According to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), every year eight lakh engineers are passed out from the technical colleges, but out of these eight lakh more than 60% are not able to get a job.
So, as per the statistics, overall the country is losing 20 lakh man-days every year. Moreover, the number of students going for summer internships is less than 1%.
It has also been observed that out of 3200 institutes that offer engineering programs, only 15% have the accreditation from the National Board of Accreditation (NBA).
All these findings indicate that there is a big variation in the standards of various technical colleges all over the nation and most of them are preparing engineering graduates who are not even suitable to be employed by any organization.
Seeing this trend, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) is planning to give India’s technical education a facelift. Not only this, it also wants to bring a big change in the technical education of the country.
Their new strategy is to start a single National Entrance Examination for Technical Institutions (NEETI) from January 2018, and also making annual teacher training a necessary parameter for getting approval for the institution with revision of curriculum every year in addition to compulsory induction training to the students who have enrolled.
According to a senior MHRD official, for National Testing Service (NTS), NEETI will be the first examination which is going to be totally computer-based. The officer said, “In all probability, NTS will be ready by January 2018 to conduct the NEETI as well as National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical courses. The exams will be conducted multiple times in a year.”
As per plans, the first NEETI exam is likely to be scheduled for December 2017-January 2018, followed by another one in March 2018 and the third in May 2018.
The official added that NTS will also conduct entrance test for IIT. The paper setting will continue to be with the IITs. Only the conduct of the exams will be NTS’s responsibility.
AICTE, which comes under MHRD, has decided to raise the standards of technical education in the country for which it has planned to take steps in order to increase the employability from present 40% to 60% and to make sure that 75% of the engineering students enhance their skills and get industry exposure through summer internships.
AICTE also plans to get 50% of the programs run by technical institutes accredited by NBA and progress will be checked annually; if institute doesn’t show progress, it won’t get the approval. AICTE is also working to make sure that the selection process will depend on a single entrance test which will be conducted by an organization or agency with authorization from MHRD and all other exams conducted by other agencies will be banned.
It will also be mandatory for institutes to make “suitable changes in the curriculum every year” and this process should get finished by December each year before the next academic year starts. Institutes have been asked by AICTE to make an action plan before June 2017 as to how they will implement these ideas and their impact in monetary terms.
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