Tuesday, February 20, 2018

PhDs from IITs to serve as teachers in rural tech colleges



New Delhi: After doctors, it is now the turn of IITians to serve in rural areas. Over 1200 PhDs and MTech graduates from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) will serve as faculty members in engineering colleges in rural areas in 11 states that are considered underdeveloped including Jharkhand, Bihar, MP, UP and others.
Unlike doctors, there is no compulsion for techies to serve in rural colleges and as many as 5000 of them had applied to be a part of the rural teaching programme when the government invited applications for the same last year. This programme is a part of the Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) under Ministry of Human Resource Development. TEQIP is a World Bank sponsored programme, which is being managed by MHRD in India. The budget for teachers is Rs. 375 crore for three years.
These fresh-out-of-college techies will serve for three years as Assistant Professors before they venture into some other field, either a job as a teacher or with some private company. The experience that they gain from teaching in these institutes will however be counted if they serve as teachers. They have been appointed on contract basis.
There are 293 PhDs and 932 MTech graduates among those who have been selected to teach in 53 engineering institutes. According to officials, more than one lakh students who are studying in these institutes will be benefitted by the scheme. These teachers would improve teaching learning process in these institutes apart from imbibing a start-up culture among students.
“We are taking this step to ensure quality education in rural areas in states that are underdeveloped, specially those that were considered Bimaru at one point of time. Applications were invited from post graduates and PhDs in premier institutes like IITs, NITs and IISc to serve in rural areas as teachers and we got a very good response from them. Now 1225 have already started teaching in colleges in underdeveloped districts,” said HRD minister Prakash Javadekar.

Source:DNA-1st February,2018
http://epaper2.dnaindia.com/index.php?mod=1&pgnum=1&edcode=820009&pagedate=2018-2-01#