Technical Education The Urgent Need Of The Hour

The purpose of education in engineering is to provide the learning required by students to become successful engineers – with technical expertise, social awareness, and a bias toward innovation.

This combined set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes is essential for strengthening productivity, entrepreneurship, and excellence in an environment that is increasingly based on technologically complex and sustainable products, processes, and systems. Simply put, it is imperative that we improve the quality and nature of undergraduate engineering education.

The answer could be buttressed through a combination of efforts by the student and the educational institution, with a more holistic approach in preparing the student to meet and match the employable skill sets demanded by the industry. There must be a clear comprehension of the purpose of higher education and employability. The institution should take an active role in nurturing the transformation that the student undergoes from school to undergraduate studies with a positive bias towards soft skills and the requirements of industry.

Taking cues from new age university skill-building methodologies, every student should make a 52 week plan each year – 10 -12 hours during each day and meticulously work on the schedules thus planned. It is mandatory that the student should self-introspect the plan vs achievement on a day-to-day basis and seek help from mentor and other good samaritans who could nurture and positively shape the student career.

Let us review a typical situation by getting into the shoes of a student:

Barring a few hours of classroom training the student is most often free and left to manage aimlessly the free hours.

Understanding the real purpose of going to college, it would be a good idea for the student to peep into the industry window – understand the industry demand and constantly prepare oneself to score ahead of peers, with superior skill building in technical knowledge, communication, presentation, and train to think creatively and innovate.

To conclude, learning is an everyday process, change remaining the only constant.
The ability to think in one’s shoes and endeavour in offering innovative solutions would be the key to scale the ladder.