Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology

The Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology (ZHCET) is a prestigious school affiliated with the Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh, India. It is dedicated in the name of Dr. Zakir Hussain, President of India (1967-69). A long-standing leader in science and engineering, this college has had excellent results in the past. The college is being considered as a center of excellence in the various fields of engineering it offers. Though the debate on its inclusion in the Indian Institutes of Technology goes on the Government of India has decided that the college along with six other colleges should be given special treatment in the form of grants and other facilities.

The admission to the Bachelor course is done through an admission test which is generally conducted in the first week of May every year. The paper is of single answer type objective question and consists of 150 question (70 Mathematics, 40 Physics, 40 Chemistry). The duration of the paper is 3 hours. The admissions to the Masters course i.e. M.Tech. is done through GATE.

The College offers courses in Undergraduate as well as Postgraduate level. The language of instruction in all these courses is English. There are 8 academic departments associated:

* Department of Electronics Engineering
* Department of Computer Engineering
* Department of Electrical Engineering
* Department of Mechanical Engineering
* Department of Chemical Engineering
* Department of Civil Engineering
* Department of Architecture
* Centre for Petroleum Studies

The college facilitates with a Book Bank, which has a great resource of more than 1,500,000 books and journals. All the enrolled students get books issued for the academic year. Apart from that all the departments have the facility of online subscription to desired journals.The college promotes all round development of its students. There is an Annual Fest in which there are various cultural and entertainment programmes. The College enjoys the reputation of one of the highest number of placements of undergraduate students in India. The All India Council of Technical Education(AICTE) has pointed out that ZHCET is an Institute of immense potential to be a "Brand" like the IITs. Some concern has been shown by various experts in the various fields of engineering on the lack of addition of new branches of engineering like Aeronautical Engineering, Mechatronic engineering, some students think that Applied Physics department in the college should be upgraded to Engineering Physics. On the whole the college produces students who are at par with the IITians and a number of students go for higher studies to various countries. A number of graduates from ZHCET have also studied at Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, Purdue University, Max Planck Institute(Germany).

ZHCET on the path of IIT

It is now well known that the S K Joshi Committee has selected seven colleges/universities for potential upgrading to Indian Institutes of Technology.

The committee took into account parameters like faculty strength with percentage of doctorates, research papers published in a year, courses offered, student strength and physical infrastructure, et cetera, and arrived at the following list in the order of merit:-

1. Bengal Engineering College, Howrah, West Bengal. 2. Institute of Technology Banaras Hindu University (IT-BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. 3. Jadavpur University's Engineering and Technology Departments, Calcutta, West Bengal. 4. Andhra University College of Engineering, Vishakhapatnam, AP. 5. Zakir Hussain College of Engineering and Technology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, UP. 6. University College of Engineering and College of Technology, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. 7. Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT), Kochi, Kerala.

The meeting with MHRD Having short-listed the institutions that can be upgraded to IITs, the Union ministry of human resources development (MHRD) invited all seven colleges for a discussion at Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi, on May 3, 2005.

For the colleges, it was a red-letter day as the most important discussion in their lives was to take place to decide their future. Recently, the government has formed a five-member expert committee, headed by HRD Minister Arjun Singh, to further select from among the seven colleges that will be given IIT status and to oversee the progress achieved by these colleges. The meeting was chaired by the following members of the expert committee: Sudeep Banerjee, IAS, additional secretary, HRD ministry; Ravi Mathur, IAS, joint secretary, HRD ministry; Anuradha Gupta, IAS, member secretary, All India Council for Technical Education; and Dr R A Yadav, Vice Chairman, AICTE.

Aligarh Muslim University and Banaras Hindu University are central universities under MHRD control. Some of the other significant factors in the making of the new IITs are faculty, students, research, academic excellence, funding, etc.

While IITs have all faculty members with doctorate degrees, the percentage of faculty members with PhD qualification across the seven selected colleges varies from 80 per cent (at IT-BHU) to 40 per cent. This is because these colleges follow AICTE rules for staff recruitment, which allow post-graduates for teaching positions. It is also due to insufficient funding received from the government. All the colleges have been asked to increase the proportion of doctorates in the faculty. This will be achieved by hiring only PhDs for teaching posts, enrolling the existing staff into doctorate programmes, and by shifting the remaining staff to non-teaching assignments (labs, research, workshops, et cetera).

One of the problems likely to be faced during faculty recruitment is the availability of suitable candidates for teaching jobs, since India produces only about 400 engineering doctorates per year and a majority of them opt for lucrative industrial and research positions. There is a small talented pool of 'foreign-qualified' doctorates available, but they tend to settle in a metropolis or with reputed institutes. The colleges have also been asked to increase the number of teaching staff and to achieve a faculty-to-student ratio of 1:10 in some departments, to begin with. IITs have a ratio of 1:10 or better.

CUSAT and AMU admit students through their own all-India entrance exams, hence a majority of the students admitted to these colleges are from within the states that they are located. The MHRD has instructed all colleges to have at least 50 per cent of their intake on an all-India basis through AIEEE (All Indian Engineering Entrance Exam). This popular exam has seen the rank of candidates swelling from 250,000 last year to 400,000 this year, and the government's decision will benefit about 1,200 to 1,500. The government has also offered students from IIT-JEE exam for colleges showing good progress.

Some states showed resistance to admitting students on national basis. However, experts ask how can these colleges become national institutes if they resist in such fashion? Moreover, students entering through national level entrance exams are more adaptable to other cultures, more risk-taking and thus more successful in their careers.

One significant parameter for the progress of an academic institute is the research output by the colleges, measured in terms of numbers of research papers published in national/international magazines, patents received, etc. On an average, each IIT produces about 450 research papers per year. With a teaching staff of about 300-500 per IIT (all doctorates), the output rate comes to about one paper per doctorate per year. It is good to know that the output rate of these seven colleges is almost same as that of the IITs, but due to a smaller teaching staff (and all of them not being doctorates), the output is slightly low. The number of patents filed by colleges is much less compared to IITs due to less research funding received. To provide information and to assist in the filing of patents, a patent sub-office will be opened at each college campus.

As per central government instructions, the World Bank carried out a survey of leading technical institutes/engineering colleges in India and submitted a report in August 2003. According to the report, IT-BHU was ranked second in research category, just behind the top ranked Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Academic excellence The colleges are expected to achieve a general standard of academic excellence comparable to that of the IITs. They should implement reforms such as grading of marks and course evaluation, revamping curriculum and introducing modern programs, improving official Web sites and developing media relations, admit students as per reservation norms of IITs, etc.

External links

* [http://www.amu.ac.in/index3.asp?sublink2id=122&sublinkid=178 Z.H. College at Aligarh Muslim University]
* [http://www.amutechies.com A Web Portal of ZHCET]
* [http://www.wes.org/ewenr/07jan/feature.htm World Education Services]