Express View on uptick in BTech seats: Engineering the future

The information for BTech seats crossed the country is simply a crushed for hope. The All India Council for Technical Education’s (AICTE) approved intake for undergraduate engineering and exertion courses for 2024-25 shows a astir 19 per cent summation from 2021-22, erstwhile the full fig of seats touched the lowest successful a decade. The uptick comes aft a year-on-year diminution successful intake for astir of the past decade. This was besides a play erstwhile reduced request forced respective colleges to unopen down. The slump, arsenic underlined by an probe successful this paper successful December 2017, had overmuch to bash with the deficiencies of the institutions and the AICTE’s failings arsenic a regulator and enabler. The investigation had revealed that astir colleges were dogged by corruption and did not person facilities — due laboratories, trained teachers — to nurture talent. The AICTE has clarified that the summation successful the fig of seats is contingent connected the institutions fulfilling infrastructure and faculty-related requirements. It should defender against lapsing into the aged ways.

The engineering assemblage successful India is riddled with paradoxes. The state produces 1 of the highest numbers of engineers successful the world. Yet, study aft study has pointed retired that astir Indian institutions bash not supply state-of-the-art skills. Even the astir blimpish surveys estimation that astir 30 per cent engineering graduates bash not person a occupation — successful fact, past year, past NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar said that this fig is arsenic precocious arsenic 48 per cent. Most institutes bash not supply applicable grooming that should beryllium cardinal to an applied subject specified arsenic engineering. That’s wherefore they person failed to supply a springboard for the Centre’s entrepreneurial projects specified arsenic Make successful India. A portion of the occupation besides stems from debased concern successful probe and improvement (R&D). India’s R&D expenditure to GDP ratio of 0.7 per cent is precise debased compared to developed economies — South Korea, for instance, spends much than 5 per cent of its GDP connected R&D.