New Delhi: Engineering colleges under the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will soon be able to offer courses in emerging fields -- artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning and others -- from the academic year 2021-22. The council has sought a list of the new courses from institutions that were already offering them from 2020-21, and will add them to the AICTE's approval handbook from next year. Once done, the new curriculum will become official, enabling more colleges to offer the courses to students. The idea is to make students employment-ready in line with the new National Education Policy. Making the announcement in a circular dated 29 October, the AICTE said, "lt is seen that during the approval process 2020-21, many institutions have made use of this opportunity for introduction of new courses in the emerging disciplines approved by the council. We all understand that the introduction of more number of new courses in emerging areas or Interdisciplinary Courses would help the student community in their goal of employability or entrepreneurship and this is also stated in the new National Education Policy 2020."

To improve teaching abilities of teachers in engineering colleges, AICTE is ready to set up AICTE Training and Learning (ATAL) academies in 11 more States. AICTE Chairman Anil D Sahasrabudhe said the council had set up four academies on its own, and 11 States, including Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, came forward to have them. The council would set up them if the respective State governments provided infrastructure. The four academies were started by AICTE at Jaipur, Baroda, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati. The idea is to improve the knowledge of teachers who had started their career long time back so that they can, in turn, teach students.

The world is evolving faster than ever thanks to the proliferation of technology brought about by an increasingly connected global market. And while the changes in education system was slow a few decades ago, the course curriculum was not required to be updated frequently. However, with today's fast pace changes in market needs, new curriculum is required almost every few months. This is primarily due to the fact that while technology, knowledge, and the job market can and do change almost overnight, the education system is rigid, often bureaucratic, and in many cases even resistant to change. This ever expanding gap between academia and the real world has resulted in a whole generation of students who while undoubtedly talented, intelligent, and hardworking simply do not have the skillsets required for employment.

For the first time in India, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has given up to 20 credits for subjects like artificial intelligence, internet of things, machine learning and robotics. In December 2017, the AICTE had revised the curriculum for the four year undergraduate (BTech) program. AI, robotics and IoT had been made mandatory from academic year 2018-19. In a move which is being clearly welcomed by academicians as well as students, over 80 percent of all the technical and engineering colleges in India have agreed to follow the new curriculum as well as the grading system. Now, this new move by AICTE is being hailed by everyone as the students are hoping to get better placements, and employers are expecting to hire more industry-relevant workforce.

New Delhi [India], Dec 7 (ANI-NewsVoir): Excerpts from the section of Future Jobs: Future Skills from India Skills Report 2018 shows 46 percent of college graduates find Artificial intelligence as the next generation technology where technology leaders are drumming up the thought that the emergence of new technology such as AI and Robotics are going to be the new drivers of employment. Over 36 percent consider 3D and Bio Printing where 21 percent consider Agricultural Robots and only seven percent consider Augmented Reality as next gen technology for employment. The section on Future Jobs also finds that more than 52 percent candidates consider Agricultural Technologies followed by 25 percent consider Healthcare technologies to be the focus for companies for technology adoption where Transport and Military Technologies were considered 12 and 11 percent respectively where future jobs will arrive. Recently All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has revised the curriculum for the four year undergraduate program. Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Internet of things are mandatory induction program from academic year 2018-19 to prepare future engineers more employable.