Southern States - Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad   

10 new polytechnic courses in the offing

By R. Ravikanth Reddy

HYDERABAD Dec. 17. The Department of Technical Education is planning to introduce 10 new diploma courses in polytechnics from the next academic year aimed at imparting specific skills to meet specific needs in the emerging fields of technical and engineering streams.

The National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Delhi, is coordinating with the Department in identifying the courses and the nature of the courses are likely to be finalised when the officials of both the institutions meet in February 2003. The NIFT, Delhi will make a demand assessment report and present it to the Technical Education Department.

The broad areas which are likely to be touched are fashion, construction management and architecture. "There is a heavy demand for specified courses in these fields since they have better and instant job opportunities and we want to extend these to the interested sections,'' said A.R. Sukumar, Commissioner, Technical Education.

Specified courses, which are generally offered through diplomas, have to be encouraged since their number is not in tune with the engineers produced in the State, Mr. Sukumar said.

Earlier, for every engineering graduate there were three diploma holders, while the ratio has now gone down to 1:.03. This was mainly due to the large number of engineering seats increased over the years, while the diploma holders did not increase correspondingly.

Moreover, courses suiting the market needs, were also not introduced as much as they should have been.

The diploma courses, Mr. Sukmar said, are mostly sought by the economically backward sections and people from rural areas since they have wider scope for employment and that too in a short time.

The department would also keep them in view while designing the courses, he said. "Our idea is to give a second chance to the students who stop their higher education for certain reasons.'' Since the change is quite fast in many fields, the Department plans to update the curriculum every year.

First year students would not know precisely what the course content would be in the second year since it would be updated according to the market needs incorporating the latest developments in that particular field. "Employers want readymade technicians rather than those who learn with them''.

Realising the potential of specified courses, Mr. Sukumar said that even institutes like Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) are also introducing diploma courses.

The Department has already introduced five new diploma courses this year at the Government Polytechnic, Masab Tank and it has received good response from the students.

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