Vacant seats show ignored benchmarks

A report by the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) recommends a cap on the number of seats that should be approved based on the institute’s quality,surprise checks on colleges,especially those with 70 per cent vacancies,and synergy between industry and placement cells at institutes. Changes in curriculum as per industry needs,compulsory accreditation and encouraging accreditated institutes to go for autonomy are other recommendations.

However,the workability of these suggestions depends on intentions of the state,institutes and industry,say academicians and bureaucrats. So far,none has shown any interest in stepping in. And that holds true for other parts of the country as well.

A previous DTE committee,which had also done some soul-searching and benchmarked Maharashtra’s performance against elite international institutes,had failed the state miserably on all counts. Maharashtra’s placement rate was pegged at 44,way below Cambridge University’s 95.2 per cent and Harvard and Boston’s 83 per cent and 82 per cent,respectively. The state’s student gender distribution (male:female) was 73:27 as against 50:50 for Harvard,42:58 for Boston and 52:48 for Cambridge. In student:faculty ratio,Maharashtra was at 19:1 against Boston’s 4:1. All these are critical parameters.

The fact that a study of the top 10 Asian universities in terms of teacher-student ratio showed no institute from Maharashtra speaks a lot about the state of the system here.

And while the industry time and again complains that only a handful of graduates from these institutes are employable,there is a way they could change that. The AICTE introduced an initiative this year allowing industry/corporates to start an institute — it has received only four applications so far.

Mihika is an assistant editor based in Mumbai