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Seminar on higher technical education held

An All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)-sponsored national seminar on ‘Future Perspective of Higher Technical Education in North East Region’ was held at the Srimanta Sankardev Kalakshetra recently under the aegis of Shillong Engineering and Management College, Jorabat, on 20th and 21st January, 2009.

The seminar, presided over by CM Jha, director of the institute, was inaugurated by Dr NK Choudhury, former Vice-Chancellor of Gauhati University. Several eminent resource persons, besides over 200 technocrats including engineers, industrialists, private investors in technical education, professors, guardians and students, took part in the meet, with some of them addressing the gathering.

Dr Gautam Baruah, director, IIT-Guwahati, delivered the keynote address, touching upon various issues such as the importance of quality and quantity of HS Science Education, opening of more PG facilities in leading universities in the NE, to remove the dual regulatory system of the AICTE and University, etc. Dr UK Sarma coordinated the seminar. 19 research papers were presented.

The concluding session made several recommendations, which include i) setting up of a technical university in the line of Uni-Tech of New Zealand for affiliating all the technical institutes offering certificate, diploma and degree courses in the North-east; ii) ensuring networking among themselves and with industries, R&D institutes and community centres, and to create a data base of different facilities for resource sharing, including meeting teacher shortage; iii) maintaining accountability of all participants to all stakeholders in the technical education system for ensuring quality education; iv) enforcement on the part of the governments making industries and commercial organizations pay to the universities in different kinds; v) provision for a common admission test for avoiding appearance in too many tests by the students; vi) initiating attractive measures to restrict flight of teachers; vii) including IT courses in all course works, etc.

It must be noted that a presentation to the Chief Minister Mr. Tarun Gogoi in Assam 2007, held in Washington, D.C., and an accompanying research paper started the initial discussions on the current state of technical education in Assam and the Northeast. You can read the initial article at tinyurl.com/bwussy