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Raise technical faculty quality and numbers: Sukhatme- 14-Sep-2011

Mumbai: To enhance the quality of teachers in technical institutes across the country and also to increase the faculty number to improve the distorted student-teacher ratio, the Centre should revive schemes like the erstwhile Technical Teachers Training (TTT) with attractive incentives, said an education expert here.
   
"Such schemes would attract and encourage the graduates to do Masters and PhD programmes and come into technical teaching line and bring out the best talent among technical teaching community, especially in the private sector," Suhas P Sukhatme, Professor Emiritus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Bombay) said.
    
He was speaking on the theme 'Some perspectives on Technical Education in India' during the 10th V G Kulkarni Memorial lecture at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education here.
    
Sukhatme said the credit of growth in number of technical educational institutions and thus the number of students since 1951 goes to the private sector.     

However, the quality of technical faculty in these institutions has to be improved to a large extent to increase the employability of students coming out of these institutes.
    
Quoting figures, he said the total graduates passed out of technical institutions in 1951 was 4500 while in 2011 it is nearly three lakh which was adequate. The number of ME/MTech passed out in 1950 was 400 and the number in recent years was 19000 (marginal). The number of Phds in 1960 was less than 100 and currently it is approximately 1000.
    
There is a great deficit especially at PhD level,he said.     

Sukhatme said the ideal (desirable) teacher-student ratio was 1:8 but atleast we should be able to achieve 1:15 (like in IITs). In private institutions it is currently 1:30 in most cases, he pointed out.
    
Sukhatme, former Director of IIT-B and Chairman of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board said it was also necessary for technical institutions to retain the existing faculty by encouraging them with performance-related incentives.
    
Criticising the current form of selection of teachers through long procedures (legacy of selection committees) which most of the time distract them from coming into the profession, Sukhatme said online procedures and tele-interviews could be adopted for faster recruitment.
    
He also stressed that those coming into teaching profession should have life-long commitment and dedication and should never stop their learning process and have to like students.
    
Giving another suggestion to enhance the technical skills in the core subjects of the engineering college teachers, Sukhatme said the 'Eklavya' model which is being adopted by the IIT-B could be utilised extensively in the country.
    
In this programme at a time (for a period of one week training) around 1,000 teachers can be trained as it is done using EDUSAT and computer technologies.
    
Academic autonomy and administrative autonomy also should be promoted in the technical institutions, he added.
    
Answering a query on the declining standard of country's three oldest universities (Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata), he said "we need to carry out major changes in these universities to bring back their glory."