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.
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