The Hindu Business Line : Flexibility in engg education urged

THE All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has given a call for flexibility in engineering education and multi-disciplinary approach so as to tap the opportunities and face the challenges in the field of science and technology in the new millennium.

"The new millennium is characterised by several distinctive features," Dr R. Natarajan, Chairman of AICTE, said.

Inaugurating the third annual convention of Andhra Pradesh Akademi of Sciences (APAS) here today, he said the new millennium was witness to certain things which were thought impossible 30 years ago.

The two-day convention is being organised in association with Chaitanya Bharati Institute of Technology (CBIT).

Breaking up of USSR, unification of Germany, an end to apartheid and LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation) were thought impossible 30 years ago. Nature of employment is changing. Some professions were getting extinct, while some new professions cropping up, he said.

The Silicon Valley revolution had brought in an era of free flow of information. Access to information was no more guarded. "It's being shared," he said.

The fast changing scenario called for a different set of skills. "Self-motivated learning, ability to listen and life-long learning have become very important," he said.

Asking the students to keep in view the fast changes taking place in their respective disciplines, he said: "the change is so fast that knowledge is getting obsolete within no time."

Quoting extensively from futurologists, he said the pace of technology advancement and the magnitude and rate of change that caused lower predictability and `forecastability.' "It is impossible to predict the future but it is possible to define the boundaries within which possible `futures' must lie," he said.

"For technology forecasting, we need two things - sound scientific knowledge and flexible imagination. The single most important factor in making an accurate prediction is the level of detail," Dr Natarajan said.

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