Director, Institute of Engineering and Technology, Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya

“Our enrolment ratio has scaled three times from about 49 lakh in 1991 to about 1.5 crores at present. This is a problem created because of massification, a term given by UNESCO. Massification has also given way to unethical practices in the system. Education, these days runs as a business”


Dr Kuncheria P Isaac,
Member Secretary, AICTE

“We have to bring in discipline and some kind of shifts and changes, which everybody will have to do it, something small or big, whether it is teachers, students, the attitude of students, the social system, the infrastructure or the library. Everybody will have to bring a change which has to happen over a period of time so that we will be able to bring in a quality education system in the near future.”


Dr G Viswanathan,
Founder & Chancellor, VIT University, Coimbatore

“India’s GER (Gross Enrolment Ratio) is 16 percent whereas the world average is 27 percent. Thus, expansion of higher education particularly technical education is the most important reform that the country requires as opposed to centralisation of power, as is suggested by most pending government bills. Instead, the government should be liberal, should encourage competition and through competition we will achieve quality, be able to cut down the prices and bridge the gap between different states in the higher education sector. I also believe more private institutes should be provided with greater autonomy.”


Dr Akshai Aggarwal,
Vice-Chancellor,Gujarat Technological University,Ahmedabad

“I have visited now about 200 colleges in GTU, and I believe if we cannot have discipline, we should not ask for a world class university in India. There have also been issues about lack of industry-institute interaction, but my suggestion is don’t go to the large industries. They are good for seeing or tour, but not for learning for students. On the issue of autonomy of institutions, one should copy the west intelligently. We will doom all the autonomous institutions to remain third-rate for all time to come, if they do not have two to three world class teachers. According to a study, Indian institutions did not even make to the list of top ten technical institutes in Asia. The way out is to be ruthless in quality, supporting the institutions financially and giving them sufficient autonomy”


Lokesh Mehra,
Director, Education Advocacy, Microsoft

“By the year 2025, there will be 47 million youths and there should be 52 million job opportunities to employ everyone. There is a common complain that the industries do not come forward. However, the truth is that industries operate in silos. Some people prefer to go and deliver a guest lecture, some of them allow students to visit them,and some of them will come forward and donate equipment. Also, as far as the curriculum s concerned, the board of study sits twice or thrice a year. So the curriculum is not updated often.”


 Prof S Ramesh Babu,
Associate Vice President,Education & Research, Infosys

“We need to connect to the stakeholders and get a lot of insights from them to make our programmes relevant, flexible and useful to our people”

 

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