rmprabodhini.org

About Us

Chat

Message Board

Guestbook

Home

GRADUATION - A MILESTONE
IN THE JOURNEY OF LEARNING

Dr. Hari Gautam, Chairman, University Grants Commission delivered the Convocation Address at the 13th Convocation of Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology (Deemed University) Patiala. He said "Education is a life time process. Graduation is not the end but a milestone in your journey of learning. You have to keep learning in order to remain up to date in knowledge in the modern society. I may inform you that higher education has a beginning, but no end. A new chapter is now to begin in your life." Excerpts

Young friends - this is an important day in your life as before you now lies a challenge and responsibility to shape your career and future prospects both in Technical Education and Professional pursuits. Today, you are standing on a bridge between the past and the future. Your education does not end with the degree. Knowledge is not the subjects you have studied. Education is not the total marks and merit positions /awards you have obtained. Your personality is not merely a collection of testimonials and certificates.

Education is a life time process. Graduation is not the end but a milestone in your journey of learning. You have to keep learning in order to remain up to date in knowledge in the modem society. I may inform you that higher education has a beginning, but no end. A new chapter is now to begin in your life.

Life belongs to the livings and ones who live to learn to face challenges. You have innumerable opportunities before you. Your potentials are immense. You are in for exciting times. Use your discretion. Evaluate all issues and make firm determination of your choice. Work hard to attain your chosen career with care and sincere commitments. Remember that the opportunities; are awaiting you. It is for you to make serious efforts. I want you to dream and make all out efforts to make your dreams a reality. But also keep a space for your-self as a person. Think about what you are, what you want to be, what are your personal objectives and what interests you.

I wish you all the best and pray God for success in shaping your future career. Remember that whatever you do and wherever you are - you shall always be an Indian. Your doings and deeds shall bring credit both to your motherland and your mother Institution. Plan your career with care and caution. Nothing is impossible to achieve. Learn to use the word "impossible" with greatest caution. May God be with you.

You would now be spread in many directions. One thing shall be common and be always with you that is the sense of responsibility.

Rightly it is said that good students make good university. It would not be an exaggeration if I say that good students are an even better assurance for a high quality university than good Professors. Your generation, I hope will transform the future even more profoundly that what the elder generation has been able to achieve. The world is on the upswing and you ought to be destined to play your due part in shaping India's future.

The Panorama of quality of institutions providing engineering education has alarmingly been not only most disturbing but shocking as well. There have been the institutions whose performance cannot even be taken as satisfactory. There are institutions which hardly possess anything in the name of either the infrastructure or the desired faculty profile. It is the result of the mushroom growth of engineering colleges of late.

Naturally, therefore, the graduates of wide variation in competence and culture are being produced in these institutions. While the IITs and other reputed institutions are able to market their produce in India and abroad, a large portion of engineering graduates in the country remain unemployed immediately after leaving the second or third grade institutions. Many remain under-employed while some may continue to be labeled as unemployed.

Decisive and effective measures have to be taken to curb this inferior quality education. India cannot afford to have the so called acceptably well taught and trained professionals, may it be in medicine or engineering who lack the desired competence, talent and degree of information knowledge they ought to have been equipped with before leaving the portals of the institution of higher education. The whole issues need to be re-examined. A re-look has to be enforced and review of all these institutions may have to be done with the prime objective in mind that only those who deserve to exist are allowed and those which do not are closed forthwith.

Some fundamental changes are necessarily required in the planning and organisation of Engineering Education. It is, however, more important and pertinent as well to safeguard against mistakes than to unnecessarily expand. The lead times in Education, in general, and Engineering Education, in particular, are long, and unless we plan ahead reasonably accurately, we would be unable to fulfil our obligations effective. There is an urgent need to develop an academic integrity, accountability, an updated curriculum and to reform the engineering education.

In order to succeed in our efforts for providing the much needed improvements in the course curriculum, it is absolutely essential that the dons in the educational institutions recognize the need for assessment of skills, aptitudes and knowledge requirements of the industries and organisations which recruit their products. Currently there is a total absence of such a feedback system. The dons overwhelmingly are conscious that it is they who know the best and it is they alone who can decide what is best for the academics. It is this blasphemy which is responsible for the daring obsolescence of the course curriculum and a deadlock on the interaction with the industries. The dons must understand that because of visible compulsions of global competitiveness the industries foresee the technology and human resource requirements faster than the institutions do.

There should be involvement of the students in the real-life situations while they are still at the studies. Special courses with a committed intake designed specifically for the industries can also help develop the relevant human resource. The training and retraining of engineers can also be ensured through such linkages. Academic-Industry linkage has become a vital link which can no longer be ignored now and in future. The corporate sector has universally recognised the importance of quality in their products and services for achieving and sustaining competitiveness.

The Engineering Education sector, however, has been rather slow to act in this respect. We must recognize the role of quality in achieving our identified Mission and Vision. Besides, we ought to incorporate into the Engineering Education system - the curricular content relating to knowledge, skills, attitudes and orientation to enable the technological profession to practice in inter-disciplinary and multicultural contexts for solving the intricate problems lying ahead.

Introduction of new courses keeping pace with the developments and updating of the curriculum should help. An effective quality control, monitoring of the academic performance to maintain the standard of education, examination and research in all the institutions should constantly be undertaken. The good be rewarded and the ones not upto the mark be punished for their failure. Incentives and awards both for the institutions and individual teachers be instituted for good and the excellent job they do. An effective deterrent be imposed on those who repeatedly fail to deliver the expected output.

Having hundreds and thousands of universities and colleges, we have to have a system to know 'who is who' and what is being done by whom. Accreditation and assessment score must be obtained by each and every institution and be displayed for a wider consumption. This not only will encourage competitive spirit among the institutions to perform better but shall also let the people at large know the quality of educational institutions existing at any given time in India.

Something of no lesser concern is the multiple examination being conducted in our country. We have JEE-IIT, CEE, DEC, entrance examination of different universities and that of state level colleges. It is too much for the students to go through the ordeal of appearing in so many entrance tests besides paying multiple application/examination fees and incurring other expenses thus imposing an economic hardship on the poor and middle class families. It is high time that we resorted to a single all India entrance examination in engineering and technology. I hope it may become a reality in future.

There can be no two opinions that the role of a teacher is vital in the growth of technical education and in upholding the quality of human resource development. What is however not unanimously upheld is the view that the teacher in an engineering institution should devote not only to teaching but also to R&D on Industrial consultancy, The students in engineering institutions are to be taught by those who take pains in sustaining the interest of the students by constantly updating their teaching material while at the same time commanding a high reputation as practicing technologists, something similar to what is done in medical colleges.

Higher Education will have to become internationally competitive. It must be emphasized that any country, which does not have good technical education, will never be given the importance and respect of a really independent country. Only countries prepared to tolerate second-rate and subjugated status in the world will neglect the technical and professional education.

All said and done it is not so easy to achieve. There has to be a will, a commitment and a go ahead feeling atleast in few if not all of us who could accomplish this formidable task of reforming the engineering and higher education. We need a leader in higher education, a leader in technical education, a leader who shall serve the cause of education at large to provide the much desired benefits to the nation. The new urgency is how to prepare the nation to meet the future. The nation requires a firm sense of direction and leadership which is committed to make the future happen. To lead this movement of reforming the technical and higher education, we need new leaders who will innovate, promote innovation, who will dare, who would set the goals and who will also take risks.

With a vision for the mission ahead - let us hope and believe that we shall rise to the occasion and do what is expected of us - to serve the cause of higher education and to bring in the necessary reforms in this system.

Source: University News