Access for all versus the pursuit of excellence, the difficulty of attracting students to core engineering subjects, creating meaningful links between industry and academia —those are some of the issues that Indians in the field of technical education have to tackle.
On a recent visit to India, Cambridge University’s head of the manufacturing engineering division Mike Gregory offered some suggestions, based on his experience of similar issues in the UK. Prof Gregory is clearly passionate about manufacturing engineering, and he feels it is important to communicate that enthusiasm right at the school level. “Our problem is worse than yours,” he says, when faced with complaints of an exodus to software engineering, to the detriment of core engineering.

“At least your young people are keen to do engineering.” In the UK, the preference for creative or financial fields has caused so much concern that there was a House of Commons enquiry on attracting students to an engineering education, he says. One of the measures that got a response is to send young engineers in industry as ‘ambassadors’ of a sort to schools across the country. After all, school is where they often make their decisions.