Dr. Ramakalyan Ayyagari, Dean, Academic Programmes at NIT Tiruchirappalli, has more than 20 years of teaching experience and holds a Master of Engineering (Control Systems) from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam. He obtained his Ph.D. from IIT Delhi in 2000 for his pioneering work on dynamic non-cooperative games and robust control for a class of nonlinear systems. In a conversation with Higher Education Review Magazine, he shared his views and thoughts on the role of engineering education in contributing to the socio-economic development of the country as well as the role of research and innovation in preparing engineering graduates to address current and future socio-economic challenges.

What strategies would be implemented to align the engineering curriculum with the evolving needs of industries and society?

Fundamentals remain fundamental; I am sure nobody is going to condemn as dated and dump in the garbage, say, Newton's laws and the like; in fact, over time, we have a lot of interesting books and videos appearing that save a lot of time erecting the students, now in a much larger number, on a robustly stable platform to jump around and understand the dynamics. From here, one can envisage several directions as well, including industry as a major lead.

The second step is to spend the third and fourth years on scaled-up systems. For example, a typical student (assuming all is fair) has cracked JEE and secured admission; until then, he would have focused (obviously with limited exposure but a sheer determination to launch himself or herself into a coveted group) on single variables in single dimensions, e.g., speed. He/She needs to be taken up to higher levels through advanced mathematical techniques and software tools, and as I mentioned in the 3rd and 4th years, to a large-scale operation of a fleet of, say, airplanes. Issues such as services, connectivity, punctuality, safety, and the like take over the simple mechanics of flight. How many flights would be taking off/flying/hovering to land/landing now all over the world? There is no dearth of excitement in the child. In a very natural setting, one can open up simple mathematical models, apply optimization techniques, and arrive at the answers in a reasonably early way. Moreover, the tools and techniques that operate via pseudo-English-like programs in Python do not take much time to learn.

Unless and until such integration takes place, we are far behind in aligning the curricula with the evolving needs of the industry.

In your opinion, what is the role of engineering education in contributing to the country's socio-economic development?

Each student must be trained and tested on large-scale platforms, gather data, and learn to report documents, understand the process of approvals, and so on. I tell you, today’s children are pretty smart, and it can be done, but instead, if we are keen on only offering another half-dozen fundamental course(s) just because a faculty member of the department has written a paper or a book in that area, you are for sure heading towards a disaster.

As I mentioned above, if we continue to train the students to look at scaling up as a service that is possible and can accommodate a lot of people, we should also give them the basic idea that changes do take some time (latency) to show their effect and one has to wait, or some research can be done, for example, SCM, in an attempt to tighten the loops. And short courses on such topics can be encouraged as electives.

What is the role of research and innovation in preparing engineering graduates to address current and future socio-economic challenges?

This is a serious matter. In the above two points, we fairly assumed the teachers did a good job. But, in recruiting our Assistant Professors and evaluating them a little later to promote them, are the methods really fair? A million-dollar question indeed. Young faculty, after their PhD, are recruited to primarily teach; it is their job, and they are paid, but they need to work for their upgrade, but on what? Is it a much smaller question these days than who does the evaluation? This “who” is likely to change the entire game. An institute that has grown a niche area in the previous couple of years can slip way into the favorite area of a so-called expert invited to evaluate/interview (aka influence) its hard-found gems for further promotions.

Already, the Washington Accord, Bloom’s taxonomy, etc., have, in some sense, since the inception of NITs dried up; nevertheless, the whole beauty of generating vibrant ideas lies in the classroom; but, all along, where did we miss the 2012-dated San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment? It has a clear message: researchers must be assessed on the work they have produced, and its impact, rather than the entire focus of the assessment is on where they have published or the various counts (such as impact factors or H-indices). Just re-read this, which was written more than a decade ago; most of those Assistant Professors could have been promoted, but was there any real value addition to the institutes?

Today, I could see many young faculty refusing to collaborate with seniors for various reasons. Why is it that we are still sitting with age-old practices of promotions? The experts' opinions in the assessee's research area must play an important role, rather than just publication metrics and opinions "around the table.

What key performance indicators would be used to assess the effectiveness of engineering education programs in achieving their socio-economic impact?

For the past two decades or so, apparently, there has been more, as well as diverse, funding for research, and we have pulled up our publications – just quick rounded figures for 2020 – China 670 K, US 450 K, and India 150 K, not bad in the numbers. But, we are nowhere in terms of the real impact, as we can see from your FWCI (Field Weighted Citation Index.). FWCI considers the variability in the number of citations across fields, with an index of 1 indicating average impact. The FWCI of top science and engineering universities in India, as per the NIRF rankings, are observed to be just about average. Despite having low THE rankings, more comprehensive universities, such as Banaras Hindu University and Jamia Millia Islamia, have FWCI values close to 1.5.

Changing this scenario is the first KPI. Followed by objective – extremely objective, giving no scope for ambiguity – evaluation and grading will make the student proud that he knows something with so-and-so proficiency.