Technical education is right train on the wrong track

An authored article of Vikrant Pande (Provost, TeamLease Skills University) in DNA talks about how the teaching methodology in technical education is based on a faulty assumption.

A recent article talking of nearly 2 lakh engineers applying for 368 peon posts in UP state is a clear example of engineering colleges being on the wrong track. Since the IT revolution of the ’90s, engineering colleges were sitting pretty, getting 100 per cent placements and generally not bothered about what they taught. Today many of them are closing down due to the inability to place students. The less than industry-relevant curriculum is the effect, not the cause, of what ails colleges.

Teaching methodology is based on the faulty assumption that engineering is an academic discipline like chemistry or physics. In fact, engineering is applied science and is a profession, akin to medicine, law or chartered accountancy. The distinction between a profession and an academic discipline is crucial. When the Industrial Training Institutes (ITI) were formed, in the ’50s, the objective was to create a ‘trade’ school which conducted practicals more than theory. That was a useful, but hardly a comprehensive and professional education. The engineering colleges were supposed to fulfil the gap of offering ‘theoretical’ inputs. No curricular reforms will work until we start considering engineering as applied science. Today, the pedagogy in engineering colleges is only about teaching dozens of subjects with little or almost nil effort on practical exposure. Going back to the trade school paradigm would be a disaster. It is thus imperative to strike a new balance between pure theory and practical relevance.

Creating an entirely new set of universities like a skills universities offer many solutions to the problem. How is a skills university different from others? The basic DNA is about praying to the one god of employer. The curriculum is set by industry and not academicians. In engineering colleges we find that professors have no exposure to industry and they are far detached from real life applications of engineering. A skills university balances theory and practise. Theory in itself is not bad but focus on theory alone is disastrous. Law schools expect faculty members to be first-rate scholars; in fact, articles published in law reviews are often cited in trials. But these institutions also value professors’ ability to teach. Similarly, medical schools carry on advanced biological research, but most members of the teaching faculty are also practicing doctors. Our engineering colleges are full of professors with PhDs in their subjects. The regulator too mandates this without demanding for any industry experience.