Rating of Engineering Colleges in Kerala 2009
Report on the Survey on Engineering Colleges of Kerala 2009
The jury committee appreciates the initiative taken up by RECCAANIT Cochin to conduct a survey of the engineering colleges of Kerala to assist the students seeking admission, by providing necessary information about the colleges. It also appreciates the voluntary response of the various Engineering Colleges coming forward to participate in this survey. Many colleges have furnished required information in the prescribed format and have shown considerable enthusiasm in this regard.
The committee notes that many engineering colleges are of high quality and are imparting good technical education in the state. A number of them have good dedicated faculty, infrastructure and library facilities. Some of the colleges have a good placement record. Government and government-aided colleges have reasonably good faculty.
However, self financing institutions seem to lack in this regard. Many of them have large numbers of “guest” faculty. Many of the faculty have limited experience and have only a Bachelor's degree. Sincere efforts should be taken to recruit faculty and with higher qualifications like M. Tech, PhD or depute the existing faculty to improve their qualifications. The government and universities should take initiatives to offer M. Tech and PhD programmes in more institutions, especially in IT related branches where most of the colleges run B. Tech programmes.
Many of the colleges (except very few) have not undergone the “National Board of Accreditation” exercise of the All India Council of Technical Education.
Since most of the faculty are not PhD qualified, research contribution is rather poor. Further, consultancy activities in almost all colleges are absent. If the faculty/student ratio is improved considerably, research and consultancy activity can improve. Some of the established engineering colleges have excellent faculty with several doctorates in all branches of engineering. However, the research output from Kerala is considerably low compared to other states. When research potential from numerous government organisations is available in plenty, this looks inexplicable.
Efforts should be made to extend the library working hours much beyond the regular office hours. There is a need to improve laboratory facilities. Interaction of faculty members with other institutes of repute is practically nonexistent and hence deserves serious attention.
The rating of engineering colleges and the observations above are based purely on the written information supplied by the institutions in the prescribed format which has been presumed to be authentic and fully reliable.
Prof. A. Sridharan
Chairman of the Jury
Rating of Engineering Colleges in Kerala 2009