To improve the standard of engineering colleges and quality of engineering education in Tamil Nadu, 50 per cent of engineering colleges in the State should be closed down and the rest streamlined. Existing syllabus and teaching methodologies should be upgraded. Assistance from premiere technical institutions like IITs could be obtained for such development, said M. Anandakrishnan, former Chairman of IIT, Kanpur.
Talking to press persons after presiding over the 15th International Tamil Internet Conference held at Gandhigram Rural Institute near here on Friday, he said that quality of education offered by the existing engineering colleges was very poor. A total of 15 lakh students joined engineering colleges in the country. But jobs were available only for five lakh students. Around 10 lakh graduates were rendered jobless every year. They have been working as mechanics and technicians in metro cities for a paltry sum, much less than the wages of daily wage workers, he deplored.
Now, Tamil Nadu has more than 500 engineering colleges. The have been functioning like tutorial colleges. Syllabus followed by them was very weak. Teaching and learning methods were also very poor. They could perform well like IITs and NITs. Anna University could help them. But it has not shown much interest in this connection. But it has been upgrading research activities within its campus. Teachers in engineering colleges too did not know their duty and responsibility. Existing engineering colleges have been producing graduates with no employability skills, he pointed out.
In 1992-93, total number of engineering colleges in the State was around 70. We had insisted the State government not to increase the number of colleges as such increase would affect the quality of education. At last, we appealed to the government to at least restrict the number to 90 and not more than that under any circumstances. Mushrooming of engineering colleges was due to involvement of people with political connection.
IITs were prepared to assist engineering colleges around them to enhance the quality of education, teaching methods and class room techniques. The engineering colleges could get assistance from IITs, he suggested.
