Crisis in Technical Education in India: Evolving Contours of the Computer and Information Sciences Discipline

Since about the turn of the millennium there have been massive transformative changes in the computer and information science (CIS) discipline requiring substantive overhauling of existing systems of technical education—curricula, courses offered, teaching skills, supportive infrastructure and, importantly, placement possibilities. Even as the Indian CIS education system (in terms of number of institutions offering such courses, enrolment, placement, etc.) has been on a growth path at least since the mid-1980s or so in recent decade a series of disruptive technologies have necessitated a complete revamping of the existing curricula and methods of imparting education under the CIS discipline. This has led to different educational institutions responding differently—some seeing this as beyond their capabilities while others hoping to catch up with the new dispensation. Addressing the major churning taking place in the sphere of professional education in CIS in India, this paper has made an attempt at empirically tracking the contours and extent of changes as may be surmised from the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) data, mainly. The study takes into account a wide variety of CIS courses those are/were offered in technical institutions in India over about the last couple of decades and analyses the implications of such performance of the CIS education in India. State-level disaggregated data are analysed and are supplemented with policy measures at national and subnational levels in addressing the challenges of disruptive technologies in education.