MSDE rolls out red carpet for Engineering Colleges

Rajiv-Pratap-Rudy

Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (Independent Charge)and his ministry today offered a red carpet model to revive the engineering colleges and polytechnics in India which are experiencing sustainability issues and are in distress by linking them to Skill India.

The ideas were proposed today to a gathering of odd 300 representative from engineering institutes and polytechnics across the country, at a Consultative Workshop on Skill Development in Polytechnics and Engineering Colleges. The objective of the workshop was to leverage the existing offering of the institutes towards skill development in the country and in the process ensure cent percent capacity utilisation.

Presently about 50% of the seats in the Engineering Colleges are vacant resulting in availability of spare infrastructure at these institutions. As per the data available on the AICTE website, out of a total intake capacity of 16.31 lakh, only 8.5 lakh students have been enrolled for the current academic year 2015-16 in various engineering colleges.

Addressing the gathering, Shri Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (Independent Charge)said “Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is extending all possible means and modules to ensure that there is a conducive training spectrum matching a successful business model for all engineering institutes. This is our opportunity to make the best out of each other.”

The Hon’ble Minister mentioned to the gathering, “We are trying to create a template to map the trades and skills sets which are required across sectors today so that we can work towards a common outcome. But whatever you create in partnership with us, has to be of excellence, visibility and aspiration so that we create examples for others and aspire the youth to join. We will create a corpus to support the growth of path of the candidate along with you.”

“We do not want to create an over capacity but remain focused on what we have to achieve. A core committee will take a stock of what is the outcome of this workshop and how you can help us, over the next one month. It is an open play field as far as skill development is concerned and is completely the passion and drive that you have to make the best of this landscape,” he added.

The model of engagement can be in form of Run Long Term Skill Based NCVT courses or by setting up Model Skill Development Centres and rolling out Short Term Skill Courses under Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY).

Addressing the gathering and reiterating the need for collaboration and convergence, Shri Rohit Nandan, Secretary, MSDE, “We need to make a super human effort and take a generational leap to ensure that we quickly map the areas where we can collaborate with existing entities to capitalise on existing offering and infrastructure. This is an earnest effort to bring NCVT together with AICTE and NSDC to bring about a concerted action to further boost skill development in India.”

“NCVT 3.50 Lac seats added over the last 2 years. This year will add 7 lakh seats,” he added.

Shri Rajesh Agarwal, Joint Secretary, MSDE said, “This is the first time in the history of India that we have exceeded the number of seats in ITIs from the engineering seats. In other countries, the technicians are usually five times the engineers, in number so as to serve and support them. Our target is to train 25 lakhs students in the next one year and scale up to 18000 ITI by end of this year.”

Anil Dattatraya Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE “There are 3800 engineering colleges and 3000 polytechnics that have the capacity to expand their infrastructure and their offerings to skill development courses. We are discussing relaxing the exclusivity of running only engineering courses in the colleges. The times are changing and we have to change with changing times. AICTE MSDE and MHRD will work together in this area and ensure we have a constructive outcome to build our ecosystem. Every institutions affiliated to AICTE, should ideally skill 100 students in a year.”

A short sample study was conducted to analyse how this model can best function. Some of the observations made are:

  • Institutions need to augment equipment, machinery and tools required as per the NCVT norms for trade.
  • Creation of infrastructure for running the NCVT Programme in AICTE approved institutions (to ensure that AICTE approved programmes are not affected)
  • Employment of staff exclusively for running NCVT Programmes
  • NCVT to submit the guidelines for granting approval for running NCVT Programmes in Engineering / Polytechnic College in the next meeting



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