Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP)
Engineering Education became very popular in the country post 1990 with India becoming a major contributor to the global IT industry revolution. Since then many State Governments have encouraged the idea of selfâfinanced private engineering colleges where State Government does not provide financial support but facilitates the setting up of such institutions. This resulted in the Indian system of Engineering Education becoming very vast with the establishment of a large number of Engineering Degree Institutions with intake capacity running into few lakhs of seats. This exponential growth in Technical Education has, however, not resulted in significant growth of quality graduates due to paucity of experienced, motivated and competent faculty. There is currently a wide gap between the educational standards of premier institutes like Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and other Engineering Institutions.
Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP) was envisaged as a long-term programme of about 10-12 years duration to be implemented in 2-3 phases for transformation of the Technical Education system in the country with the World Bank assistance. The Phase - I of TEQIP was implemented in 13 States and covered 127 Institutions including 18 Centrally Funded Institutions. It became effective in March 2003 and completed on 31st March, 2009. In order to sustain the reform process and scale-up the transformation to a higher level , a sequel Project was planned as TEQIP (Phase-II) through the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) initiative and named Knowledge Incubation for TEQIP (KIT) which is currently in progress.
TEQIP (KIT):
Around 190 Engineering Institutions have been competitively selected to improve quality of Technical Education through institutional and systemic reforms. The colleges have been clubbed under Quality Circles of different IITs and the programme is being implemented with rigorous and detailed monitoring by National Project Implementation Unit (NPIU) established by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. Quality Circle (KIT) will serve the specific goal of quality improvement for the TEQIP institutions in
the quality circle around an IIT. The project has already yielded important early results.
The objectives of TEQIP-II are as follows:
- Strengthening Institutions to produce high quality engineers for better employability
- Scaling-up postgraduate education and demand-driven Research & Development and Innovation
- Establishing Centers of Excellence for focused applicable research
- Training of faculty for effective Teaching
- Enhancing Institutional and System Management effectiveness
I.I.T Kharagpur is currently undertaking the following activities to meet the above objectives of TEQIP-II :
- International Summer & Winter Term (ISWT)
- Short Term Courses
- Knowledge Dissemination Programme
- Faculty Development Programme for Effective Teaching.