Engineering Education in India: A Comprehensive Overview

Abstract

This chapter is an attempt to survey the steady evolution of engineering education in India from colonial times to the present in terms of institutional landmarks and defining moments in Indian history. The survey urges that engineering education in India, especially in its contemporary reflexes, has to be understood against the backdrop of periodic reviews, reforms, recommendations of various committees and the compulsive social, economic and political matrix informing policy-making. In particular, it highlights the achievements as well as the shortcomings of the concerted attempts to consolidate teaching and research in keeping with the imperatives of national objectives and market needs. It reviews reform initiatives in recent times, and it locates in the convergence of the technical sciences and the liberal arts disciplines the potential for improving human resources in India.