Admissions to the B.Tech. programme in colleges in Kerala may have grown steadily over the past few years, but the actual number of engineers coming out of those campuses is a sorry figure.
A study has found that the out-turn rate, or the percentage of students graduating from among those enrolled, from engineering colleges, which was almost 90 per cent for the 1991 intake, has been coming down and currently stands at about 55 per cent — so one of every two students either drops out of the course or fails in the examinations.
A study by Sunil Mani, Professor, Planning Commission Chair at the Centre for Development Studies in Thiruvananthapuram, and Arun M., who did his M.Phil. at the centre, reveals that liberalisation of education has not brought in the expected benefits for Kerala.
The study, titled “Liberalisation of technical education in Kerala: Has a significant increase in enrolment translated into increase in supply of engineers?,” says the intake has increased at an annual average rate of 17 per cent, while the out-turn has increased only at 15 per cent a year from 1995 through 2007.
Despite sharp increases in intake since 2004, the out-turn has been on a declining mode since 2006. In 2007, for instance, when the intake was 24,000 students, the actual number of engineers graduating was only 9,300, the study says.
Stating that there is a tendency among policymakers and industrialists to use intake or enrolment figures to speak about actual supply of engineers, Prof. Mani told The Hindu-EducationPlus that this was fallacious.
“Privatisation of engineering education, although increasing enrolments, has actually led to a deterioration in the quality of engineering education as indicated by lower out-turns. However, in all fairness, this deterioration has actually started in the 1990s, when the provision of engineering education was still in the government sector,” he said. Engineering colleges affiliated to the University of Kerala were considered to analyse the intake and out-turn rates as part of the study. Investigations found that the data from the university showed the same pattern seen in the State-level data in terms of capacity and out-turn rates. “The intake and out-turn for three cohorts of students from 2004 to 2006 shows that while the intake has grown fast, the out-turn rate has not increased at the same pace. The results for the 2006 cohort show a substantial reduction in the out-turn rate at 35 per cent. Even the absolute number of out-turn for the 2006 cohort is actually less than the absolute level of out-turn for the 2004 cohort,” the study says.
