The foundation of Universities was another development under the British rule. Sir Charles Wood‘s Education Dispatch of 1854 can be regarded as the forerunner of modern university education in India. In 1857, three universities were established in the three provinces of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. [17] The expansion of the University system was slow.
In the first decade of the 2oth Century, there were only five Universities. All of them were modelled on the University of London and all of them were affiliating and examining universities, not teaching universities. Postgraduate work was confined to the colleges which were not properly equipped for such work and so the quality of postgraduate work was not of a very high order. The University curricula were inadequate to meet the needs of a scientific and industrial age. Thus the universities in its early stage, failed to contribute much to the advancement of knowledge in India, which was surely one of their main functions. When the Bombay University was established, it had no faculty of science and the only course in engineering was in Civil Engineering. Kolkata grew with a strong science base. Under the guidance of Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, the Calcutta University produced the torchbearers of renaissance in Indian science like Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray, Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose and their students Prof. Satyendra Nath Bose and Prof. Meghnad Saha. [17] The University College of Science and Technology was established in 1912 in Kolkata, and many eminent scientists were
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associated with this institution. However, the progress of technical education was hampered due to the lack of Government support and funds as also an alienation of the University model from that of Germany in particular.
Although the universities offered a programme of undergraduate studies in pure and applied sciences, enrolment in these courses throughout the nineteenth century was very low, because, opportunities for Indians to advance in the scientific services were limited by colonial rulers. Most students preferred arts courses or professional courses like law or medicine.
This naturally hampered the growth of higher scientific and technical education within the domain of the university system.
Some universities became predominantly technical but not technical institutions up to the 1960s, until the Kothari commission report came out. [21]
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT): PG and research model
During the Second World War period (1939-1945), the Government of India began to realise the importance of organising Technical Education in the country on systematic lines. The first major step in that direction was taken in 1945 when the Government of India on the initiative of Sri Ardeshir Dalal, a visionary director, Tata Iron and Steel Company, appointed a Committee of industrialists and educationists, under the chairmanship of Sri Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, to survey the entire question of Technical Education in India and to make definite and concrete recommendations in this respect. [18] Until the establishment of the Sarkar Commission in 1946 (the report was published in 1949) –there was no specific thrust towards higher technical education and research in India. In their interim Report in 1946, the Sarkar Committee recommended that four Higher Technical Institutions should be set up as soon as possible, one each in the east, west, north and south. [18] Establishment of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur in 1951 started the realisation of this plan.
The five core elements of the IIT vision, first articulated by the Sarkar Committee, and their relationships as given in the following diagram, suggests that the priority of the IIT system was clearly on education, followed by research and extension. [19]
The IITs were created with foreign technical collaboration, UNDP assistance and modelled on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Manchester pattern and to train scientists and engineers with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947. [18] The first IIT was established in 1951 in Kharagpur in the state of West Bengal with Sir J. C. Ghosh as the Director. The other 3 IITs came into existence in a short span of a decade in Bombay, Madras and Kanpur. The College of Engineering, Delhi and the Roorkee University were converted to IIT in 1961 and 2001 respectively and a new IIT was set up in Guwahati in 1994.
Now, IITs are a group of fifteen autonomous premier engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Parliament of India [IIT Act, 1961].
To review the work and progress of the IITs, the India Government had appointed the Nayadumma Committee in 1984 and Ramarao Committee in 2004. The Ramarao committee had highlighted several of the issues involved and made
recommendations regarding governance, faculty matters, research enhancement, entrance exam, linkage with industry and funding policy etc. For recruiting new faculty members, the IISc practices were considered more flexible system than the IITs.
The committee made a comparison of the IITs and IISc practices in this regard and recommended that IISc system may be adopted by the IITs for the faculty induction, assessment and promotion. [19]
The IITs have earned worldwide fame due to sincere efforts of faculty, students and administration. The IIT system is one of the major success stories of independent India and ranked amongst the topmost institutions in the world in all ranking systems. The autonomy and academic ambience created in these campuses have attracted best faculty and students all over the world. But how far the IITs succeeded in conducting research and development at internationally competitive levels and succeeded in producing engineers ‗on par with the best in the world?‘ –are the most frequently raised questions and is subject to further study, as India still remains a low ranked country in terms of technological education and research.
Conclusion
India‘s growth is very nonlinear. The evolution of Technical Education is one area which shows the same characteristics.
Predominantly an agricultural country, India had a weak Industrial System compared to European Countries and America. Under the British rule, Technical Education developed in India ‗by the colonials, for the colonials and of the colonials‘. Resurgence of nationalism encouraged leaders to go for independent national models of Technical Education. Of these the National Council of Education, Bengal was developed by the moderate Swadeshis, but developed into a good research institute (Jadavpur University) only in the 21st century. However, the IISc model and the IITs, which were developed with the assistance of technically developed countries, one at the beginning and others during the middle of the 20th century, took quickly their position in the international rankings of higher education in the world.
This indicates, though technology was very country specific, a global connection together with nationalism helped in development of better models for Technical Education.
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