B Tech credit needed to be cut to 160 from 200: Anil Sahasrabudhe

Thiruvananthapuram: All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe said the number of credits needed to graduate with a B.Tech in four years would be reduced to 160 from the current 200-credit requirement. Mr Sahasrabudhe told reporters on the sidelines of Sankethapravesam–2017’, an induction function for incoming engineering students at Tagore Theatre here on Thursday that the plan was to a 10 credit reduction per year of study. “Outdated syllabus and old fashioned question papers are the reason for turning a high percentage of graduates from our engineering schools unemployable,” he said.

“The idea is to give them time to self-learn and the freedom to experiment.” The decision is expected to be implemented in the coming academic year. This would decrease the pressure students are put under. “Exams will feature questions that require them to apply their lessons instead of forcing them to learn by rote. The recent downward trend in engineering graduates' employability was due to outdated curriculum,” he said. The AICTE is also planning three-week induction programmes for students. The induction programme which goes beyond the prescribed textbooks to sensitise them to the grand-scale challenges facing the country besides helping develop inter-personal skills, upgrade their English proficiency and improve soft skills.

“Newly inducted faculty members will also undergo a six-week induction programme,” Mr Sahasrabudhe said. “In the induction programme, one teacher will be designated to mentor and counsel a group of 20 students.  It will help facilitate their entry into academic and campus life.” He also participated in a panel discussion that further explored the possibilities of developing an entrepreneurial startup culture among students from within educational institutions. The other panellists were Startup Village Collective (SV.CO) chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar, former director of executive engagement at Microsoft India and founder of the Jackfruit365 initiative James Joseph, principal of Trinity College of Engineering Arun Surendran and Santhosh Kurup, CEO of ICT Academy Kerala.