With reference to Shyamal Majumdar's column, "The crisis in engineering education" (November 20), it is no secret that a significant number of IITians either join corporate management institutes or the Indian Administrative Services, if they have not already migrated to US universities, rather than Indian manufacturing companies.
India cannot have a first-rate manufacturing base unless it has a pool of first-rate engineers. The country has a vast number of engineering colleges, but a majority of them have substandard faculty members. Consequently, the students graduating from such colleges are of poor quality and unemployable by industry. They bring no value to industry. Such engineers are stuck with low salaries and a dead-end future.
In the past 60 years the standard of engineering education in India has fallen. What we are witnessing is the engineering institutes' inability to attract good faculty. It is imperative that institutes have qualified and experienced faculty members.
Let us accept the fact that most of us choose a career for the remuneration, glamour and power it offers rather than our aptitude or passion for it.
Gangesh Kumar Varma, Kolkata
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