Create two-track Education System: Anandakrishnan

Create two-track Education System: Anandakrishnan

Engineering institutions across the country should be allowed to pursue two-track education system, where skill-based degree programmes will exist alongside theory and research-based programmes M.Anandakrishnan, former Vice-Chancellor, Anna University, and Chairman, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai has said.

At the thirty-sixth annual convention of the Indian Society for Technical Education at the Bannari Amman Institute of Technology in Sathyamangalam recently, he said the flexibility is necessary to help higher education face the challenges of globalisation.

“A few of the institutions – selected on the basis of criteria such as the quality of students, faculty and infrastructure and transparent environment – may be supported to run the Five Year Integrated Dual Degree Programme. Some of them may be encouraged to offer skill-based degrees to facilitate candidates move up the value chain from diploma to Ph. D”. Apart from suggesting dual-degree programmes, Mr. Anandakrishnan emphasized on enhancing the quality of higher education institutions. He called for the enhancement through flexibility in curriculum.

“The foremost requirement for enhancement of quality of graduate engineering education is the adoption of a flexible curricular framework. The structure of the curriculum should provide for individual aptitude and career goals to students. For this, it will be necessary that all engineering curricula in India be based on credit system within the next two years, keeping in view, the scope for further refinement”. Besides enhancing the quality of institutions he also called for expanding technical education through additional intake of students. And, he also called for more government investments in the sector.

“There should be major investments by the government, instead of abandoning the technical education to the private investors. The government investment should help establish or upgrade about 100 technical institutions to substantial intake capacity to world-class standard”.

This, he pointed out, was necessary for providing social equity. “The expansion of the technical education system should also provide for the economic and social equity as well as for excellence comparable to some of the best in the world”.

Further in support of equity, he said: “Merely increasing the number of technical educational institutions and their enrolment capacity will not achieve the national development goals without concurrent attention to ensure the quality of the education system, its access to those who desire, and equity measures for fair and impartial treatment of the disadvantaged sections of the society”.

Create two-track Education System: Anandakrishnan

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