AICTE to allow colleges to hire 20% of faculty members from industry
With the aim of solving faculty shortage in engineering colleges across the country and ensuring quality education, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to allow technical institutions to use 20 per cent of their faculty from industries
By : migrator
Update: 2016-01-22 15:04 GMT
Chennai
So far, experts from the industry and retired faculty could not be employed as adjunct faculty in technical institutions and they were not to be considered as regular faculty members. Speaking to DT Next, AICTE chairman Prof.
Anil Dattatraya Sahasrabudhe said that last year the council held consultations with stakeholders in various places across the country, when private colleges raised concern about the difficulty in getting qualified faculty for technical institutions.
“As we need to overcome faculty shortage to provide good quality education to students we have allowed 20 per cent faculty members to be adjunct faculty from industry and retired faculty from top class institutes like IITs. The remaining 80 per cent of faculty should be regular/full time,” he said.
Prof. Sahasrabudhe pointed out that this move would help students get more industry exposure as members from industries have often raised the issue of non-employability of engineering graduates.
“When industry experts teach students they would teach them what the industry needs, making students industry-ready. There are some good quality retired faculty members who can still teach. So we thought ‘why not allow colleges to use their expertise’,” he added.
For colleges in urban areas like Chennai, which cannot expand their present facilities to meet AICTE’s land requirements (2.5 acres), the council has now permitted the setting up of two campuses within 2 km — one for administrative (not less than 1.5 acres) purposes and the other for teaching.
Private colleges have welcomed the move stating that the decision would help them to rope in good quality retired faculty from top class institutes like IITs as students from private engineering colleges don’t get an opportunity to be taught by such experts.
“Retired faculty members from IITs would have undertaken high quality research and also would have taught the best minds in the country. So, why should we not utilise their services?” an administrator of a private engineering college said.
Another college administrator noted that as there were fewer Ph.Ds in the country it became difficult for private colleges to get more faculty with Ph.D to teach students.
“There is a mismatch in our system where we have more students and less Ph.D holders to teach students. Hence allowing us to use retired faculty will also solve this issue,” the administrator said.
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