First ever Industry-sponsored awards for best industry linked engineering institutes

Report by India Education bureau, New Delhi:

Tata Chemicals, Mindlogicx Infratec, Infosys, Hi-Tech Gears, Forbes Marshall, and Elico have, for the first time, joined hands to give awards to engineering institutes in recognition of their strong linkages with industry. In a maiden initiative of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), top corporates have come forward to announce awards in five streams of engineering—Mechanical, Computer & IT, Electrical, Chemical and Electronics.

These awards will be presented on 8th November in New Delhi on the occasion of AICTE-CII University-Industry Congress and 4th Global Higher Education Summit. The awards are the result of a first-ever survey of industry linkages of engineering institutes carried out between June and September this year. Henceforth this will be an annual feature.

Announcing this on Friday at a press briefing, AICTE Chairman Dr SS Mantha said the evaluation process and the methodology followed for this survey was as per best industry standards anywhere in the world. The scope of the survey will henceforth be increased and many more disciplines and streams will be covered under it, he said.

In another first of its kind, industry will support research and development (R&D) by pledging scholarships for PhD fellows under a joint scheme designed by CII and Science Engineering and Research Board (SERB). The scheme will be formally launched by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), on 8th November. Announcing this at the press briefing, Mr P Rajendran, Chairman of CII National Higher Education Committee and Chief Operating Officer of NIIT Ltd, said “Industry is now taking this important step with far reaching consequences for the nation’s talent development and to create new knowledge coming out of India’s institutions of Higher Education.”

Industry support for another important aspect of higher education—faculty upgradation and making teaching an attractive career option for young generation—will be on display at the CII summit in the form of Best Faculty awards which have been instituted by Tata Chemicals and the Association of Chemistry Teachers, in partnership with Godrej Industries.

Explaining about the survey of engineering institutes, Dr Mantha said it was done online through the AICTE web portal for the sake of data security and eliminating any chance of non-affiliated or non-recognised institutes entering it. Only those AICTE-affiliated engineering institutes which had completed 10 years as on 31 August 2012 and offered at least three out of the selected six streams—Civil, Mechanical, Computer & IT, Electrical, Chemical and Electronics–were eligible to participate in it.

Objective, computer-generated scores of institutes were put before a high-level jury comprising Prof PV Indiresan (Former Director, IIT-Madras), Dr YS Rajan (Hon. Distinguished Professor, ISRO), Prof Prahalada (Vice-Chancellor, Defence Institute of Advanced Technology), Dr Naushad Forbes (Chairman, CII National Innovation Committee and Director, Forbes Marshall Private Limited), Mr Sanjeev Lal (Vice-President, Tata Chemicals Limited), Prof Shevgaonkar (Director, IIT-Delhi), Prof Sandeep Sancheti (Director, NIT-Delhi) and Prof Kak (Vice-Chancellor, Mahamaya Technical University).

AICTE is committed to promoting quality in technical education and all its initiatives, be it e-governance or promoting research through collaborations with industry, are truly a case in point leading to a win-win for all its stake holders.

CII represents the voice of industry which benefits from the output of higher education. It has been actively involved in promoting industry-academia collaborations as it believes that until this interaction grows, industry’s knowledge-driven growth will not be possible.

Ref: indiaeducationdiary.in