Education

 My Blog No. 18

Professional Education: A professional is equipped with requisite educational qualifications, like, a physician or a surgeon with a degree in medicine and surgery, or a lawyer with bachelor’s  or master’s degree in law, and architect with appropriate bachelor’s or master’s degree in planning and architecture as opposed to a carpenter or a cobbler who possesses necessary skill sets but not a university degree. Conduct of various professionals like chartered accountants, cost and management accountants, doctors, lawyers and architects is regulated and governed by professional bodies like The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India or Medical Council of India or Bar Council of India or Council of Architects. For engineers and managers there is no such professional body or council to regulate and govern their conduct. For the purpose of regulating professional education including engineering and management education All India Council of Technical Education was established as a government institution to promote, develop and regulate technical education in India.

Engineering education started as an apprentice based training and education. The oldest Engineering College in entire commonwealth was College of Civil Engineering at Roorkee in 1847 now IIT Roorkee. Engineering education had started in Europe at many places in the eighteenth century. The postgraduate degree courses started in the erstwhile Roorkee University for the first time in India in 1956.

Science is the study of why things work and how they work. It provides the base or foundation through theories, concepts and principles. Application of mathematics and science for manufacturing or construction for larger good like damns, bridges and roads and rails is engineering. When the collection of these techniques, skills, and processes/methods in order to create goods or services is transferable and marketable it may be called technology.

The first Indian Institute of Technology IIT Kharagpur was established in 1951, the second IIT Bombay in 1958, the third and fourth IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras were set up in 1959 and IIT Delhi in 1961 was the fifth. After a long gap IIT Guwahati was established in 1994.  In 1961 Parliament decreed the IITs as ‘Institutes of National Importance'. India's first technical institute, set up in 1847 and known as the Thomson College of Engineering and subsequently the University of Roorkee, was ordained as the seventh IIT in September 2001. In the year 2008, six new IITs were started: IIT Bhubaneswar, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Patna, IIT Rajasthan, and IIT Ropar. This was followed by two more IITs in 2009: IIT Indore and IIT Mandi. During the early years, the IITs benefited in varying degrees from material assistance and academic cooperation from developed countries — IIT Bombay from the Soviet Union, IIT Madras from Germany, IIT Kanpur from the United States, and IIT Delhi from the United Kingdom. The new IITs are mentored by old reputed IITs.

 At present there are 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) Bangalore and 7 other Indian Institutes of Science Education & Research (IISERs). There are 31 National Institutes of Technology (NITs). There are 5 Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and 19 IIITs in Public Private Partnership mode.  Additionally there are 3 Schools of Planning & Architecture (SPAs) and National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NIITE)

94 Institutions, mostly technical, in the country have been designated as Institutions of National Importance.