NASSCOM News Room
As Demand for Engineers Grows, Experts Say India Has Only 10
To 30 Percent of The Qualified Instructors it Needs
Nachammai Raman
In a sign of growing pains within India's high-tech economy, the government last week slashed
the intake capacity of engineering schools by more than 25,000 seats across the country's private
university system.
A dramatic shortage of engineering teachers with doctoral degrees prompted the cuts. Various
experts estimate that India has only 10 to 30 percent of the qualified instructors it needs.
The shortfall is a product of India' s economic success story - as well as a peril to its future
expansion. High salaries and abundant jobs are attracting more students to engineering, and at
the same time wooing teachers away from classrooms and into the office parks that now dot
many of India' s southern cities.
"The gap has to be filled very shortly," says P. Devadas Manoharan, a civil engineering professor
in Madras. "Otherwise, the quality of education will come down."
While the jury is still out on the future implications of such engineering education problems for
India's booming IT sector, questions have already been raised about the quality of Indian
graduates in general.
A Merrill Lynch report in February from its Bombay office cites a study by McKinsey &
Company, a global consultancy, that suggests 75-80 percent of India's graduates are not
employable in the IT-enabled services industry, which could lead to a qualified labor shortage.
The cutting of engineering seats June 7 was ordered by the All India Council for Technical
Education (AICTE). This government body was established in 1987 to oversee the quality of
technical education in India at a time when private engineering schools were coming up to meet
the growing demand for such training.
Private engineering institutions have spawned all over India because the government has not had
the funds to increase significantly the number of engineering schools it runs. In 1970, India had a
total of 139 engineering institutions, and only four of these were private.
Today, India has nearly 1,400 engineering institutions; only about 200 belong to the government.
This explosion in higher education has allowed many more Indians to pursue an engineering
degree.
Tushar K. Nath, director of AICTE's southern regional office in Madras, says that seats were so
few 20 years ago that only 1 percent of aspiring students got in; today, nearly 70 percent manage
to find places. But the wider availability of engineering training has come with a dilution of quality. "We had
gone for extensive inspections. Many institutions could not satisfy standards," Mr. Nath says.
Crowded Classrooms
Overcrowded classrooms are the chief problem. Defaulting institutions were given until July 7 to
meet the required teacher-to-student ratio of 1:15. Advanced degree holders are difficult to find,
so schools are recruiting more faculty with bachelor's level engineering qualifications.
According to AICTE sources in New Delhi, many schools want the seats that they lost back,
after recruiting teachers with bachelor' s level qualifications to meet the required teacher-tostudent ratio.
Adinarayana Kalanidhi, a former vice-chancellor of a government university in Tamil Nadu,
welcomes AICTE's regulatory function, but says its approach to solving the problem is
misguided.
"If an industry is [faltering], the government comes forward to support it. But when a private
engineering college has problems, it's going with a police stick to beat it up."
Deprived of student fees by mandated cuts in seats, private institutions founder in financial
troubles and close down. "So the good intention with which you permitted them to participate in
education is lost," says Mr. Kalanidhi.
Prior to the opening up of India's economy in 1992, industry jobs were not as plentiful, so
students pursued advanced degrees to secure teaching jobs, which commanded respect. But
vigorous job growth in recent years has left few takers.
"About 20 years ago, when I came into teaching, the salary for a university teacher was on a par
with the salary outside," says Mr. Manoharan.
A Matter of Incentives
Today, a fresh engineering graduate can get paid twice as much as an assistant professor who has
spent a minimum of six extra years and a hefty Rs. 300,000 to 400,000 ($6,896 to $9,195) more
to earn his master's degree and PhD.
Kalanidhi decries the lack of innovative mechanisms to motivate graduates to become
engineering teachers. He describes a program he helped start in Punjab that allowed lecturers
with only a bachelor's degree to attend master's programs part-time.
He holds up a teaching research associate (TRA) program - similar to teaching assistantships in
the US - he implemented at a government university in Tamil Nadu as another model.
Instead of hiring new faculty, he assigned each TRA two undergraduate courses to teach. It
carried a monthly stipend of Rs. 8,000 ($186), which helped offset the high cost of the PhD
program. Nath suggests that private colleges sponsor their teachers for advanced degrees in foreign
countries, which have far more graduate engineering programs than India, and then bring them
back to teach. He also urges high-tech businesses to set up endowments or grants to benefit
engineering institutions in India.
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