International Comparative Study: Engineering Education in India

India's higher education system is one of the world's largest in terms of the student population. The Higher Education sector in India has witnessed a tremendous increase in the number of Universities/University level Institutions & College’s post-independence. However, there are issues that are hindering the system to be qualified as a top-notch globally. This paper examines the perception of Higher Education in India among college students with an aim to examine the extent of disparity in the system, to understand the required standard of higher education and to recommend changes that may arise in the process associated for improvement of higher education in India. The study was undertaken with an online survey by collecting data from different researcher scholars and postgraduate students with different specialisation, gender and age groups enrolled in the university. The findings from the study demonstrate the subjective interpretation of higher education from the narrative of the participants.

Engineering education in India has been facing considerable challenges in regard to good teaching and knowledge deployment. Therefore demands new teaching methods and learning approaches thus must be developed in the field. The present review explores the concept of good teaching practices affecting performance of students in higher education with special reference to engineering education in India. With the advent of new technologies and tools, it is also vital to study the effectiveness of teaching methodologies; therefore, the review is intended to demarcate the factors which can be used to evaluate the good teaching among students. This study also explains the research done on engineering education in India in the past and recognizes the major factors influencing the same.

It is often argued that the mushrooming growth of private engineering institutions in the country is primarily responsible for the diluted quality of engineering education in the country. Quite paradoxically, the number of engineering students in India, including both undergraduate and post graduate students is 1290 per million population which is the lowest rate in comparison among all the countries in the world. However, the fact remains that only about 25% of technical graduates are suitable for employment in the IT sector, and about 64% of the employers hiring the fresh graduates are only partially satisfied with the quality of graduates that they are getting. These facts establish that the engineering education in the country is suffering from dilution of quality. This paper critically reviews the conditions of existing engineering institutions in the country, compares with the global data, identifies that the engineering education sector is in severe shortage of high quality faculty and establishes it as the main reason for the quality problems. It is proposed that the authorities at the helm of the affairs in deciding the policies in engineering education must focus on the qualitative aspects of teachers such as their performance and contributions to get the expected outcomes of the students , rather than insisting on the quantitative aspects of teachers such as higher qualifications , divisions/grades, number of publications , impact factors etc., which in no way would be directly contributing for the enhancement of quality of students . Finally, the paper highlights that the Teacher Education is the immediate need for bringing in a positive transformation in engineering education in India.

Social entrepreneurs are springing up everywhere across the globe and they are gaining increasing recognition for their activities as agents of change. More and more citizens are using entrepreneurial skills in building sustainable enterprises, profit and non-profit to bring change in country and to address global societal, ethical or environmental value issues primarily at local level. But it is imperative to scale up the operations and maintain acceptable quality standards through the perspective of productions and operations management. This study provides a comparative analysis of eight cases of social entrepreneurship in the field of healthcare and education sectors in India and suggests factors associated with scaling up of operations that leads to significant changes at the base of pyramid to marginalised and poor people and are able to overcome the hurdles to socio-economic and sustainable development in poor countries.

In response to the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) Initiative, the Virtual and Accessible Laboratories Universalizing Education (VALUE @ Amrita) Virtual Labs Project was initiated to provide laboratory-learning experiences to college and university students across India who may not have access to adequate laboratory facilities or equipment. These virtual laboratories require only a broadband Internet connection and standard web browser. Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University (Amrita University) is part of a consortium of twelve institutions building over two hundred virtual labs covering nine key disciplines in science and engineering. This National Mission project hopes to reach out to India's millions of engineering and science students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The Virtual Labs Project is providing virtual laboratory experiments that directly support the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) model curricula for engineering and sciences undergraduate and postgraduate programs.

The present study aims to understand the concept of Industry 5.0 in the higher education sector and its role in transforming distance education in India. An exploratory research design is used to understand and outline the concept of Education 5.0 and its associated benefits for higher education institutions (HEIs). An extensive literature review was carried out to collect the data from the available research papers, reports, and articles in the field of Industry 5.0 and HEIs. The data were then analyzed to explore the avenues of Industry 5.0 implementation in the distance education sector in India. The findings of this study suggest that the incorporation of advanced technology in the traditional distance learning model is urgently required which will enable the HEIs to develop a blended or hybrid learning model. The study also outlines the key features and concerns that every distance education institution may have about Industry 5.0. In addition, the benefits of Industry 5.0 in distance education in India are also discussed in this study.

