A study by the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) has revealed that the degrading quality of education in technical institutes and colleges in the state is the major reason for over 40,000 engineering seats going vacant every year. The same trend is seen in courses like pharmacy, architecture, hotel management and catering technology, MBA, MCA and other vocational courses. dna finds out the reasons...
Salary packages in remote colleges are not attractive
It is true that due to deteriorating education quality and poor faculty, many seats of engineering and other vocational courses are going vacant every year. I think the major problem is that corporates are attracting students with better opportunities, with none of the good students preferring to enter the teaching profession. Which is why the teaching standard seems to be getting poor in all colleges. Getting a good quality faculty in remote engineering colleges has become all the more difficult, because salary packages are not attractive. Big engineering colleges are being built because of availability of land and finance, but what is missing is the core strength of research facility, good faculty and students. The institutes and colleges are having good infrastructure but not good teaching. There is a need for good quality internship and research projects especially in the rural colleges and institutes. Each college should have 4 to 5 corporates supporting them in internship and projects. Also, the industry-academia relationship has t o be good.
--Ketan Deshpande, Founder Chairman, FUEL NGO
It has become very easy to complete ME or PhD degree
Nowadays students are well-informed and choose engineering institutes offering better infrastructure, education and quality faculty. Only those institutes which maintain their quality with faculty and provide facilities, score better with students and don't have problem with filling their seats. It is true that many institutes in the city and more in the rural areas are not able to fill the seats. We have to understand that today's generation is more informed and connected and more so are the parents of the students. Parents and students do consider the quality of faculty, basic facilities available before taking admission in an institute. It has also become necessary for institutes to regularly come out with new innovative ideas over the regular campus activities, to keep the students engaged. The faculty quality is deteriorating because nowadays it has become very easy for anyone to complete ME or PhD degree, along with doing a part-time job. With the absence of full-time devotion to master or doctorate programme, how can you expect quality.
--Milind Rohokale, HoD (Mechanical Engineering), Sinhgad Institute of Technology
Faculty must be offered better salary in rural colleges
Since 1983, when the self-financing engineering colleges came into existence, it led to a huge increase in the number of colleges cropping up everywhere in the country. This happened without looking at the quality aspect of the faculty, which considered the backbone and integral component of any education institute. This was followed by the government taking decision to establish AICTE, which looked after the technical aspects of institutes in India. However, this body did the same thing of just increasing the number of institutes. This figure of 40,000 vacant engineering seats is mostly seen in institutes located in rural areas of the state. I would say that hardly 5 pe cent of these vacant seats are seen in the urban institutes. Now, why these rural area engineering institutes are lagging behind is because they do not attract quality faculty and good number of students. As these institutes do not attract more students, they naturally fall short of funds to attract better faculty, maintain quality and keep with incremental development needed every year. Just offering training to faculty is not enough they must also be offered better salary as per norms, especially in rural colleges.
--Jayant Kulkarni, Dean Administration & Registrar, Vishwakarma Institute of Technology
Engineering stream is no more attractive as there are less jobs
Basically there is no control over the increasing or allotting of intake. There are many colleges which have started one or two shifts. If there are 60 seats they have increased it to 120 seats introducing shifts. But the major reason for engineering seats to go vacant is that students are no more finding engineering stream attractive as there are less jobs due to slowdown over the years. Who will pay for high-cost engineering education when there are no good opportunities. The ground reality is that in many of these institutes there are no PhD faculty to take care of their masters programmes.
--Yogesh Bhalerao, Principal, MIT Academy of Engineering
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