By Gaurav Sinha:
As a final year engineering student in a non-IIT college or the other prestigious ones, I am forced to think about the AICTE approved curriculum of the various engineering streams. I am a student of electronics and communication engineering, a very wide field of application as well as research. Huge amount of changes and ideas brought forward every day make this stream one of the most interesting as well as challenging and most youngsters have a fair bit of idea of how to go about it.
What is genuinely disappointing as well as disturbing is the curriculum and the contents taught at the undergraduate level. A large portion of what is being taught are technologies developed more than 40 years ago. A bit of history is no doubt important regarding the development of that technology and means but sadly it covers more than 2/3rd of the syllabus. For instance most of these courses have a subject “microprocessors” in which the 8085 processor which was developed way back in 1973 is taught. Its architecture and working are necessary but the curriculum should cater to the modern day development and needs. Most of the times the student goes to class for attendance or because of guilt conscience. Learning has been replaced by idling away time. Laboratories are there as a credit requirement rather that seeing and researching on practical implementation of things learnt.
Also the system at most places are hell bent on testing you rather than teaching you. At the end of four years you are having a degree and a job but you are dissatisfied with the throughput. You expected to be able to understand the working and development of major current trends but most of the information you have is useless or at least obsolete. And as an engineering student at the end of finishing my college I too am dissatisfied and working to upgrade my skills but I am running out of time. And I am very much unfamiliar with the practical use of things I have written in my exams.
A major overhaul of the syllabus and curriculum is needed both in attitude and curriculum. May the future generations be luckier.
Jai hind