The Prime Minister of India in 2020 announced his vision of Aatmanirbhar India to make India an economically self-reliant nation. He shared this vision while announcing the 1st economic package to support the Indian population during the COVID19 pandemic. He believed Aatmanirbhar India could be achieved through pursuing policies that are competent, efficient, and resilient along with being self-generating and self-sustaining. This vision was well aligned and would contribute significantly to India's plan of becoming a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025. However, achieving this vision would have required systemic changes in India's DNA as a larger section of the India population needed to become Innovators and Entrepreneurs. One element of adapting to this new DNA was envisioned through the development of innovation and entrepreneurial mindset among the youth of the country. It was important to capitalize on the potential of the young minds and awaken the innovators among the students in K-12 and especially higher education. In the last 3 years, the Ministry of Education (previously Ministry of Human Resource Development) along with other central organizations such as the AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), UGC (University Grants Commission) etc have come up with a range of policies and initiatives, all strategically aligned to foster an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and innovation (I&E) in higher education institutions (HEIs). In this paper, we highlight a set of initiatives and policies launched up by the government of India to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in HEI's. We elaborate on the National Startup and Innovation Policy, New Education Policy (NEP) along with national initiatives such as Smart India Hackathon, ARIAA (National I&E ranking) and others. Case-studies are presented of noteworthy HEI's who have transformed themselves by using the government's efforts as catalysts to nurture I&E. At the end, we highlight the potential of HEI's in India to collectively contribute to helping India become Aatmanirbhar (self-reliant) in the post-Pandemic world.

The evolution of Engineering Education (EE) in India has been drastic from the British era to the present day. EE in India started during the British era and focused mainly on civil engineering. In 1945 a Government Committee was appointed to suggest options for advanced technical education in India which recommended the establishment of higher technical institutes based on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the four regions of India which resulted in setting up five Indian Institutes of Technology and the 20 Regional Engineering colleges just after independence was one of the first milestone achieved by Independent India. Then, there are a large number of State Government Engineering Colleges, often affiliated to a University and having a limited or no autonomy about curriculum, examinations, degree granting, etc. The great demand for engineering and technical education has led to the mushrooming of a large number of private engineering colleges. Since the establishment of IIT Kharagpur in 1951, India has a total of 3,393 engineering colleges as on May, 2012. In spite of the large number of engineering colleges in India, as per the third edition of the National Employability Report, Engineering Graduates - 2014, only 18.33% of the Indian engineers are employable and only about 18.09% actually get a job. This alarming survey indicates the need of a paradigm shift in today's school of engineering learning and training so that we may not only target increased employability but also set our eyes on ameliorating research and innovation into Engineering Education. This paper presents the work conducted by the Centre of Engineering Education Development (CEED) at KG Reddy college of Engineering and Technology, which was established to continuously work towards improving the teaching learning process by implementation of new pedagogies. The focus will be on implementation of active learning into the lecture delivery, it's impact on the student's, subsequent results and the future scope of work.

Higher education of India has the third largest higher education sector in the worldwide. In India expenditure per student as well as per teacher is very low .In the last ten years, higher education sector has improved as more IITs, IIMs and various central and state-level universities begin. Advancement of higher education various concerns raised. Various universities suffer from an insufficiency of good-quality of teaching staff and laboratories.

Every year large number of engineering graduates and diploma holders pass out of engineering colleges and universities. However, a sizeable number of them are not simply employable. Again, the growth of the manufacturing sector has almost become stagnant globally, so also in India. And economic recession is still looming large in different walks of life. Direct effect is that employment opportunities of engineering students are on the wane. Moreover, appropriate skilling and training are not provided to students pursuing engineering education in many of the institutions having lack of laboratory facilities and suitable man power to impart desired education and training. Result of these combined effects is alarmingly poor admission of students in engineering institutions, particularly in distance private colleges far off from the state capitals. The AICTE, New Delhi has put large number of such institutions in the list of possible closure or no-admission category. In this backdrop, this brief write up outlines some of the glaring facts that are plaguing engineering education in reality nowadays.

