Mushrooming Engineers

MUSHROOMING ENGINEERS
In a bid to increase quantity of education, we have compromised on quality.

India is considered a pioneer when it comes to producing engineers. The Indian Education system along with the Society mindset has made professions like engineer, doctor, teacher as the golden grapes. Though it is said that a person is free to choose to what he wants to do , most of the time social expectations and financial situations become the hackles that prevent a person from making this choice freely. Naturally, India sees a majority of students running after an engineering degree just for the sake of it.

Around 20 years ago, laws and regulations applicable on technical education imparting institutes were relaxed so as to make higher education easily available. At that time, the boom in number of engineering colleges and universities felt like a positive step to provide room to those fighting for space in engineering classrooms.

But now, after these twenty years, we see an avalanche effect of universities and colleges springing up at every other place. Money is playing its game. These colleges and universities lack facilities as well as the quality of education that an engineering degree demands.

Majority of students in these institutions lack career direction and the will to study or work hard. Much of the time is spend at the canteens, at dhabas, at secret hangouts. They know that once they have been admitted into the college, nothing can prevent them from getting their degree. Even if they score awfully low and flunk, they can very easily take a retest. If they flunked even that, another retest and then another and another. There are students in these colleges who accumulate these re-tests and need to give 10-12 exams against the normally required four exams, in their final year to be able to become a graduate. Even parents have come to accept that this is nothing to worry about. The college administration is a puppet of these students who hold their re-test applications in one hand and a bag of money in the other. The mandatory project that every student needs to submit is usually brought for a few thousand bucks from hobby electronics shops. These shops keep readymade projects and you can go and choose and pick, just like you would shop for clothes in a mall. The books used are the ones which have the least information so that much mugging can be removed. Practical experiments are performed by the few geniuses in the class while the rest sit and watch. Lab assistants are bribed to help them cheat or get the experiment performed during lab practical exams. Fresh graduates are appointed on the post of professors and then even the few good students get denied of good teaching. The quality of education is degrading and nobody even stops to think about it!

The world is full of people who don’t appreciate the things that they have got without struggle, and engineering students of such colleges belong to this group. They let the opportunity to learn go by, not realizing that somewhere in this same country, students with much more aptitude and will are yearning to be in their place. Somehow the four years are dragged by so that they can get that degree. A sheet of paper called degree in exchange of many pieces of paper called banknotes. But is this sheet as crisp, as pure, as deserved as it ought to be?