Edu-leaders

Faced with a shortage of quality faculty in engineering colleges, the government of Punjab is planning to set up an institution to train technical educators.

It plans to translate its ideas in consultation with Punjab Technical University (PTU); Jalandhar. The proposed institution will roll out quality technical educators who will in turn churn out quality engineers.

This was revealed by state Technical Education Department Principal Secretary Suresh Kumar on the sidelines of a national conference ‘Managing Global Business in Competitive Business Environment’in Mohali. “The current education system is not geared to produce quality engineering teachers,” he said, adding, “There were only five engineering colleges in Punjab in 1992, when the economy was opened up. Now there are 82, and 76 of them are private.”

“The idea is to provide quality education to engineering aspirants and to make Punjab colleges most sought after in the entire country,” Kumar stated.

PTU is also planning to establish 50 incubation centres in its affiliated B-schools in Punjab, to promote skill development and entrepreneurship among students.

These centres are intended to develop overall personality of students and to provide them with appropriate industry exposure.

“We want our students to become job providers rather than jobseekers on graduating from the business school,” PTU Vice Chancellor Rajneesh Arora said.

These incubation centers will not only help the students to think out of the box but will also help young entrepreneurs to arrange money for starting new projects. They intend to provide much needed industry exposure to the management students and thus, help enhance their job prospects.

The Aryans Business School (ABS), located in Nepra village of Punjab, about 25 km from Chandigarh, will be the first business school in Punjab to start an incubation centre in the next few days.

“We welcome this initiative of PTU and we are ready to impart any kind of help in this venture. This was the need of the market and we have made all the arrangements for launching incubation centres to translate student’s ideas into actual business,” said Aryans group Chairman Anshu Kataria.