IIT grads to teach in rural engg colleges

NEWDELHI: Over 1,200 graduates from the country’s premier institutions have been selected to teach in engineering colleges in backward areas across the country, Union human resource development minister (HRD) Prakash Javadekar said on Wednesday.

The graduates have been selected from institutes such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITS) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITS). They will teach in backward areas across 11 states and UTS.

The initiative is part of the Technical Education Quality Improvement Project (TEQIPIII) for upgrading the quality of engineering graduates at a cost of ₹2,300 crore, to be implemented during till 2020.

The new faculty will work on a contractual basis for a period of three years in these areas.

“This is the first time such a measure has been taken to improve the quality of education in backward areas.

With the initiative, more than one lakh engineering students in the most backward areas would be benefited...” the minister said.

Each of these faculty members will be paid ₹70,000 per month with the government spending about ₹375 crore for the initiative.

The Union human resource development minister (HRD minister said these colleges often failed to attract qualified staff.

He added that vacancies in staff were as high as 60% in some of these colleges.

“A public appeal was made to M Tech and PHD students from these premier institutions to work in the backward areas. There was an overwhelming response... more than 5,000 highly-qualified persons applied,” the minister said.

Explaining the distribution of these faculty members, Javadekar said as many as 301 teachers will head to 11 institutes in Rajasthan, 210 teachers to seven institutes in Bihar, 194 teachers to seven institutes in Madhya Pradesh and 191 teachers to six institutes in Jharkhand.

Other states to which the faculty will be deployed include Assam, J&K, Odisha, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.