While students in the most remote villages of India, away from the glamour of the big cities and education hubs, harbour the engineering dream, many of them lag behind in the race, due to the acute shortage of good teaching faculty in government engineering colleges.
And in order to help these students get equal opportunities to quality technical education, the Centre has decided to employ over 1200 young individuals with PhD and M. Tech degrees from elite institutes like Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, and National Institutes of Technology to teach at 53 government engineering colleges in rural areas for the next three years.
At a budget of over Rs 370 crore, this initiative by the Centre is aimed to help state governments fill up vacancies in backward districts in 11 states where engineering students were suffering because of a shortage of teachers, reports The Hindu.
These young graduates, who will now assume the role of teachers, will be bound by a three-year contract and will get a monthly salary of Rs 70,000. Their salaries will be paid through a World Bank-aided project aimed at improving quality of engineering graduates in India’s backward states in technical education.
After completing their term of employment, the teachers may either continue to work in academics or quit it, to join the corporate world.
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Of the 5,000 people who applied for the posts of teaching, 1,225 were selected and have already joined the colleges, the HRD Minister said. Out of the lot, about 300 teachers have PhD degrees, and about 900 have M.Tech degrees.
The project is expected to benefit over one lakh students in developing states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Tripura, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and the Andaman and the Nicobar Islands.