Recently, there are two reports published in Times of India and Indian Express, which deal with falling standard of education in India. The reports try to analyse the cause of the degrading quality in our colleges.
a) The report in Times of India shows interesting statistics about engineering colleges.
(Correction-It mentions 9 IITs, perhaps referring to the 9 colleges-7 IITs along with IT-BHU and ISM, Dhanbad-admitting students through IIT-JEE. There are 20 NITs, including the latest one announced at Imphal, Manipur state.)
The article:
Engineers: Quantity over quality?
26 May, 2007 l 0144 hrs IST l Subodh Varma/TIMES NEWS NETWORK
NEW DELHI: This year, a record 7 lakh students sat for the All India Engineering Entrance Examination, competing for over 9,000 seats in engineering colleges across the country. Last year the number was 5.8 lakh, while the year before it was 3.6 lakh. The great rush for engineering continues but for how long and at what cost?
There are over 1,400 engineering colleges in the country offering more than 5 lakh seats, of which, over 85% are private colleges. And, such is the demand that parents are willing to pay lakhs to get admission into the so-called open seats. However, the number of students successfully passing out from these colleges declined from about 70% in 2002 to 57% in 2005.
A few other facts indicate the chaotic situation prevailing in this sector. Despite the mad rush, several thousand seats go vacant in engineering colleges. Thus, in 2006, over 47,000 seats were left vacant in 7 states. Also, every year, thousands of seats are de-recognised by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the top regulatory body for non-IIT engineering education.
Declining pass-out rates and periodic de-recognition are a direct result of the unregulated growth of colleges. At the top of the heap are the 9 IITs. Then come the 19 National Institutes of Technology, formerly known as the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs). These top two layers are government run. Then we have the rest of the colleges, mostly private.
According to Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), a top professional body, the mushrooming of private colleges without any regulation in quality has led to a deterioration of standards and skill levels. In most colleges, fresh BTech graduates are working as lecturers. AICTE estimates that there are only 7,000 PhDs and 20,000 MTechs working as teachers, while BTechs number nearly 1 lakh.
Vacancies in college seats are a result of a combination of factors. Colleges with a not-so-good faculty and infrastructure are not preferred. Courses like IT are preferred more over, say, agricultural engineering. In addition, seats reserved for SC/ST often go vacant. Derecognition occurs because colleges initially meet the minimum conditions required for getting AICTE approval but later fall back.
These conditions include faculty strength, qualification, infrastructure, among others. Actually, AICTE only provides the minimum standard for approval. The real test is accreditation by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), which looks at quality of education too. Only about 8% of the engineering colleges are accredited by the NBA.
Over 60% of the engineering colleges are located in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Since most industries are located in these states, absorption rates are better.
There may be a similar concentration within a state, for instance, most of the 236 UP engineering colleges are located in the industrial districts of Ghaziabad and Noida. According to Arun Arya, a second year student in Ghaziabad, "I have come from Lucknow to study here because placement possibilities are better."
However, employment may not at all be commensurate with qualification — several engineers can be found doing data entry jobs or working in call centres. This is because there is a wide mismatch between jobs requiring engineering skills and the numbers being churned out.
In fact, top policy makers are worried that post graduate studies in engineering are abysmally low. Only about 5% of the engineering graduates continue to complete MTech — and, of these only 3% go on to do a doctorate. And, it is not as if the situation is any different in emerging disciplines. Only 4500 of the 1.8 lakh computer engineering BTechs went on to do MTech. This not only causes a severe shortage of qualified faculty, it also blunts the edge in research and innovation.
So, what should be done? INAE prescribes an overhaul of the administration and management structure of technical institutions, boosting faculty strengths, rationalising admission policy and increased interaction with industry. Without these, and a strict watch on quality of education, India could well end up with too many engineers out in the cold.
b) Another report in Indian Express shows that education standard in falling in colleges and universities across the country. It cites statistics from NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) to support its argument.
Higher education, lowest standards
Shubhajit Roy
Posted online: Sunday, June 10, 2007 at 0000 hrs
UGC survey shows 90% of colleges, 68% of universities assessed medium or poor; half of Class XII students never even enter college
New Delhi, June 9: In this season of celebrating toppers and staggering cut-offs in college admissions across the country, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has come up with a startling admission: Over half of the students who pass Class XII don’t even enter the higher-education sector; 90 per cent of colleges and 68 per cent of universities across the country are of middling or poor quality. On almost all indicators, from faculty standards to library facilities, from computer availability to student-teacher ratio, higher education is in crying need for an upgrade.
The “quality gap” in both universities and colleges is alarming: 25 per cent faculty positions in universities remain vacant; 57 per cent teachers in colleges do not have either an M Phil or PhD; there is only one computer for 229 students, on an average, in colleges.
These results of the first-ever official assessment of the higher education system, conducted by UGC’s Bangalore-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), have been presented to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by HRD Minister Arjun Singh. The assessment was conducted on 123 universities and 2,956 colleges across India — an estimated 60% of these institutions were private, the rest government-run.
Institutions participated on a voluntary basis. It was based on seven broad parameters: curriculum, teaching, research and consultancy, infrastructure, student support, management and innovative practices.
The data acquire extra significance given the boom in the higher education sector and the exponential rate of growth expected. The number of universities has risen from 20 in 1947 to 378 in 2006; colleges, from 500 to 18,064 during the same period. And yet, “little more than half, 52.61 per cent, of those who passed the 12th standard get into colleges and universities, the other half drops out,” said UGC chairman Sukhdeo Thorat.
The dropout rate among Scheduled Tribes is maximum (61.5 per cent), followed by Scheduled Castes (51.21) and Other Backward Classes (50.09).
“We followed a rigorous methodology for each institution which, in an average, took as long as seven months,” said NAAC’s director V S Prasad. “This included a self-appraisal, a peer review and an independent monitoring.”
So far, no IIM, IIT or NIT (formerly RECs) have been assessed by the council — these anyways are likely to be Grade A institutions, said Prasad.
The key findings (see charts) are startling:
- Of 123 universities, only a third is of “good quality,” over a half are B-grade and a sixth C-grade
- Among 2,956 colleges, only 10 per cent made the Grade A cut; 66 per cent were B-grade and 24 per cent C-grade.
Thorat, present during the meeting with the PM, told The Sunday Express: “We have to focus on bridging the quality gap between A-grade and the rest. There are mainly two reasons for this quality gap: availability and quality of facilities and quality of faculty.”
Thorat says that one key factor behind the quality gap is the under-investment in higher education since 1980s. Between 1951 and 1980, the government spending on higher education sector grew at the rate of 17 per cent, but then it dipped to 10 pc between 1981 to 2003-04.
The result, the UGC claims, is that it’s unable to fund 60 per cent of colleges and 40 per cent of state universities. To “improve the situation”, the UGC, backed by the HRD ministry, has sought Rs 77,779 crore as funds for the XIth five-year-plan. And plans to make NAAC assessment and accreditation mandatory, link funding to performance, expand operations in districts with enrolment less than 10 per cent, increase funds to institutions with higher share of students from the poor and the marginalised sections.
Quality status of the universities and colleges sector
Colleges Assessed by NAAC 2956
Grade A 10%
Grade B 66%
Grade C 24%
Universities Assessed by NAAC 123
Grade A 32%
Grade B 52%
Grade C 16%
