MY THOUGHTS I HAVE SENT TO A MAGAZINE, AT THE SAME TIME I LIKE TO SHARE IT WITH ALL CONCERNED ON THE ISSUE WITHOUT COPYRIGHT GIVEN TO ANY ONE Some Notes on Redesigning Higher Technical Education to meet National Aspirations Liberalization, Globalization and Privatization to which India participated in 1992 has openen up great challenges, viabilities and potentialities subject to adoption and changes. Generation of a deliverable brilliant pool of national human resource is decisively a sound strategy for any developing country for competitive advantage in the current globalized economy. Economy and Education are most important for any country, and these are dependent on each other, not replacement. Today like never before, national development is closely related to the application of science and technology in the developmental process. The wisdom of being developed is therefore how exceptionally finest is the national intelligent resource and how closely generation system of human resources fits the national requirement. India despite claiming to be the third largest technical manpower in the world, has not yielded the expected results. This calls for reviewing of current technical education system of India towards devising mechanism for result oriented transformation and to think for on return on investment made by country. The current technical education in India is objectively plagued, of course not limited to, by just producing, in general ”academic engineers” rather than “technical engineers” and in generating engineers who in general run after jobs rather than building minds to creat at least certain jobs. What is strongly, quickly and massively needed is surely a changed, innovative and country specific, not necessarily following the developed countries’ models always, technical education system as a whole. Innovations are the need of the hour in regard to framing syllabus to meet the aspirations of applying products of the system to build developed India. The emphasize requires to be done on the spirits of “ practice is the first theory” in teaching, “credit & time structure is for content and content is not for structure, ie, not fixing content of any course in a time bound structure ” in designing the contents of any subject paper, “ giving higher emphasis in thinking & imagination process over dissemination process” in teaching mechanism, “do while learning “ in environment, “entrepreneurship teaching” as essentiality, “human values, ethics, NCC and NSS” for holistic man making, and finally changing the evaluation process from current practice on “how much you do not know” to “ how much you know.” The introduction of on line examination both for objective & subjective evaluation and open book examination will be rational in this context. Creation of technical or practical engineers calls for one way rethinking on radical change of establishing laboratories in the institutes and in another way revizing institute industry interaction. For the long period so many exercises of institute industry interaction has not made any note worthy impact. It is suggested that as & whereas the interaction is essential, there is no reason as to why institutes will not establish its some of the selected laboratories as small industries. Industries of institutes will certainly be an in built institute industry interaction never thought of before. As teachers do consultancy for industries and as the laboratory product is the first & foremost for commercial production, the proppsal of industry by institute is dully feasible and definitely realizable. What is needed is a changed mindset for acceptance. Further such a proposal may create huge IRG ( Internal Resource Generation) for which each institute is thriving for. In private sector, if the proposal is allowed & accepted, it is supposed to bring revolution in industrial infrastructure in the country. It is absolutely necessary to think the model fitting the need of the country. What is doing very good in one country may be disaster for another country. This is how the mind set is needed to be changed. Country is in crying need of adequate number of quality teachers. Dedicated resourceful teachers having crunch thrust for learning and spontaneous zeal for research, as quality higher education is imbridged with research, are pillars of any extraordinary institutes. Practice of several measures exercised by this time for attracting teaching profession has not produced desired results. The practices in this regard undertaken so far are found to focus on offered enhanced and extra financial packages. The measures on financial gains may create certainly not an environment of getting teachers “by choice.”. There is a need for creating conducive environment and culture for attracting bright & scholastic students to opt for teaching by choice. Generating interest in teaching at early stage may be thought of. The students by merit of 4th year of B Tech classes may be given some opportunity to teach in 2nd year classes for generating teaching and research interest among finest young minds besides existing financial packages and in house off the peg availability of PG course and Ph D programme. This kind of environment may bring a cultural mind change for fruitful availability of teachers by choice. Barrier-free , less-rule based and liberal-grant based research culture should be another goal of any prospective institute for competitive survival and sustainable growth. In house research and Ph D programme for both young teachers & students should emphatically be encouraged and enhanced if required with innovative practices of quality control. Now-a-days some not-to-be-dismissed suspicious about in house Ph D for internal teachers are reported. Such issues need innovative measures to curb with rather than killing the legacy of historically established research foundation in any institute. What is suggested that the submitted theses of one Institute(parent) may be sent to another Institute(foreign) for evaluation. The foreign Institute will be responsible for finding experts for evaluation of theses, and once the evaluation reports are received, the reports will be sent to the parent Institute for the acceptance or rejection as per prevailing rules. Last but not the least the assessment of institutes if is done by the quality of products only they produce it may not serve the right national purpose. More meaningful and appropriate parameter for assessment of institutes should be productivity defined as ouput divided by input. What is output for a given input is decisively more important than what is the just output. The national assessment process to some extent will be wrong if just be copied from other countries, and may like to seriously look into the measuring productivity of the institutes for grading institutes among others things. Innovations and applications of art of novelty are of paramount importance to exercise the importance of making students who will eventually be made to accept “ what you do with what you know is more important than what you know” and “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Institutes should be made for Innovation, Expansion and Excellency with autonomy as far as practicable, being independent in full and thinking neither superior nor inferior to any other institute, and finally making as good as others if not superior.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Nov 2013 14:01:06 +0000
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