All over the country the number of engineering colleges have increased over the past few years. These colleges churn out many lakhs of engineers every year. For a developing country there is a need for many engineers and this justifies opening many engineering and polytechnique colleges every year. In the process one thing is totally ignored. As is the case with many ill-conceived strategies, with respect to technical education also, the quantity is kept in mind while quality was given a go by. The result is that today there are many engineers on the street who are ready to work even as clerks. We are facing this situation today thanks to AICTE who gives the nod to open engineering colleges.

It is easy to get permission to open an engineering college. The management has to show the site for construction and few other details with regard to the overall planning. Thus, it is possible to apply for permission even without recruiting the faculty for the proposed departments of the college or show a list of faculty on paper. This is not to find fault with the system but it is to highlight how easy it is to get permission for opening an engineering college. The only difficulty that comes in the way of the management is to deal simultaneously with the state government, the University to which the proposed college would be affiliated, and the AICTE.

The "Accredidation" scheme of AICTE that we talked about in an earlier part of this article, was introduced four years back and is proving to be meaningless, as it is only voluntary for the colleges rather to be specific for the departments in a college. This scheme should be made mandatory for any college or any department in a college to continue its existence. Also, this has to be repeated once in three years.

Couple of years back, Supreme Court while delivering a judgement on "derecognised teachers' training institutes-candidates case" has remarked that "ill-trained teachers are a drain on nation" (The Hindu, 30th September, 2000). The judges came down heavily on the practice of licensing ill-trained teachers from de-recognised or unrecognised institutes to teach the children of impressionable age. The judges have opined that teachers and educational institutions play a vital role in the process of building a great nation. While dismissing a large group of Special leave Petitions (SLP) against the Division Bench judgement of the Madras High Court, the SC insisted that "mere passing of public examination is not enough. It must be coupled with a proper training in a recognised institute in order to get meaningful and purposeful results". The judges also added that in order to maintain the standard of education and develop the career of children adequate training is required for teachers before they are allowed to teach.

Let us apply these valued opinions of SC judges to engineering college teachers. Is there not a need for training stint before engineering graduate joins teaching faculty in an engineering college? While conceding the fact that engineering college students are not of impressionable age, most of the remarks by SC judges apply equally well to the teaching faculty in engineering colleges. The AICTE stipulation of a requirement of a Ph.D. for promotion to Assistant Professor level indicates that a mere engineering degree is not sufficient to teach engineering students. In order to impart a wider and deeper knowledge to students, the lecturer must have an overall appreciation for what he/she lectures/professes. Otherwise the transfer of knowledge from a teacher to the students would be half-baked and incomplete. It has greater ramification as the teacher has impact over many batches of students and in the worse case of a student taught by such a teacher takes up teaching profession, it becomes a negative and a deteriorating vicious circle. After the spurt of engineering colleges, one can observe that an outgoing student of a college takes up a faculty position in the same college. There are many fresh graduates teach the students in private engineering colleges. A fresh engineering graduate most often takes up lecturer job for want of a job. If one is really interested to take up teaching profession, one would definitely do higher studies before joining the teaching faculty. AICTE should take a serious note on the number of such fresh graduates in the teaching faculty during accreditation. AICTE tried with few training programmes to address this issue. "Yearly Induction Programme" was widely termed as a futile attempt. AICTE also introduced a scheme by which the potential teachers are identified in the final semester of undergraduate engineering course and their post graduate study would be co-sponsored by the AICTE and the beneficiary college. Again, this does not ensure that the candidate is properly trained to teach engineering students. Also, in the first years of service as a faculty member, one is supposed to undergo "Induction Training Programme for Engineering College Teachers" for 15 days run by the Academic Staff College. It would be surprising if AICTE has made it a compulsory requirement for a new recruit before he/she is allowed to teach the core subjects.