Shortage of faculty a matter of concern

COIMBATORE: While engineering colleges are springing up at every barren patch of land, academics are concerned that a critical faculty shortage would seriously impair the quality of output from these institutions.  Therefore, it is felt that it is better to restrict the number of technical institutions in the State.“Several engineering colleges are facing a severe shortage of faculty. About 75 per cent of the self-financing technical institutions are functioning with business motive and do not pay good salaries to teachers and consequently do not attract the best of faculty members,” points out S Sundarrajan, Director, National Institute of Technology (NIT Tiruchi).Elaborating, he says “many private engineering colleges in TN are functioning like real estate players. They have good buildings, but quality teachers are missing and so are facilities like laboratory, testing equipment andlibrary.”In addition to these shortcomings, the present engineering curriculum is not industry-driven. “As a result of this, the students who complete four years of education are not directly employable and need to be trained further. If we increase the number of engineering colleges, where are the jobs for the graduates? Therefore, the HRD Ministry is certainly proceeding in the right direction,” Sundarrajan insists.In this context, there is a need to introduce drastic changes in the engineering curriculum in the coming years. One way of doing it will be to grant autonomy to well-established institutions so that they will have the freedom to change the curriculum in tune with the needs of the job market.However, K Paramasivam, president, Association of Management of Coimbatore Anna University Affiliated Colleges, is against any move to restrict sanctioning of new technical institutions.“India is a democratic country and the government cannot fix a cap on the number of institutions. Some media reports say that the number of vacant seats in engineering colleges has shot up. But what does the Government stand to lose in this? After all, the State is not financing the colleges. On the other hand, if there are more number of engineering colleges, the students will have wider options in choosing the right institution,” he argues. According to him, even now engineering colleges are like an open market where the students and parents independently choose an institution or course.