COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF CONTINUING ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN INDIA : A CASE OF ROORKEE UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The reality of today is a changing environment which is a dominant factor in the growth and development of a country. The increasing accumulation of practical knowledge has made it impossible to provide a comprehensive initial education of reasonable duration. It has been realised that engineering is more a learning profession than a learnt profession. The traditional pattern of formal engineering education can not equip graduates with required expertise. Continuing engineering education (CEE), therefore, becomes an important part of complete educational system. It plays a vital role in the education and training of engineers and professionals to keep them more productive and creative throughout career. It leads to better job performance, job satisfaction and contributes higher level of economic development. The need for CEE at the present juncture is all the more evident because of the rapidly developing international economic relations and trade practices. This calls for the suitable strategies to carry out the knowledge upgradation programme for working professionals. In India this unavoidable need has been felt over recent years, and government and other organisations have made some notable efforts in this field. However, it has not yet achieved its desired status. Therefore it becomes significant to take an account of a few important aspects of CEE. The proposed study has made an effort to study the cost and implementation aspect of same. The study covers the following objectives (i) to study the present scenario of CEE in India, (ii) to calculate the total annual cost of Continuing Education Project run by the government of for the last three years, (iii) to calculate the cost of CEE courses run and funded by the government and compare it with the cost of CEE funded by the professional organisation in their own interest, (iv) to measure the aptitude (Year/Course ratio) of engineers , according to the core level of education, towards attending the CEE courses, (v) to find out the relationship between years of experience and number ofcourses attended by the engineers, per year. Chapter I is introductory in nature and deals with the importance, scope, objectives and limitations of the study. It spells out the methodology adopted for the study. Chapter II gives a detailed survey of literature related directly of indirectly to the problem. Chapter III is a historical review of the CEE in India, during pre-independence and post-independence period. Efforts and provisions made by various committees and commissions in this field have been discussed. Chapter IV presents a study of the Continuing Education Project run by the MHRD, Government of India. In this study total annual cost has been calculated. Chapter V is a study of cost and implementation of the CEE courses which are conducted by the University of Roorkee. Cost of government funded courses has been compared with the cost of Sponsored courses. Chapter VI presents an analysis of the benefits accrued by the participants by attending the CEE courses. Chapter VII gives a measurement of engineers" aptitude for CEE and also finds out a relationship between the experience and courses attended by them. Chapter VIII presents Summary, Conclusion and Prospects of the study. The study concluded that CEE has been a matter of vital importance which has been ignored and the government could not make a clear cut policy regarding it. In 1987 government launched a project for the CEE. Mainly two types of courses are conducted; first, are run by the direct sharing the costs by the government and second, sponsored one. The sponsored courses are implemented in a better way than normal courses. Through sponsored courses more people are trained in lesser no. of days while in normal courses less no. of persons are trained in more days. There are a number of reasons responsible for the success of sponsored courses but the main reason is the cost which is paid by the case-firms and hence they take part because of the involvement of their money second the topics on which the courses designed are relevant to the job and directly fulfil their immediate need. On the other hand the normal courses are fully funded by the government. These are first planned and designed and engineers are then contacted to join the courses, and are generally based on topics which cover a wide subject areas in common interests, in this situation the conducting of a course fully depends on the nominations of engineers if the nomination received are less than the required number, the course is canceled. The major number of course cancellation shows less interest of the engineers. in Lectures on practical aspects and lectures on problem solving are found the most useful parts of a course respectively. Most of engineers feel that courses moderately fulfill their objectives and expectations. The best method of continuing education is short term courses and then come long term courses. Generally engineers get the information about the CEE courses from their own organisation, so the professional organisations play an important role in the information system, other major source of information is letters from institution that organises the courses. Participation in CEE courses after a reasonable duration remains beneficial to the participant engineers. It helps in the knowledge upgradation for self satisfaction, getting better job assignment, promotion, job transfers and job satisfaction. Courses offered are felt highly or moderately relevant to the job requirement of engineers. These courses are found beneficial to the participants highly or moderately beneficial to increase the quality and the productivity of engineers. An average Indian engineer attends one CEE course after a period of about 7 years of his experience. Core level of education plays an important role to create the consciousness for continuing education amongst the engineers such as, there is a significant difference found between the interest of diploma holders and bachelors and masters, i.e., a diploma holder remains less conscious about the attending the courses than a bachelor or master. As a diploma holder, on an average attends one programme after a period of 11 years, a bachelor attends in 5 years and master attends in 4 years. Bachelor degree holders have a positive and significant, and a higher degree of correlation between the years of experience and the number of courses attended, while, other two types of engineers have an insignificant and lower degree of correlation, it means the bachelors pay more attention to their continuing education with their increasing experience, but in case of masters who are equally conscious and have an interest which is equal to that of bachelors, do not have a significant correlation between years of experience and the number of courses attended, it may be because they are engaged in such type of jobs that they have to update their knowledge ontheir own or they are engaged in an administrative type ofwork. Over all engineers, irrespective to their core level education, have not a significant correlation between years of experience and number of courses. Lack of information is the main reason why the engineers are not able to attend more programme then come the paucity of time, lack of resources as the main reasons and sometimes irrelevance of course contents to job requirements is also a reason why the engineers are not able to attend. CEE has also become an important means of human resource development, but in India this important issue could yet not get an attention in due course, the major cause for this is the lack of consciousness and the less involvement of engineers. Therefore to create a consciousness about the CEE is the very first requirement for the effective implementation. People's involvement and continuous improvement are the main factors to bring in total quality. Now the time is here when a strong will power should be developed for the implementation of CEE. Today it is generally agreed that if implementation of CEE is to be successful it will require a unique partnership of government, business, labour, educators and social action organisations.