FACULTY DEVELOPMENT

THE INDIAN HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM IS THE SECOND LARGEST IN THE WORLD IN TERMS OF ENROLMENT, CONSISTING OF NEARLY 30 MILLION STUDENTS ENROLLED IN 48,500 INSTITUTIONS. THE QUALITY OF TEACHERS AND FACULTY MEMBERS WILL DECIDE THE QUALITY OF THE STUDENTS AND THEREBY THE NEXT GENERATION MANPOWER

The aim of India’s higher education system is attaining sustainable development and achieving higher growth rates which could be enabled through creation, transmission and dissemination of knowledge. Higher education at all levels in the country is witnessing a consistent growth pattern marked by the setting up of new institutions and the improvement of the existing ones. Demand for qualified teachers and faculty members over the next few years would be substantial and will become extremely critical for states to expand the current institutional capacities, not only of infrastructure but also of qualified and trained faculty members.

India is one among the countries that has the highest number of educational institutions in the world and, consequently, the highest number of teachers and faculty members. The unprecedented growth of institutions in India in the past two decades has led to a shortage of updated and well trained faculty members and has created a quality challenge for education.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT

DEVELOPING EMPLOYEMENT READY GRADUATES AND YOUTH BY 2020 INDIA WILL HAVE A SHARE OF ABOUT 18% OF THE WORLD’S SKILLED MANPOWER AND HENCE HAS TO DEVELOP THE SKILLED MANPOWER STRENGTH TO 47 MILLION TO ADDRESS THE WORLD’S MANPOWER SHORTAGE OF 56.7 MILLION.

Skill Development and Entrepreneurship development efforts across the country have been highly fragmented so far. Though India enjoys the demographic advantage of having the youngest workforce with an average age of 29 years in comparison with the advanced economies, as opposed to the developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60% and 90% of the total workforce, India records a low 5% of workforce (20-24 years) with formal employability skills.

So, there is a need for quick reorganization of the skill development ecosystem and the promotion of which is necessary to suit to the needs of the industry to ensure enhancement of life of the population. India would surely rise to be the Human Resource Capital of the world by appropriately skilling its youth bulge and convert its advantage into a dividend. Skill development initiatives will help actualize the inert potential, for which development and articulation of a national policy on skill development is already in progress.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

INDIA IS RAPIDLY ENLARGING ITS RESEARCH PRESENCE GLOBALLY. ITS OUTPUT EXPANDED NEARLY THREE TIMES THE WORLD AVERAGE OVER THE LAST DECADE, SOME 146%, FROM 21,269 WEB OF SCIENCE PAPERS IN 2003 TO 45,639 IN 2012. IT IS AN IMPRESSIVE GROWTH AND GAINED FOR THE NATION AN INCREASE IN WORLD SHARE OF 1.1%, FROM 2.5% TO 3.6%.FOR 2008 TO 2012, INDIA CAPTURED ITS GREATEST WORLD SHARE OF PAPERS IN ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY AT 4.8%.

Four decades ago, significant discoveries were numerous, but most occurred in the well-established economies of Europe and North America. In 1973, about two-thirds of the nearly 400,000 research publications had an author in one of the G7 countries. Today, this has changed dramatically. Four times as many documents - more than 1.75 million journal publications - are being indexed, and barely half will have a G7 author. A significant part of the change is attributable to rapid research growth in five countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Korea.

India prides itself in having one of the largest technical manpower in the world. Noting that the country would have to depend on technologies derived from Indian science to improve its innovativeness index, Applied & fundamental research is the crying need of the nation to foster research culture in our academia and universities.

INDUSTRY-INSTITUTE INTERACTION

BRINGING INDUSTRY AND ACADEMIA CLOSER INDIA IS RANKED 109 AMONG 145 COUNTRIES WITH A SCORE OF 3.06 IN KNOWLEDGE ECONOMIC INDEX. INDUSTRY-INSTITUTE INTERACTION IS A MAJOR FACTOR TO ENABLE THE INDIAN EDUCATION SECTOR SCALE UP IN THE GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE INDEX.

With the advent of globalization and opening up of Indian economy to outside world, competition among industries has become stiff. To solve their engineering problems they look up now to engineering institutions. Similarly, there is an urgent need to prepare engineering students for jobs in multinational companies, by exposing them to newer technologies and engineering methodologies.

These objectives can only be achieved well by bridging the gap between industry and the academic institutions. Better interaction between technical institutions and industry is the need of the hour. This will have great bearing on the engineering curriculum, exposure of engineering students to industrial atmosphere and subsequent placement of young graduating engineers in industries across the country.