Can’t believe the title? Confused? Relax! Even a student who struggles to pass his examinations can actually become an engineer! Thanks to the ‘initiatives’ taken by the government for the students struggling to find some time to study because of the spree of major incidents including the ongoing agitations, bandhs, floods, swine flu and the sudden demise of YSR in this academic year. The government believes that the better pass percentage will make students and parents ‘feel good’ and engage in future academic courses. If easy question papers are set, and correction is liberal in SSC, intermediate and EAMCET exams, why would not a poor performing student become an engineer?
According to the sources in the department of secondary education, the government wants to achieve more than 90 percent results in the exams this academic year. This resulted in the instructions given to the question paper setters of SSC and Intermediate examinations to prepare easy question papers and the evaluators have been asked to be ‘liberal’ while awarding the marks. The evaluators have also been asked to award up to 5 marks if a student falls short of pass marks in any subject.
In the similar lines, even the Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University (JNTU), Hyderabad is planning to design an easy EAMCET paper this year.
All these measures by the government may be helpful to students but it could have much serious consequences than it appears. Already the quality of the education is poor. Added to it, this kind of wrong steps by government will worsen the scenario. Here, every party involved in the ‘education system’ will be fine but the losers are the students of the state. The gullible students will get admission into engineering or medicine. The colleges will fill the seats and collect their fees and donations. The government will have the pass out numbers to show to World Bank to get more funds. The students will get their professional degree certificates at the end of the course. Now the problem starts.
Many of the ‘professionals’ who come of the engineering colleges will be good for nothing. They can be termed as ‘Butler Engineers’ similar to ‘Butler English’. Butler English was the broken English spoken by the native servants to communicate with the British officers before independence. The servants pick some essential words and manage to communicate without any sense of grammar and usage. Similarly, the low quality engineers from the poor standard engineering colleges will have little bits of knowledge and are unfit to do any professional job and hold any responsible position.
However, some of the Bulter engineers will find some sort of an engineering job by hook or crook. As a result, these Butler Engineers will show their ‘skill and competence’ in building equipment/ roads/ buildings that could crumble and do some serious damage. This might be slightly exaggerated, but it is the fact that the engineering students are the ultimate losers. Since they have an engineering degree, they will be qualified to hold engineering jobs such as a government supervisor or in private sector certifying engineering works. You can imagine the kind of engineering that can be expected from such Butler Engineers having half knowledge.
Good companies will come up with some standards like EAMCET ranks and colleges to differentiate good engineers from Butler engineers. Ultimately, these Butler engineers will not find any engineering job or even if they get one they’ll be out of it in no time because of their half-knowledge. Overall, such sub-standard education system can lead to low quality human resources that are unfit to meet the requirements of the industry in India. This can ultimately result in moving of the offshoring jobs out of the country to the new destinations with better quality human manpower.
Recommended Reading:
Structural Imbalance in the Ratio of Engineering and Polytechnic Diploma Seats in AP
Dramatic Fall In Education Standards In Just One Decade
Fresh Engineering Degree Graduates – Most Will Be Condemned To A Life of Misery!