TNN, Pune Edition, 22th Aug 2008

For 20 Lakh Engineering Students, Only 4,000 Tutors Get Trained Annually

Pune: Chew on this. Against a requirement of 1.6 lakh teachers for the 20 lakh engineering students in the country, the number of teachers that get trained annually is barely 4,000 or a little over 2 per cent.
According to IIT Bombay professor Kannan M. Moudgalya, close to five lakh students join the 1,500 private engineering colleges in India every year. The combined strength works out to 20 lakh students for the four-year course duration.

With the ideal teacher-tostudent ratio pegged between 1:10 and 1:16, the requirement for engineering teachers has been projected at 1.6 lakh by the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTel).

The NPTel is a joint venture of the seven IITs and the IISc, Bangalore, for creating technology-driven content for engineering and science courses. It is funded by the HRD ministry.

Clearly, the shortage of engineering teachers is ‘huge’ and calls for a robust effort by the stakeholders including industry and academia. More so, when the shortage finds a telling manifestation in the poor employability (less than 10 per cent) of the fresh engineering graduates rolled out by the institutions each year.

Moudgalya, who heads the Centre for Distance Engineering Education Programme (CDEEP) at the IIT, Bombay, said that distance education was a partial way to addressing this issue and the same was finding gradual acceptance among institutions and industry alike.

A case in point is the Mission 10X, a not-for-profit trust launched by software company Wipro in September last year to implement a programme of training 10,000 faculty by 2010 in new methodologies of teaching in engineering.

On Thursday, the Mission 10X announced a tie-up with IIT, Bombay, for taking further its faculty training initiative.

The idea is to utilise the IIT’s expertise in distance learning for pushing a faculty-to-faculty leverage training model being introduced from the second year of Mission 10X, beginning September 5, said Selvan D, senior vice-president for talent transformation at Wipro Technologies.

The Mission 10X primarily involves a series of faculty enabling workshops conducted at engineering colleges with a specific focus on the faculty’s potential and insight into interactive teaching methodology and teaching aids.

The trust has developed a set of innovative teaching techniques called the ‘Mission 10X learning approach’ (MxLA), which is being integrated into various engineering courses at the colleges covered by Mission 10X.

“In our first year, we have covered 1,000 faculty at engineering colleges in five states — Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Orissa and Karnataka. This includes 17 colleges in Maharashtra, of which 14 are in Pune,” said Selvan.

Over the next two years, the programme will reach out to 3,000 and 6,000 engineering faculty, respectively, at colleges spread across 12 states, said Selvan.

The Mission 10X-IIT, Bombay MoU was announced at a ceremony here that was attended by Sharadchandra Darade-Patil, dean of Maharashtra Institute of Technology and S. Nagarjuna, head, Mission 10X.

FALLING SHORT

Private engineering colleges: 1,500 Yearly enrolment of students: Nearly 5,00,000 Combined strength of students for the four-year course duration: 20,00,000 Ideal teacher-to-student ratio: between 1:10 and 1:16 Projected requirement for engineering teachers: 1,60,000 Teachers who get trained annually: 4,000