New Delhi, March 18: Over 60 per cent engineers graduating from technical institutions across the country remain unemployed, according to the All India Council for Technical Education. As per the institution, a total number of eight lakh engineers graduate every year. Reportedly, it records to a potential loss of 20 lakh man days annually.
Apart from this, less than 1 per cent of engineering students participate in summer internships and just 15 per cent of engineering programmes offered by over 3,200 institutions are accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA).
In a bid to change these numbers, the ministry of human resource development is planning rolling out the single National Entrance Examination for Technical Institutions from January 2018, linking annual teacher training as a must for approval of the institution, mandatory induction training to enrolled students and annual revision of curriculum. As quoted by TOI, a senior MHRD official said that NEETI (for admission to engineering programmes) will be the first exam to be conducted by the National Testing Service (NTS), which will be completely computer-based.
As per plans, the first NEETI exam is likely to be scheduled for December 2017-January 2018, followed by another one in March 2018 and the third on May 2018. The official added that NTS will also conduct entrance test for IIT.
The report in Times of India states that the paper setting will continue to be with the IITs and the NTS’s responsibility will be to conduct the exams. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), under MHRD, has also set broad targets, which will focus on immediate improvement of employability to 60 per cent from the current 40 per cent, and to ensure that 75 per cent of the students get industry exposure in the form of summer internships.
According to the planned initiatives of the AICTE, the selection process will be based on the single entrance test by an agency authorised by MHRD and there will be a ban on conduct of such exams by any other institution or university or agency.
The institutions from now on will have to make “suitable changes in the curriculum every year” and the process shall be completed in the month of December each year ahead of the coming academic year. Reports say that the AICTE has ordered the institutions to prepare an action plan in this regard before June 2017.
