Learning engineering in mother tongue: Amid poor response elsewhere, Pune college fills seats

Announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year and covered under the National Education Policy, the plan to teach engineering to students in their mother tongue was rolled out last year by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in 19 selected engineering colleges across the country.

“This emphasis on mother tongue as the medium of instruction will instil confidence in students from poor, rural and tribal backgrounds,” Modi had said.

While it was assumed that the opportunity to learn in their mother tongue would entice many to seek admission in such courses, the ground reality is different. Out of the 19 engineering colleges approved to start regional language divisions, nine did not get a single admission, while in the ten other colleges, batches are less than 50 per cent full, AICTE chairman Anil Sahastrabuddhe said.

“I think the concept is new and people were not even aware that such an option was available. There should have been more efforts to spread the word. It’s not as if the concept is not popular, because this year, 10 more colleges will be offering the regional language courses,” he said.

Lack of awareness is what Avijit Karmakar, principal of the Technique Polytechnic Institute in Hooghly blames for the Bengali-language diploma in electrical engineering having few takers. Only 16 of the 60 seats on offer were filled this year.

“It’s still 30 per cent admissions, which isn’t bad for the first year. Firstly, students are not aware of this option and secondly, they are sceptical because for them, engineering educations means studying in English or they won’t get jobs. It took some counselling even to fill the 16 seats,” he said.

However, at the Pune college, admissions were not only full in the first year itself, but has exceeded the number of seats on offer — 65 admissions against 60 sanctioned seats. The starkly different experience of this college compared to others involved in the programme across the country, make it an important model to study. The AICTE has expanded engineering education in regional languages to 10 more colleges, and Modi has called for medical education also to be imparted in regional languages.

Ashwini Vaze, academic coordinator, regional language course, at the PCCOE said college authorities had convinced several parents to enrol their children in the course. “It’s not as if students were over excited to take admissions. In fact, we convinced a lot of parents to let their wards get admitted in this course. The computer engineering course at our college, which has 240 seats, is very popular and cutoffs are very high. When parents came for counselling, if the seat was getting missed by a few marks, we suggested to many to take admission in the regional language course where they could get the same degree, but cutoff was slightly less.”

Some parents had demanded at the time of the orientation for the course that the students be allowed to study in English through an internal transfer, but college authorities refused. “…(But) We reminded them that they came in knowing the conditions, of learning in Marathi, so they would have to stick to it,” said Dr Govind N Kulkarni, director, PCCOE.

However, the course isn’t being taught in the mother tongue alone, with a hybrid model having emerged in the college.

“The teachers speak in Marathi and students answer in Marathi, but the books are in English. Orals and practicals are conducted in Marathi, but for written exams, students are given the choice to answer in either language,” said Sheetal Bhandari, dean of academics at the college.

On why such a model was adopted despite clear instructions from the AICTE to teach students only in their mother tongue, she said: “Before starting the course, we did research for several months. We used our network and gathered 120 engineering aspirants and conducted a workshop in batches of 10, where we taught them basic concepts of Mathematics and Science in Marathi. The feedback we got was the conceptual understanding was better, but they found it difficult to follow technical terms in Marathi. Later, when we got the Marathi books from AICTE, we realised that the meaning of some words changed or were lost in translation,” she said.