When I was in school, being an engineer was pretty hyped up. You score the highest, you got to be an engineer or a doctor. That’s what parents would say.
Somehow this kind of enforcement by parents and teachers imbibes the thought in the head of the kid, “Yes. I want to be an engineer.” It’s a blunt statement made by a kid without actually knowing what stuff is in engineering.
When I went take an entrance test to one of the coaching class for JEE at my hometown, the director asked me, “Why do you want to be an engineer?” I replied, “I am interested in Science and Technology, especially in Technology and that makes me want to be an engineer. Boy, did I know what technology is other than some peripheral knowledge about fancy gadgets and car statistics? Definitely no.
Then came the phase of JEE preparation. Let me tell you, there won’t be any syllabus better in engineering (most of the departments) than the JEE syllabus. This syllabus lays the foundation of basic concepts of science. It tests your ability to learn and solve. Solve. That’s important. It lets you use your ability to work on a problem. Even if you can’t solve it, you at least use your brain. That’s not what happens in a general engineering college. Note that I am not at all considering IITs or NITs.
These and following views are based on my life at College of Engineering, Pune (CoEP) at the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science Engineering and experiences shared by a friend from other engineering colleges, that includes experiences shared to him by his friends from other engineering colleges as well.
Engineering sucks away a lot of your time, just like that. There won’t remain a thing called productivity. So, are things this bad at a general engineering college? Well, let me share with you a few more glimpses.
Many students who end up in government colleges like CoEP are someone, who aspired to be in an IIT or an NIT. So, they have learned the basic chemistry, mathematics, and physics pretty well; and not just that, they have solved a great deal of problems in these subjects. When you have done this, it’s like you have reached a high, believe me. It’s like a sine curve, where JEE is the peak of the curve and when engineering starts, things begin to go down the hill towards the trough. I am talking just about the curriculum here.
Engineering is not good if you were fascinated by JEE syllabus. It’s basically a repetition of JEE syllabus, except that the level is lower and yet it may happen that your scores are low.
I will present parameters that suck your time while pursuing engineering. Time is wasted due to INEFFICIENT management of lectures. The management people don’t know how to create a time table, I would say. They should be aware that one needs to have the ability to teach, and usually, one doesn’t, so they need to at least think that one can’t focus provided they are with such a teacher for more than half an hour.
Not only do they keep lecture of one hour, but they also keep lectures for hours with one break. Or they keep a break of say two hours and then a lecture or practical, even that’s a lot of waste of time. Teachers mostly don’t bother to know if knowledge is reached to students. They come and tell some stuff and take attendance and go. The worst part is, now they don’t even use chalk and board. They just show slides of a presentation, read it or just show it and vanish.
Teachers teach in a way, that you will want to give up the interest in the subject. Mark oriented teaching is a common practice. Teachers focus on what would give you more marks. You are kind of taught to study as per marks. Most of the teachers nowadays do their job as they don’t get any / they want a job so that they can chill out. Very few teach because teaching is their passion. Teachers don’t update their knowledge of the subject. They just pass on what they have stored 10–15 years ago when they were studying. Analytical thinking behind every engineering aspect is something teachers don’t want to discuss. You will realise that the accumulation of information and facts and statistics is more important than knowing the reason behind stuff.
Hardly any practical work takes place. You just get to read or hear whatever is there in the syllabus. Hardly comes a time when you get to actually see what that is or how the work is done. They don’t even foster field visits. All field visits that happen are for the sake of it, just to prove that they took you to one or two field visits because the syllabus demands that, it doesn’t matter if you saw something on the field or not.
Practicals that happen in college are limited to demonstration or at most to do something that someone has been doing it for ever; you hardly get to learn something new or work on something new. State of instruments isn’t fascinating. Dust-laden or very limited in number. I can’t explain it, you just get repelled is what I will say.
In an engineering college, or in a college for that matter, not everyone wants to study. It’s not just a problem with teachers and college. It’s also true that many students don’t want to learn. They seem to be there to just listen, score good marks and that’s it. They don’t want to know why whatever happens, the way it happens.
Things aren’t proactive. Things move just because they are meant to. Lectures will take place because they are meant to. Exams take place because they are meant to. Hardly it happens that anyone wants to go beyond everyday stuff and do something more.
Worst of all is the exam pattern which necessitates one to learn the theory by heart. Exams don’t test a student’s ability to think rather they test her/his ability to remember and write fast, like a clerk. Waste of stationery stuff is an integral part of engineering. Ink for writing unnecessary stuff. Pages for writing journals. Pencil lead for figures and lines. What comes ahead is not just limited to engineering.
Contradiction of EVS subject:
We have been learning environment science or study since we were a kid. I still remember my Our Environment book that I had in the first standard, with its yellow cover, and in the second standard, the design was the same, but the colour was green. The fact is, we have been talking about the environment all the way, but what actually did we do for our environment, all the way into engineering? Not even once, not even when we were grown-up enough to be an engineer were we asked to do something for the environment in the subject of environment.
Ironically, we were asked to take notes and write stuff and present, all of which consumed the resources of our environment without giving it back a bit.
Well, that’s a glimpse of engineering in India.
