“We sacrificed quality in technical education for the sake of quantity,” said Education Minister Adimulapu Suresh. The rot can be stemmed by weeding out useless academics and punishing professors who lack basic knowledge of their subjects.
Mr. Suresh called upon all stakeholders to take the responsibility for reversing the trend so that not only employability of graduates increases from the current 22%, but also helps the State put in place a continuous sustainable model of pedagogy as the pace of the change in technology was very fast, after inaugurating a two-day national conclave of Vice-Chancellors of technological universities here on Thursday.
Attended by 65 V-Cs, the second conclave jointly organised by Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Anantapur, and Visvesvaraya Technological University(VTU), Belagavi (Karnataka) in association with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) marking the 75th year of setting up of the engineering college at Anantapur, the conclave aims at ‘reinventing excellence in technical education.’
While stressing on the urgent need for training teachers, the Minister said just tackling the problems of higher education in isolation was not the panacea for all ills, hence the Jagan Mohan Reddy government had focused on comprehensive improvement in the education system in the State right from the elementary level and had introduced English medium to partially overcome the challenges faced by many graduates.
“A B.Tech (honours) 5-year course is proposed in State technological universities, but the government is seeking legal and AICTE expert opinion on integrating internship in related industries,” the Minister said, adding that gaining theoretical knowledge was not enough.
MoU on ATAL Centre
AICTE Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe acknowledged the opinion of speakers that the country had slipped in quality of education, but only focusing on employability. Creating good citizens with value-based education was the need of the hour.
The AICTE entered into an MoU with the VTU for starting an AICTE Training and Learning (ATAL) Academy in Bengaluru on a two-acre land and with JNTUA to begin a programme in faculty development and Mr. Sahasrabudhe exchanged the documents with VTU Vice-Chancellor Karisiddappa and JNTUA Vice-Chancellor S. Srinivas Kumar.