This paper gives an overview of the Indian technical education system with regard to both its quantitative and qualitative scenario and upholds the value of accreditation in quality improvement and quality assurance of educational programmes. The paper presents a comparison of accreditation systems being followed in some important countries, including India, that are signatories or provisional members of Washington Accord. It also looks into the reasons of the sparse level of accreditation work completed by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) since its inception. While mentioning strengths of the NBA accreditation system, the paper points out some shortcomings in the policy, self-assessment questionnaire, criteria, weightage assigned to criteria and rating scheme followed by NBA. Some important recommendations have also been made to render the accreditation system more effective and acceptable to various stakeholders of the technical education sector in India.

Leadership qualities are influenced by various perspectives and viewpoints, including the Great Man Theory and various academic disciplines. The desire for self-assertion and self-accomplishment is a common thread in the evolution of leadership qualities. India's feminist movement, initiated by men and later joined by women, fought against oppressive societal rules and discrimination. The women's movement began as a social reform movement in the 19th century, with women advocating for women's rights and education. However, efforts to improve women's status were thwarted by nationalist movements. The Women's India Association, National Council of Women in India, and All India Women's Conference were formed by women between 1917 and 1927 after World War I. Today, women's presence in the top-notch hierarchy and leadership is less, with women being considered “empowered women” if they can make financial decisions without consulting their husband. The research aims to understand lagging factors in the overall higher education sector in India.

The paper elaborates the conceptual framework for resource allocation model based on performance of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs). It provides logical workflow to develop input-oriented and output-oriented prediction model to assign academic, financial, and research enhancing resources to the institutions. The input- and output-oriented parameters such as faculty student ratio, number of publications, number of citations, number of patents, capital and operational expenditure, student admission ratio, number of PhD scholars enrolled, and number of PhD scholars graduated would be considered for the conceptual framework. All parameters would be identified by applying supervised machine learning algorithm like correlation and regression analysis. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) would be used to measure relative efficiency of each institution. The unsupervised machine learning algorithm would be implemented to find out clusters of institutions based on their relative efficiency. Finally, the input-oriented and output-oriented predication model would be developed to allocate resources to the institutions. The conceptual framework is being developed as a hybrid model with combination of optimization techniques of operation research and machine learning algorithms. The prediction model plays a vital role to allocate resources to the HEIs based on their performance. It would become benchmarking and decision-making model in perspective with higher education sector in India for administrators, funding agencies, and policymakers.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the factors that determine the knowledge exchange intention and behavioural nature of academics by the help of social media tools in the Indian higher education. Design/methodology/approach This study has used valance–instrumentality–expectancy (VIE) theory to determine the knowledge exchange behaviour of academics. The study has considered the effects of knowledge contributor (KC) and knowledge seeker (KS) as moderators. The model has been validated by using a survey with 320 usable respondents. Findings The results highlight that if the stakeholders of higher education institutions feel the deficits of knowledge exchange, they realize importance of knowledge sharing and use social media to increase effect of knowledge exchange. Besides, perceived usefulness impacts on the use of social media for knowledge exchange by the concerned stakeholders. Moreover, it is observed that experience of the use of social media impacts the use of this tool for knowledge exchange. Research limitations/implications The use and application of VIE theory have successfully been able to interpret the factors affecting use of social media for knowledge exchange in higher educational institutes. The use of VIE theory has also been able to explain the proposed model better as the model could achieve a high explanative power (87%). Practical implications This study has provided meaningful insights to the practitioners and policymakers to realize how the stakeholders of the higher education institutions in India can be motivated to feel the need of sharing of knowledge and how they can use social media with ease for this purpose. Originality/value Not much research has been conducted with regard to the usage of social media as a tool for knowledge sharing in higher education sector in India. In that sense, this study is a novel attempt to undertake such research.

This article takes a critical look at the higher education sector in India. It notes that even though the number of institutions and enrollment in higher education continue their rapid growth (in excess of population growth), the quality of this education outside of a handful of institutions is questionable. The number of such graduates remains small relative to the population and demands of India's economy. In general, graduate education continues to remain in an alarming state with respect to both quality and quantity. India's impressive economic performance has made the problem in higher education seem less urgent than it actually is. The article discusses several of the challenges facing higher education: the system's inability to attract the best of the best to lives of teaching and scholarship, the separation of education and research, and a short-term profit motive by private education providers, among others.