DailyPost 1032
COURSE AUDIT
The courses change with the flavour of the season with Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence close on the heals of the Big Data, Internet of Things and the like. On the other front, courses on Public Policy, on International Relations or social entrepreneurship, their are courses to feed to every taste. What have they really to offer, when there are hundreds of regular engineering colleges and business schools going out of business? A business school does not know how to do business and an engineering college is not fit to engineer its own fate. With automation ringing alarm bells across the globe, the worst performers have to be first to a make note of it.
While the courses would have, for sure, fulfilled all the criteria before it came into being, they have not been able deliver. That is a reality accepted by all recognising /accrediting agencies. The colleges survey is more of marketing exercise and does not serve any purpose. A third party objective audit of courses, each one of them on internationally accepted parameters will finally give the right positioning of courses vis a vis the knowledge, skills and competencies and the nature of job it can land you into, if any, and what would be the likely career progression.
You can either manipulate the ranking or you can have favourable parameters to manage the same, an audit would go beyond it. It should have clear cut findings on every single parameter and clear cut yes or no and also stating the parameters which are mandatory in nature, scoring the pass mark in those would be a necessity. False promises and hopes are a part of the Indian psyche and we love to be on the joyride till we finally crash land. This is happening on a regular basis. Course by course and I institution by institution, audit of every single course can put the reality in the public domain.
Archaic courses badly taught and surreptitiously evaluated cannot master of blue ocean strategy. They create products en masse that can put any industry or job/task to shame. Course Audit would do yeomen service the student fraternity, who devoid of real facts in the public domain, fall prey to make believe stories, which are deliberately planted to con the students, parents, communities, societies and the country at large.
OBJECTIVE COURSE AUDIT HAS TO BE A PART OF OUR NORMAL ACADEMIC EXISTENCE.
Sanjay Sahay