Editor’s note – This short article comes from a soon-to-be graduate who is dissatisfied with the way engineering is taught in his institution. The views are that of the author alone.
Author's note – In this article, I have written about why we need a change in the way engineering subjects are taught and the importance of a technically sound and better equipped engineer.
I am a final year Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) student at Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), Manipal. I started my Undergraduate studies at MIT as an ECE student in August 2007. When I attended the counselling session for admissions in 2007, Electronics and Communication branch was supposedly the best and the most sought-after branch. It is a branch that is said to be an evergreen one like the Mechanical and Civil Engineering branches. I have found it to be interesting during my four years of study but there is still something amiss in the way the subjects are taught at my institution.
It might not come as a surprise that the student and faculty strength of ECE branch is the highest when compared to other branches of Engineering. This is true in most colleges. I am mentioning this well-known fact merely to point out that everybody thinks about the job scenario when they choose this branch at a university. Studying just for the sake of earning money is no good. One must always strive to excel in their field of interest. We have this habit of running after jobs the moment we enter our final year. But we must realise the importance of the education gained through study in the preceding years and working in the industry must involve the implementation of knowledge gained. As I see, most of my friends have got jobs from mass recruiters that in all possibility involve working in front of the computers, meeting deadlines and learning programming languages and software that I find very intriguing. It is shocking that we do not use even 10% of the Electronics subjects out there in the real-world or the industry. Is it because those subjects are out-dated and are irrelevant to the current scenario? The answer is definitely a 'no'!
Knowledge obtained in the university must complement the work that one performs in the industry. For this to happen, it is important to have subjects that give practical insight based on the useful concepts and principles. The age old system is clearly out-dated and so is it’s curricula, which has no relevance to many subjects in today’s practical world. It is crucial that this system needs to be modified to include subjects that are more industry-oriented, practical and experimental and fun to learn. I can be sure that most of us do not remember the working of an RC coupled amplifier that was 'taught' in our Analog Electronics class. It is vital that we change the syllabus to suit the current trends of the Electronics world. We have a lot of exams and most of the time goes in preparing for those purposeless exams which concentrate more on testing the 'knowledge' and 'memory' of a student. We must put an end to this by integrating practicals and theory to have a better understanding of things. Examinations should stop asking questions on out-dated equipment and processes and concentrate on the more recent and upcoming models and theories to give a modern outlook to our system. This will not only help us to be better equipped with the industry requirements but will also instigate us to think creatively.
I am aware that most university management authorities do not understand this since their university would be labelled 'weird' for not following the AICTE standards and such but it is essential to have these changes made as early as possible for producing 'quality engineers' instead of quantities of 'memory engineers'. We need an India that can compete with the world with creative technologies and not technologies that are based on out-dated principles.
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