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India: World Bank Approves Credit for Improving Technical and Engineering Education |
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| WASHINGTON, November 14, 2002A US$250 million credit will help India boost the quality of its emerging young technicians and engineers. The Technical/Engineering Quality Improvement Program, approved by the World Bank today, will help India supply its economy with the level of professional excellence needed to foster greater competitiveness and productivity. The project will be implemented in the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh under the coordination of the Department of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Government of India. The project is designed to support engineering colleges, technical universities and polytechnics, in achieving their own visions of academic excellence. Institutions will be selected to participate in the project on a competitive basis depending on their capabilities and long-term planning for quality improvement. All selected institutions will be required to network with others and to provide services to the local community. It will also encourage granting of greater freedom to the institutions for their own governance and management of finances. There is an urgent need to upgrade the quality of technical and engineering education in India to provide students with a virtuous cycle of opportunities, said Shashi Shrivastava, senior education specialist with the World Bank. In this cycle, good training leads to better jobs, better jobs lead to increased productivity and increased productivity leads to accelerated growth of the Indian economy which, in turn, impacts poverty reduction. About 20 well-performing engineering education institutions will be selected for as the lead institutions, and a further 60 to 80 institutions will be networked by the project. This will impact over 100,000 students, approximately 10 percent of the total number of students enrolled for engineering degrees in India. A major share of the funding will be utilized for quality-enhancing activities, such as the introduction of teaching and research programs in cutting edge technologies, and the modernization of existing programs and facilities. Some of the funding will be utilized for faculty training, extension services and development of new facilities, depending on the long-term plan presented by each of the selected institutions. The credit, from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s concessionary lending arm, has a 35-year maturity with a 10-year grace period and a 0.75 percent service charge. |
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