Happy that your kid got admitted in an engineering college? Happy with the mushrooming growth of engineering colleges? Do you think that our state is an emerging educational hub? Think again! No doubt, there is a tremendous growth in professional colleges offering technical education particularly engineering courses, but many of them lack quality. For many, it may look like professional education in our state is growing, but it is a matter of deep concern that enrollment in these courses is alarmingly going up. Engineering became highly popular (in terms of enrollment) in recent times as most of the student population in higher education is going for it.
The state increased access to engineering courses, facilitating almost total enrollment by way of exemption of tuition fees and reducing the qualifying standards. There is not much to be happy about this as these engineering courses are about to degenerate like yesterday’s law courses.
Barrister to Lawyer – from respect to blacklisting
Lawyers in our country have historically been very well respected. Many of the great freedom fighters and chief architects of the Indian Republic such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Vallabhbhai Patel, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee etc. were lawyers. Earlier, there were a small number of them and they had caliber.
But what about today’s lawyers? Many lawyers today do not have the caliber which they used to have earlier. Today, only a small fraction of lawyers have caliber by exception. This has improved a bit after creation of some institutes such as NALSAR-Hyderabad, NLSIU-Bangalore, NLIU-Bhopal, NUJS-Kolkata, NLU-Jodhpur, HNLU-Raipur and GNLU-Ahmedabad.
Over the years, law courses got degenerated because of impractical approach by the people seeking these courses. Gone are the days when a lawyer used to be a powerful person with statesmanship, intelligence and leadership. Today, nobody cares for lawyers as many people with no caliber or competence are able to become a lawyer. Within few decades, once a great profession – law, got degenerated. Today, lawyers as a class are in blacklists of most finance companies. Even though other professionals like CA’s and doctors are on preferred lists of the same finance companies.
Engineering courses following the footsteps of law courses
Today, we can see the same thing repeating with the engineering courses. Education policies pursued by the state government from the past decade have been doing more harm than good. Hundreds of engineering colleges were permitted to open in the last decade. Not even half of these professional colleges in state are equipped with full-fledged faculty and infrastructure to produce good quality engineers. Lakhs of the students are picking up engineering courses today as there are scores of seats waiting for them once they pass their intermediate.
A real professional degree
An academic degree that prepares the candidate for a particular profession by emphasizing competency skills along with theory and analysis is regarded as a professional degree. A professional degree indicates some caliber, superior abilities, some things that are admirable. Remember, branding means doing difficult things well. If the person does not have caliber, subject knowledge, personal discipline, how can that person be termed as a professional?
By and large mainstream professionals today are medical doctors. Lack of competence even at lowest level of work can cause harm. Thanks to the Medical Council of India as there are only 4,200 medical seats compared to almost 2.5 lakh engineering seats in the state. Engineering seats are more than 50 times the medical seats. If this many people without enough abilities or talent join professional courses like engineering, what quality can we expect from them?
You may also like to read:
- If You Can Pass Inter You Will Become an Engineer
- Need to Revisit the Positive Stereotype of an Engineer
- Foolish Choices by Students/Parents on Education are Negatively Impacting Families, Industries and India
- Earning Degrees Doesn’t Make One Educated
- Lack of Employable Talent in Today’s Indian Graduates
- Why Today’s Graduates are Unemployable?