The World Bank-aided technical education quality improvement programme (TEQIP), an initiative of the central

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government to be implemented by the department of higher education in the ministry of human resources, moves into the second phase beginning next year with a $500 million (around Rs 2,350 crore) outlay to support close to 200 institutions to enhance efficiency and dynamism in technical education in India. In the second phase, the thrust is on creating employable engineering talent.

According to a project information document (PID) prepared by World Bank, the second phase of the technical/engineering education quality improvement project seeks to strengthen selected institutions to produce more employable and higher quality engineers and prepare more post-graduate students to reduce faculty shortage. “The second phase builds upon progress achieved under the first phase and addresses a new need for producing qualified faculty,” said the World Bank in its PID on the programme which according to the bank is in its ‘appraisal stage”. TEQIP was conceived in pursuance of the National Policy on Education (NPE) in 1986 and revised in 1992. The programme aims to upscale and support ongoing efforts of the central government to improve quality of technical education and enhance existing capacities of the institutions.

The broad objectives of the programme, as mentioned in the PID, are to create an environment in which engineering institutions selected can achieve their own set targets for excellence, to sustain it with autonomy and accountability, to support development plans including synergistic networking and services to community and economy for achieving higher standards, to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the technical education management system.

According to the World Bank, the outlay for the second phase is $500 million. Ninety per cent of the total outlay will be to support “200 competitively selected engineering education institutions through two funding windows to improve learning outcomes and employability and scale up research, development and innovation. From the remaining 10 per cent, eight per cent would be allocated to improve system management. The remaining two per cent would remain as unallocated fund to invest in the sub-components that are having the best results or are most needed, and/or to overcome unforeseen challenges to reach the project objective

Prof A U Digraskar, central project advisor to the programme, said the second phase of the programme is still in the planning stage and it is too early to comment. “Negotiations are still on with the World Bank and therefore at the final stage, there could be the possibility of changes in the plan outlay.” However, Digraskar confirmed $500 million as the proposed outlay for the programme.

The first phase of TEQIP, a Rs 1339 crore programme, supported 109 engineering education institutions in 13 states and 18 central institutions. Around a fifth of the institutions were private. The project initiated a reform process promoting autonomy and accountability that led to over 25 TEQIP-institutions becoming academically autonomous. For example, 17 Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) became National Institutes of Technology (NITs) with university status.

“This is an extremely useful programme for institutions like us. The World Bank funding coming through the state government after competitive qualifying processes, helped us to upgrade our labs with latest equipments,” said M N Channabasappa, director, Siddaganga Institute of Technology (SIT), Tumkur, Karnataka.