Wrote this post after reading this article - Big slide in engg admission: 135 courses shut in 5 years
Why do you need so many engineering branches at the undergraduate level????
Ideally, only branches that should be taught and taught really well at the UG level are - civil, mechanical, chemical, electrical. And maybe metallurgy & mining. All other branches such as instrumentation, biomedical engineering, polymer engineering, environmental engineering, software engineering, etc. etc. are better suited for PG level specialization.
Electrical engineering should cover electronics and computer engineering (hardware) as well.
Computer science can be taught as a science faculty with ability take electives from other branches as needed. Most of the computer science (theoretical part) is anyway heavy duty maths. Profs with strong math background make good CS teachers. We had many such profs.
And bring back 5 years engineering course. It was so till 1981 or so. I think my brother's batch 82-86 was the first batch to have a 4 years engineering course.
And make one year of the 5 years an industrial internship year. Students have to work as trainees in a company. Whether you make it one full year at the end or six months after the third year and another six months after the fourth year, can be deliberated.
Keep all other courses such microelectronics, VLSI, Biomed, info systems, instrumentation etc. as PG level courses or as UG electives. In UG, teach good quality problem solving and basic engineering in depth. What we have now is only superficial engineering education and no wonder students are so miserably qualified to join the workforce.
Not my original thoughts. My father has had these views for more than 50+ years. He seems to be right!
4 comments:
What is the practice in US?
True. Other than 4 core branches, all other branches were created to generate more number of seats for increasing number of colleges and do business in the name of education. Now engg has become like other degrees producing only 'graduates' mostly.
Yes, what is the practice in US?
There are colleges in some regions offering wine engineering too!
Thanks Sunaath Sir, Vikas.
In the US, till 10+2 everything is common. No arts, science, commerce streams till 12th. Everyone studies little of everything.
In the college, for undergraduate degree, everybody studies common courses for first 2 years. After that one can decide to choose a major and take courses corresponding to that major. Anytime one can change his/her mind and start working on a different direction. Such a person needs to take appropriate courses and sometimes it takes much longer and a lot of additional funds to change the direction. But you are not locked down to anything just because you chose something in the beginning.
That's the broad picture of UG education in the US. There may be some other low level specifics also which I am not very familiar with.
But in terms of granting exotic majors at the UG level, US has taken it to a all time new high. Heard from somebody that some university granted UG degree in nanotechnology which a super specialty. So there some such madness here too!
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