The Hindu Business Line : On restructuring undergraduate degree in sciences and engineering

Chennai March 26 India faces `a serious manpower shortage', cautions Mr N.R. Narayana Murthy, Chief Mentor of Infosys. Unless we have in place `a dynamic, forward-looking, modern and world-class human resources (HR) policy,' we will regret, he has said. Voices of concern about manpower crunch have been fairly regular, especially from IT (information technology) companies.

Interestingly, on the topic of HR squeeze in IT, Mr M.A. Pai, Professor Emeritus, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign, had this to say in a recent mail: "It seems to me that the IT industry expects the tech education sector to provide graduates readymade for its needs. It is impossible in any country."

The needs of India in IT sector are in some sense specific just as those in other sectors such as power, manufacturing etc, points out Mr Pai. He suggests that the IT industry can offer classes in soft skills in urban areas to start with using Edusat and that universities can get rid of unnecessary courses in the final year to make room for the course. This is easy since the students are burdened with a 35-hour week in all except the IITs, says Mr Pai. "The IT industry can administer a computer-based test and perhaps somehow arrange for class presentations (this will be difficult but not impossible). This will help all industries. The basic intelligence of the Indian grads is excellent, as I have seen by spending two decades at IIT-K and an equal time here. Feel free to convey my ideas since the time has come to think out of the box and propose near term solutions."

In a subsequent mail to Business Line, Mr Pai has offered his suggestions for restructuring the undergraduate degree in sciences and engineering. "There is genuine concern about the decrease in interest in the sciences at the undergraduate level which has an impact on lower enrolment in higher degrees. Lack of highly trained people at the PhD level in both sciences and engineering will be serious setback to India becoming a knowledge economy in any foreseeable future," writes Mr Pai.

One of the stumbling blocks is the lack of uniformity at the first degree level, he identifies. "B.Sc. degree is of three years' duration while an engineering degree is four years and that too with its variations of B.E., B.Tech., and so on, which causes confusion and an unnecessary differentiation. Good students from both these streams are comparable. Relegating sciences to 3-year duration gives it some kind of an inferior status. After that a two year M.Sc. and on to a PhD study seems like a long road."

So, what can be the solution? One way of rectifying the situation is to make all degrees in sciences and engineering (including computer science) uniform in length of four years and also abolish the terminology B.E. and B.Tech., states Mr Pai, citing `Bridging the gap,' by T.K.Chakraborty (Current Science, February 25).

"Let all degree be called B.S. in the respective specialisations. This is more in tune with the US practice. It has the advantage that increasingly there is interdisciplinary work in both areas," says Mr Pai. "Areas like nanotechnology and biotechnology have overlaps in both science and engineering. As we move from specialised professional colleges to a true university system this makes lots of sense. The first three semesters are more or less common with math, physics and chemistry and or biology and some exposure to engineering such as energy. The remaining semesters are devoted to specialisations. Under ideal conditions there should be a possibility of a shift in careers depending on student motivation." Worryingly, however, Mr Pai does not anticipate that to happen in India for a long time.

Following the B.S. degree, the postgraduate program should be a seamless program with M.S. for a year (six courses plus a project) normally and for students who do not do well may be three semesters, he postulates. "The transition to a PhD program should be a natural one after M.S. with some qualifying exam. In this way, we remove the notion that somehow M.Tech. or M.Sc. is a terminal degree. Hopefully, this will increase the intake to the PhD program which for a normal student should take three years after M.S."

How does one implement such a program? It will take time and hopefully not much of committee work at the national level, observes Mr Pai. "The implementation should be left to the autonomous institutions with some kind of an oversight. It is in some sense implicit in some of the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) which advocated the concept of a university."

Mr Pai is of the view that if premier institutes such as IITs, NITs, Central Universities and newly started IISERs can start this 4-year BS scheme with active support from UGC/CSIR agreeing for the seamless MS-PhD program thereafter, other universities/institutes will have no other option but to follow the same. "The Indian Institute of Science can also join this bold initiative."