Anna University of Technology-Chennai is worried about the status and performance of engineering colleges in the state of Tamil Nadu on the basis of academic audit that was taken up last July. For instance, during the last three years the overall pass-percentage of final year students of the university as a whole had been in the range of 75% to 80%. Only half of them were placed in jobs in 2010-11.Of these, two thirds were in IT and only the remaining were from core industries though many of the students were from non-IT streams. IT had come to the rescue of the majority of the students coming out of these colleges, it seems. IT may reach a stage of saturation very soon after which the placement percentage is bound to decline and expose the poverty of thinking in terms of man-power planning that is badly needed for this country. Sooner the better and earlier the better. What is the big use of higher education in technology & engineering at such a cost if not backed by salaried job or self-employment?
The audit also found that many teachers were not being paid their prescribed salaries. Only one college offers an average salary of more than Rs.60, 000 a month to its teaching staff. All other top ranking colleges offer an average salary of Rs.45, 000 to Rs.50, 000 a month.
Some colleges offer only an average salary of Rs.8, 000 to Rs.10, 000 a month, and this tells on the performance of the students, the university has mentioned. “A broad observation is that colleges that pay good salary have good academic ranking” said C.Thangaraj, vice chancellor of AUT-Chennai.
After holding discussions with the stakeholders, AUT-Chennai has suggested the introduction of a flexible academic system. “Our university has students who have got only 70 marks along with the students who have scored 200 out of 200. Unfortunately, we give them the same academic load to all of them uniformly”, Professor Thangaraj asserts.
He suggested that colleges give students some freedom to select the courses in a semester according to their capability, instead of asking all of them to pass six similar courses in all semesters.
Quality is more important than the quantity when it comes to higher education in professional courses and the number of colleges and students should have some correlation with the need of the society and industrial and service sectors in particular. More than the degrees we need more of the diploma holders and trained craftsmen for soiling their hands and working on the machines for manufacturing and servicing.
(Friday, October 21, 2011 Times of India)
Forty-five days of counselling in Anna University in Chennai has ensured the admission of some 1,27,404 students in various B.E and B.Tech Courses throughout Tamil Nadu, an addition of 17,238 more this year compared to last year.
ReplyDeleteIn the year 2007 there were 66,507 seats available for admission whereas now we have something like 1,82, 459 seats against which 55055 seats are lying vacant with no takers.
What a calamity in terms of infrastructure and heavy investment without any man-power planning!