Since mid 90's there has been an increase in the number of Engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu and since 2000 there iss a rapid increase. The main reason for this was the boom in the Information Technology (IT) Industry and other service based industries which mainly relied upon IT. Irrespective of the area/department a student chose, he wanted to get a job in an Multi National Company (MNC) which provided all perks which one didn't get (& not provided!) in other Government/Private organizations.
The main motive for all this was & is Money! which is not bad but not at the cost of sacrificing one's own interest. This forced parents, students, society to choose a career without thinking about their real interests (be it arts, literature, journalism, even other Engineering Depts. and Government R&D organizations like ISRO, DRDO). IT is all because of prejudice, image, social status, flock mentality which made people to make decision willingly but are not aware that they are falling into a trap!
Since the industry was in boom and all the creamy layer students obviously opted for better career rather than choose teaching/lecturing as a career which would demand the student to atleast do a postgraduate (Master of Engineering - ME) and utmost a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) either in India or abroad to survive and reach greater heights in teaching. People who opted for teaching during mid 90's to till now are the ones who were not able to secure jobs at MNC's or at other places. The percentage of people who opted for teaching with real interest and enthusiasm was very small and were discourged by friends and society.
And very importantly, teachers/lecturers/Professors can't be created (as it is an evolution process) in a very short span of time. It would take years for a person to gain confidence in a subject, think independently and teach, but this is also a chain reaction and it has great benefits in expanding ones horizons.
Having stated all this, we know why there is a dearth of qualified faculty in Engineering Colleges. So, this has led to the chain reaction where we don't have qualified faculty which inturn has led to demotivation among students in learning core (Ex: Electronics, Civil etc) areas properly. If teaching as a profession has reached this condition, how can one think about research and world class research in India?
This is how we reached the place where we are now! Can we get away from this trap and reach greater heights?
Possible solutions we can try:Courses have to be taught by experts or atleast by the one who is keen to learn the subject. Everyone (students) cannot afford to be physically present (or get admimission) into the world class institutes like Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, IITs, etc. MIT has a fantastic project MIT- Open Course Ware (OCW) which gives student at any corner of the world to have feel of thought process involved in teaching at MIT.
Every student should see Prof. Walter Lewin's () video courses on Physics . He invests about 20 hours in preparation for an hour's lecture (with demonstration). He risks his life to explain physics and makes fun out of him in every lecture. With the broadband internet penetrating to each of home in India, a student can very easily download the lecture (an hour of video lecture is file about 70MB (varies with video quality)). Prof. Gilbert Strang's () on the Linear Algebra (Mathematics course) is simple and lucid. For sure, +1 and +2 students would understand and appreciate the concepts in the subject and they would fall in love with Professors! (Since the author has seen this, he is commenting on these two Profs. and there may be other good video lectures covering wide range of other subjects which the author is ignorant). One problem which many of the Indian students may initially face is the English language pronunciation (US slang). But, MIT-OCW is kind enough to have transcripts of the lecture in their website. WOW!
Now, on the similar line IIT's have also taken steps to share the video lectures of professors online which is now available
here or about which an article came in Education Plus on 9th March 2009 titled "NPTEL - streaming knowledge to all". So, with the help of video lectures of NPTEL, a student doesn't have the problem in language pronunciation as it is typical Indian. NPTEL has uploaded all the video lectures in youtube format which requires little bit of IT skill to download the video file. In fact, Prof. Mangal Sundar Krishnan, NPTEL, IITM has been working on this project for atleast 5 years and NPTEL is on the way to install an independent and dedicated server containing the video lectures to be downloaded in MP4 (MPEG4) file format which is very similar to MIT-OCW.
With this video lectures from MIT-OCW, NPTEL and others given for free students no longer are ignorant of teaching process at world class institutions. Now, it's upto the students and parents to decide what they want to do?
One now hears from IT/service sector people that companies have stopped venturing into new projects, freezed the recruitment process and are concentrating more on cost cutting strategies. Some employees find it difficult to even retain their job which would result in high stress, in worst case has led to sucide and many other social problems. Companies are interested in people who can handle multiple jobs and there will always be demand for people who have intra and multi-discilinary experience.
With the 6th Pay Commission lining up Government sector jobs sounds to be lucrative when the IT/service industry is dull and students interested in research/challenging jobs can enter into DRDO/ISRO. And, if the students feel that they need to do higher studies it's better to do in India. The reason is that with US, Europe and UK facing recession, Universities find it difficult to get Financial Grants / new projects whose funding flows as scholarship to Masters/PhD students. The other reason is Ministry of Human Resource Development, India (MHRD) has increased the scholarship amount from Rs.5000 to Rs.8000 in the case of (M.Tech/ME/MS) and from (Rs. 9000-10000) to Rs. (14000 - 15000) for PhD in Engineeirng Disciplines. And, the moral of the story is that one should always invest in the stock market whose sensex will always rise.
No doubt that education/knowledge/wisdom is such a stock market and one who has carefully invested need not worry about sensex falling down!
