How to reform Indian engineering education?

The casual indifference of undergraduate (UG) engineering students towards their academics is well known to all - not just students and their parents, even faculty and employers as well. This is not just limited to non-elite engineering colleges but rampant even in prestigious institutes like IITs as well [1-2]. Since the engineering education is heavily subsidised in all national or state owned or government-aided institutes, our country needs a better return on investment in the education sector.

There are a number of factors that affect student motivation like the role of teacher to inspire the students through engaging lectures, assessments that are not testing the memorisation potential of the student. But in this article I limit my discussion to those factors that are solely dependent on the students themselves. I conclude with my suggestions on how to address these.

The reason for this attitude stems right from the time of admission
when they have to choose an engineering branch despite being not aware of what topics / applications the branch of engineering deals with other than some superficial notions. All they are aware of is the potential job market that their institute of choice offers after graduation. So this lackadaisical behaviour is rationalised by the poor placement opportunities in the core branch of engineering, and lower pay in such core jobs compared to computer science (CS) or information technology (IT) jobs. Hence the huge demand for CS or IT branch every year.

This results in the non-CS/IT students becoming indifferent to mastering the domain knowledge specific to their branches of engineering instead some expend time focusing on developing programming and IT skills. However even CS/IT students are not particularly focused on developing domain expertise per se. The burnout and incompetence at the time of admission translates into this indifference as the general belief is that eventually everyone graduates and gets a IT job either on or off campus.

Misguided by their "popular" seniors, the enterprising students instead focus on leadership roles in student union, campus placement coordination, organising technical and cultural festivals, and the energetic ones expend on extracurricular activities like clubs, societies, while the talented ones invest in their passion like music, dance, and sports and the remaining students are distracted by social media like Facebook, hooked onto watching sports like cricket, binge watch movies / web series, addicted to online games not to mention other addictions all at the expense of time required for developing expertise in their field.

Most students just cram few days rather nights before exams solely for the purpose of attaining grades or scoring marks but not for learning the subject. No one can develop expertise by memorising content for a short time purely for the sake of assessment. They would be unable to recall the fundamentals of a topic just a semester later. No wonder our country is not leading in technical innovation at the global stage. If this is the sad state of affairs in the elite IITs [3] then the situation is much worse in other colleges.

Here is my suggestion to resolve the engineering students' indifference towards their academics:

1. Based on their performance in entrance examination (for instance JEE-Main or JEE-Advanced), students should be allotted only the engineering college / institute and NOT the branch of engineering within that institute. This is possible since the syllabus for first year is common across all branches of engineering (except architecture).
2. All 4 years of UG in engineering should have higher weighting (50%) for continuous assessments during the term compared to end of term exams (30%) and rest 20% for project work or paper presentation in class. The results of the assessments should be disclosed only to the student concerned rather than made public which can demotivate the ones who are still catching up.
3. In the first year of engineering an introduction to all branches of engineering should be provided. This will enable students to take an informed decision during the branch of engineering allotment based on their performance in the first year. This allotment of a branch of engineering is within each institute.
4. Based on their performance in second year of engineering, students should be allotted either the 4-year B.E / B.Tech degree program which requires a dissertation in final year or the 3 year B.Sc (Engg.) degree program which does not require a final year project. The students who don't meet expectations are given an option to exit second year with a diploma instead.
5. Based on their performance in the third year of B.Tech, students should be offered Honours degree which requires them to take up advanced modules in their core subjects.
6. Based on their performance in the GATE exam in their engineering stream, students should be given mandatory credits in the final semester of engineering in addition to the viva-voce as it is not as effective as an impartial comprehensive external objective pan-India examination.
7. Based on their performance in the final year of B.Tech and in GATE exam, students should be offered an upgrade to Integrated M.Tech degrees for B.Tech (Honours) students and admission to the 2-year M.Tech degrees for B.Tech students in their institute.
8. Further, students who take up international placement offers immediately after graduation should repay the education subsidy they received while those who either choose to work or study in India for at least 2 years immediately after graduation should be exempted from repaying the subsidy.

I hope implementing this might ensure that undergraduate engineering students take their academics seriously.

References:

[1] Why don't we study at IITB? https://issuu.com/insight-vol13/docs/issue_15.2/6

[2] Why don't we study at IITB: part 2 Teaching and learning issues https://www.insightiitb.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WDWS-II.pdf

[3] At IITs, 1-Cr Job Offers Are Hype, Ground Reality is Different https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/at-iits-1-cr-job-offers-are-causing-a-huge-disconnect-2146497