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Tackling rural India's problems
These issues are debated profusely, triggering circular blame games, with a general conclusion that the responsibility lies in the hands of the country's youth to put things right. Yet, every year we see the educated youth overlooking this sector
Indian held in Dubai for rallying in support of Hazare
- An Indian expatriate in the United Arab Emirates has been arrested here for organising a march in support of the anti-corruption movement launched by social activist Anna Hazare.
- More than 150 Indian nationals had gathered at Dubai's Al Mamzar Beach on Saturday evening for a 3-km march in support of the crusade.
U.S. keen on more educational collaboration with India
- India and the U.S. have strong ties in the area of education. Over 1,00,000 Indians study in the U.S. and the number continues to increase each year.
- there are approximately half a billion Indians under the age of 25. Put simply, educating this population is one of the greatest challenges facing India
- India plan to host a higher educational summit in Washington D.C. on October 13 to highlight and emphasise the many avenues through which the higher education communities in the U.S and India collaborate
Where have engineering teachers gone?
- The government pressed a red button the other day when it was revealed in Parliament that the country faced a shortage of more than 3,00,000 teachers in its institutions of higher learning. In engineering education alone, the shortage is more than 1,50,000.
- What is more shocking is the increase in the faculty shortage to 54 per cent from the 40 per cent a few years ago.
- The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development has permitted the 15 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), premier engineering institutes in the country, to appoint non-resident Indians (NRIs) and people of Indian origin (PIOs) as permanent faculty as part of measures to tide over the teacher shortage
- The AICTE currently stipulates a 1:14 teacher-student ratio for engineering institutions.
- Plans are afoot to bring down the teacher-student ratio in engineering institutions to 1:12. The ideal teacher-student ratio, expert say, is 1:10, which is the international standard.
- When the student intake doubled in recent years with the increase in seats and courses, not a single appointment of supporting staff was made
- The result is that the faculty is being forced to spend part of their time for clerical work, leading to a dilution in academic activities.
- The AICTE stipulates a faculty cadre ratio of 1:2:4 for professors, associate professors, and assistant professors.
- Although the AICTE has made M.Tech. degree mandatory for faculty, most private engineering colleges are yet to abide by it
- The faculty shortage is the worst in the branches of computer science and electronics and communication in almost all engineering colleges. The reason is simple. The engineering graduates of these two branches are much sought after by the industry.
- Right now, we don’t have a mechanism to measure the quality. And that is where we survive
- It is this lack of quality at higher level academics, particularly doctoral and post-doctoral research, which deprives India of any single technical institution of international repute.
Pre-school education sans formal teaching
- We would like to move forward, hopefully, in the next few years to bring pre-school education on the formal education agenda without formally teaching children between four and six years
- The government was looking at putting the onus of imparting pre-school education on anganwadis in the initial stage
- The Minister also said the government was considering universalising secondary education which could come through during the Five-Year Plan period beginning 2012
- The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, prohibits engaging children below 14 in all occupations barring agriculture. Even in that sector, they could work only where tractors and threshing and harvesting machines are used.
