Even though skills education as a national development imperative is a top priority of the new Narendra Modi-led BJP/NDA government in New Delhi, in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous (200 million) state, technical education seems to have lost its sheen.
An estimated 124,000 seats of a total of 147,000, for which the UP State Entrance Examination (UPSEE) is held under the aegis of the UP Technical University (UPTU), have no takers. Although 138,000 candidates wrote the exam for seats in 306 technical colleges spread across the state, only 23,000 confirmed their admission. Technical colleges affiliated to UPTU include engineering, pharmacy, fashion design, business and hotel management institutions. Of them business management colleges have fared the worst with only 2,500 candidates confirming their admission for the 44,000 seats available.
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Educationists and academics attribute this sustained fall in demand for technical education to unqualified faculty, poor infrastructure, obsolete curriculums and lack of employment opportunities because of inadequate industrial development in the state. “Moreover the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has been too liberal in granting no-objection certificates to promoters of private engineering and technical colleges, without bothering about adequate infrastructure and duly qualified faculty. On the other hand, promoters of technical education institutions regard engineering/technical colleges a real estate business in which long-term capital gains are guaranteed,” says R.K. Khandal, vice chancellor of UPTU. The accuracy of this assertion is testified by the multiplication of engineering/technical colleges in UP from a mere 85 in 2005-06 to 306 currently.
Meanwhile competition to recruit students is becoming intense. Private colleges are known to hire agents to recruit students from distant villages. Agents get a fixed payment per student admitted and colleges have slashed admission fees to barely meet examination expenses, so as to attract as many students as possible to cover their fixed overheads.
“Our BBA (bachelor of business administration) and BCA (bachelor of computer applications) courses which were introduced three years ago with a capacity of 120 students attracted just 40 students this year. Given that the total investment on books and computers was in excess of Rs.40 lakh, it made no sense to continue these programmes. Therefore we refunded the fees of students we had recruited through agents, but now we have to deal with court cases filed by students who claim to have lost an academic year,” says the harassed manager of a Lucknow-based technical education college who requested anonymity.
UP’s young and perhaps even more harassed chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who is struggling to maintain law and order in the state, has suggested skill development programmes of shorter duration to make students job ready. However such piecemeal measures are unlikely to solve the problem of drying investment flows in UP, which is blighted by deteriorating law and order, student indiscipline, and communal riots. Meanwhile according to the 66th round of the National Sample Survey Organisation, by 2017, the number of unemployed youth (in the 15-35 age group) in the state will rise to 10 million from the current 3.2 million.
The lack of youth interest in technical education is thus just a symptomatic malaise. Unless urgent measures are taken to tackle the root causes — law and order maintenance, faltering industrial investment and plunging standards of higher education — UP will continue to languish at the bottom of the development heap and perhaps take the country down with it.
Puja Awasthi (Lucknow)