To Change or Not to Change: The Curious Case of Managing Change at CIITS
Sipping her morning tea and browsing through the newspaper, Anuja, an academic consultant, came across an article which instantly caught her attention. It was stated that the technical education regulator in India i.e., All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) was likely to cut down the total number of undergraduate engineering seats by as much as 40% to deal with the problem of vacant seats and decline in education standards. As displayed in the article,
“We would like to bring it down to between 10 lakh and 11 lakh (one million and 1.1 million) from a little over 16.7 lakh (1.67 million) now,” said Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman of AICTE. “The capacity should come down for the betterment of all—students, education providers and employers,” he added.
As per the article, AICTE’s decision was intended to improve the quality of education in India. As a number of engineering colleges in India lacked suitable infrastructure and hardly offered any employable skills, companies who recruited students from such colleges were wary of the poor quality of education.
It all fitted into the context as Anuja remembered her interaction with Gupta, Director of Central India Institute of Technology and Science (CIITS), a reputed private engineering institution in Central India.
“There is a lot of competition in the market and we are trying to improve in every possible way. Our infrastructure is better than most of the colleges in this region, our faculty members are knowledgeable and we try not just to focus on the theoretical aspects but our aim is towards overall development of our students. Though our intentions as well as our actions are in right direction, we still feel there is some missing link because of which we are not seeing an improvement in the quality of our students,” said Gupta.
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Technical Education in India
India has the third largest higher education sector in the world in terms of students, next to China and the United States of America (USA). In order to maintain the standard of technical education, AICTE was set up in 1945. AICTE is responsible for the planning, formulation and controlling of norms and policies, quality assurance through accreditation, providing funds in several areas, monitoring and involving in various certification and awards. It is also responsible for ensuring development and management of technical education in the country..............
Central India Institute of Technology and Science (CIITS)
Central India Institute of Technology and Science (CIITS), established in 2003, rapidly gained reputation as one of the better institutes in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. It was spread on a 50 acre campus boasting world-class infrastructure..............
Trigger for Change at CIITS
Educational institutions, like all other organisations are impacted by the external and internal environments. In the case of CIITS the external trigger for change came from the intense competition which required constant monitoring to identify areas for potential improvement. Recognizing this need, the management of CIITS approached Anuja to review its systems, processes and to assess the need for change..............
Views of Heads of Department (HODs) and Faculty
The backbone of any educational institution is its faculty members. Hence to find the real issues within the academic delivery subsystem of the institute it was imperative to incorporate the perspective of faculty members and HODs. In the attempt to get to the core of the problem, Anuja reached out to HODs and faculty members..............
CIITS from the Perspective of its Students
Anuja’s aim was to get a holistic view of the problem and hence it was imperative to take into account the students’ perspectives and to know the problems they faced. She interviewed students across all the four years of course.
It was found that the most faculty members followed the traditional chalk-and-talk methodology. The critical issue was............
View from the Top: The Management’s Perspective
After gaining insights about the various issues from both the students as well as faculty members, Anuja believed that it was important to explore the viewpoint of top management as well. Though she had constant interaction with the Director but for this purpose she formally interviewed Mrs. Singh, Principal and Dean of CIITS..........
To Change or Not to Change
As Anuja reflected over the data from interviews, she was wondering how useful the action research process had been. Was there any convergence between the views of the three main stakeholder groups? Would she be able to identify the problems which afflicted CIITS or was this simply a case of conflict in expectations of the three stakeholders?..............
