More promises, more engineers… = more standard?

Quite encouraging a promise it was when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his speech to the nation on 15th August 2007 mentioned about 8 new IITs and 7 new IIMs. It’s a major rollout for higher education sector which caters to the global needs for engineers and managers. This promise if made a reality would bring out even more engineers in India every year, than the number that we see in today’s statistics which is more than 350,000 graduates per year. In a developing nation, which has just entered its 7th decade of democracy, the relevancy of creating more and more technical education centers is quite debatable. When India needs more boost to primary education, to create a stronger foundation, this debate has more points to discuss.

IITs are always known to the world as the de facto of Indian engineering education. It was once a dream for many of us to get there to do our engineering graduation. I’m certainly unaware of how they’re taught in IITs, but as a victim of the JEE I’m pretty sure that those who get in there really needs to have something in their head! So quite naturally all those rare species that pass out from various IITs are looked upon with utmost surprise and reverence by people like me. But lately I realize that this “rare species” are ultimately going to be not-so-rare in the country (if the mentioned proposal of the Planning commission becomes a truth!).

It’s a noble idea to give standard education to the masses when they’re qualified to do their graduation in engineering. But how sure can be this Planning commission about the standard that is expected to be maintained in the future IITs? Not even a week has passed since this proposal was made public; the chief minister of a “very influencing” state in India has written to the PM demanding the allocation of 3 such premier institutions in his state! check out

For any average Indian tracing Indian politics for the past 5 years can be pretty sure that this boon is going to be granted. If politics could influence such areas of higher education, how can we be sure about the standards?

There is another article which many of you would have read by this time. It was published in Education Plus supplement to The Hindu dated 14th August, 2007. check out

It clearly analyses the falls that CUSAT had to bear with, due to the increasing number of engineering colleges under the university. Now, since the final year results of Kerala University (2003-‘07 batch) is expected to be published soon, I don’t know if the newspaper will have to republish the article with proper changes in names!

The government has always played games with higher education sectors with different cards at different times- the reservation cards got lost unexpectedly this year. Since the market is demanding more grads with the engineering feather on their heads, it’s a natural and welcomed move by the government to set up more premier institutions across the country. We can just hope that we have brighter grads coming out to build a better nation…!