The Government plans to introduce vocational engineering in higher secondary and under graduate courses by next year, Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal told Rajya Sabha on Friday.
Industry-prepared syllabus will be introduced in the school system and polytechnics so that students easily find jobs and their employability improves, he said during Question Hour.
As per the scheme, there will be Higher Secondary (10+2) Academic or Regular and 10+2 Vocational.Also there would be BSc Vocational Engineering, he said, adding that the attempt is to introduce the course “this year and certainly by next year.”“We are trying to integrate vocational training into education system… we are actually creating syllabus from school,” he said.Sibal said the quality of engineers produced will be reduced with increase in quantity of institutions.
Citing example of Karnataka, he said only 37 per cent of graduate engineers could find employment in 2007 because of presence of large number of engineering institutes.
“Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu may have the same results,” he said and noted that mushrooming of engineering colleges was a result of NOCs the state governments give for setting up the institutes.
As a result, seats cannot be filled and there is pressure on AICTE to further lower the cut-off for admission into engineering courses to 35 per cent from current 45 per cent for general category.
“We are getting further pressure to further reduce the minimum qualifying marks (for admission into under-graduate engineering courses) from 45 per cent to 35 per cent,” he said.
Sibal said state governments should collaborate with the Centre on the issue.
As per the sample data available with Lead Centres for all India of the National Technical Manpower Information System (NTMIS) of Institute of Applied Manpower Research for 2007 batch, 61 per cent of the graduate engineers were employed.
“To enhance the employability of engineering graduates, a programme of Finishing School for Engineering Graduates was conducted by Ministry of HRD on pilot basis during 2007 in IIT, Roorkee and six NITs (Calicut, Durgapur, Jaipur, Surathkal, Thiruchirapally and Warangal),” he said.
Based on the pilot programme, the Ministry in 2008 asked all centrally funded technical institutions to conduct the programme, he said, adding a review conducted in 2010 found that the desired results were not fully met by the scheme.
“The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) was asked to constitute a committee and suggest measures to re-design the programme of Finishing School throughout the country,” he said.
The report of AICTE committee is awaited.
Besides, as a long term measure to enhance the employability of engineering graduates, AICTE is taking steps to update the syllabus of engineering courses.