JNTU-K working to improve quality, employability of students: V-C

VISAKHAPATNAM: Current education system in the engineering colleges is not allowing students to acquire employability skills, which had led to 80 per cent of engineering graduates coming out of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (Kakinada) not getting placed anywhere.

The aptitude of students and quality of education/infrastructure was not up to the mark, said JNTU-K Vice-Cancellor Allam Appa Rao at a regional conference of affiliated colleges here on Sunday. The backlog of papers for students had risen to above 60 per cent and they were being allowed to complete it within 8 years (10 years for SC/ST).

Discussing various measures to be initiated by the university in the colleges to improve the quality of education and employability of those passing out, he lamented at the drastic drop in the number of research projects and students opting to pursue post-graduate studies. “Only those not accepted by the industry were coming to the teaching profession severely impacting the quality of pedagogy, for improving this situation we propose to hold summer training programmes for faculty members on a cost-sharing basis,” the Vice-Chancellor said.

Lashing out at the Government for not allocating sufficient funds to the universities for taking up any quality improvement initiatives, he pointed out that while the University Grants Commission had allocated Rs.170 crore, it had released only Rs.12 crore. He said that on the contrary Central Universities or top-level institutions had abundant funds, but spent barely 50 per cent of it. He termed the dream of Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal to improve the current Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of 12.4 per cent, to around 30 per cent by 2020 as difficult task as there was very little infrastructure available.