Undermining mathematics in the land of zero

India’s regulatory body for engineering and technical education, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), has decided to open the doors of engineering education to students with no knowledge of high school-grade mathematics, physics and chemistry. Students can now select any three from the expanded list of 14 subjects for entry into the BE and B Tech courses. For instance, one can opt for agriculture, business studies, entrepreneurship or graphics, and still qualify for an engineering seat.

Till now, mathematics and physics were compulsory for pursuing degrees in most branches of engineering. Over the years, additional qualifying subjects like biotechnology and computer science have been added, but this is the first time mathematics, physics and chemistry will be optional and not essential subjects for aspiring engineers.

The decision has serious implications and is being pushed in a hurry. It comes close to another recent move in higher education — permitting the training of ayurvedic graduates in surgery and allowing them to perform a set of surgical procedures.

Both come in the backdrop of the New Education Policy 2020 (NEP) which seeks to propagate the so-called flexible, inter-disciplinary approach to education. Citing NEP, the AICTE says that the decision will help ‘students who have an aptitude as well as background knowledge in certain branches of engineering and technology’but are constrained to pursue higher studies due to ‘stringent compulsions of subjects’.

The council is also working on another NEP suggestion — offering engineering courses in Indian languages — by getting textbooks translated into Indian languages. On medical education, the NEP talks of ‘pluralistic choices in healthcare’and suggests that ‘all students of allopathic medical education must have a basic understanding of Ayush and vice versa.’

The Ayush proposal on surgeries, however, has come under the judicial scanner in the Supreme Court.

The broad idea of encouraging a multi-disciplinary approach to engineering is welcome, but it can’t be done by underplaying the importance of core subjects like mathematics which promote logic and the approach necessary for engineering disciplines. Manjul Bhargava, US-based mathematician and Fields Medal winner, was part of the panel that drafted the NEP. He has been engaging with the Indian policymakers and political leadership and is known to champion multi-disciplinary education. Making mathematics and physics optional for an engineering degree runs counter to the spirit of the multi-disciplinary approach and reduces the talk of India’s past achievements like the discovery of zero to empty rhetoric.

The claim of the AICTE that its decision is based on feedback from students, industry and other stakeholders sounds hollow. If the public statements of Niti Aayog member (Science) and the principal scientific adviser to the government are any indication, it appears there was no consultation within the government itself. Two top policymakers choosing to call the AICTE decision as retrograde and ‘a step in the wrong direction’raises serious doubts about the process of decision-making.

The move comes at a time when the country is in the midst of developing a new science technology and innovation policy aimed at achieving ‘technological self-reliance’and positioning India ‘among the top three scientific superpowers in the decade to come’. The first step towards this should be to ensure greater cohesion among policymakers as well as public consultation on critical issues — both of which are found wanting in the present case.

India’s strength in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — is a result of the policy thrust and necessary investments made after independence. The setting up of institutions for engineering, medicine and management education in the post-1947 period paved the way for producing the manpower needed in key sectors. At the same time, research in national laboratories and programmes in strategic areas of atomic energy, defence research and space technology paid rich dividends over the decades.

PC Mahalanobis established the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Kolkata, while Homi Jehangir Bhabha set up the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. Both the centres were accorded the status of national institutes after independence. The ISI directly contributed to the process of national planning, while TIFR spawned national programmes in atomic energy, space and electronics. Later, it spearheaded India’s participation in big science projects like Large Hadron Collider (LHC), International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and more recently, LIGO or Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory.

For all their criticism and the tag of being elitist, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have not only produced tech and management leaders for India but are also counted among the best in the world. Some of the world’s best contemporary expertise in higher education went into their making. The software services and outsourcing industries — which fetch hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue and employ millions of Indians — are byproducts of the engineering education nurtured over the decades. The experience of developing a robust STEM ecosystem helped immensely in the second wave of institution-building in the post-2000 era that witnessed new IITs, IIMs, National Institutes of Technology, International Institutes of Information Technology and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs).

All this does not mean that everything is fine with the engineering education in India. Very few Indian institutions figure in the rankings of top engineering schools globally. Several surveys have found that the quality of engineering graduate colleges’produce is poor, and a bulk of them is unemployable in industry. The software services and outsourcing industry has to retrain engineering graduates for industry skills, and some of them offer on-job engineering degrees in collaboration with academic institutions.

The language and communication skills of average engineering graduates are very poor. Even in topnotch institutes, hundreds of faculty positions are lying vacant. The uptake in engineering and management research is less than desired. The geographical spread of private engineering colleges is skewed, and many of them are just money-making machines.

All these issues need the urgent attention of policymakers and regulators. The AICTE should address them upfront, instead of pushing ideas that can further dilute the quality of education.