Guru Jambheshwar University (GJU), in the Haryana town of Hisar about 200 kilometres from Delhi, established its department of printing technology

Planning or wishful thinking? Hardware, software and vapourware

Guru Jambheshwar University (GJU), in the Haryana town of Hisar about 200 kilometres from Delhi, established its department of printing technology in 1996. The department offers a four-year engineering degree recognised by the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the University Grants Commission (UGC), and the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). GJU is the only university offering a B.Tech degree in printing technology in northern India.

On 21 May 2002, we interviewed Prof. J.K. Sharma, the Dean of the Engineering Department, who is also the chairman of the department of printing technology and also distributed a questionnaire to gauge the department's overall standards, as part of our continuing investigation of education and training in the industry, although the information provided by a single questionnaire could not reveal much. We spoke to Ambrish Pandey, lecturer and technical advisor - training and placement, and Anjan K. Baral, in charge of the printing department.

On student intake and teaching staff

GJU has four core branches including electronics and computer science engineering. Each department admits 40 students of which 10 can be industry sponsored.

Three batches have already passed out of the Printing Technology department including the current batch of 32 students meant to pass out in end May. Students are sent out for 6-8 weeks of industrial training, which is then supposed to be evaluated. As of now the department has only four regular staff members and it invites a few industry professionals as visiting faculty.

Our experience shows that the lack of a serious faculty is universal to Indian printing education. Teachers borrowed from other departments of the institute teach non-printing subjects. This borrowed faculty rarely takes the printing department seriously and is in return treated similarly by the students. The curricula in most cases are also not very sensible in our humble opinion.

Research being initiated

"The areas in which research could be undertaken are printing and hardware. The second area could be the changes occurring in the traditional forms of printing with the onset of digital printing, types of inks and their composition, types of paper, type of binder, how fast it can bind, how fast it can laminate, etc. The third area could be the advent of computers and how they have changed the printing processes.

As for resources, the department gets a grant from the AICTE on a project-to-project basis. A project can be either submitted by a teacher of the department, or by the department itself. In both the cases, the department disburses the money. Till now the department had not been eligible for such grants, because for all such projects, it has to complete at least five years. The department can also take a sponsored project from the university and can submit one proposal each year. It is up to the government whether to give money or not but there is no bar on only taking on one project at a time. It depends on the liabilities and the objective."

The department declined to talk about the proposals submitted this far and their fate. Nevertheless it is hopeful of getting some approvals by August this year.

Student eligibility for research

Graduate students need an aggregate of 75 per cent marks and those aggregating less than 65 per cent but more than 60 per cent have to have five years teaching or industry experience to do research. Prof. Sharma claims that in India none of the eight printing educational institutions pay adequate attention to research since they don't even have an M.Tech degree, not to speak of doctorate programs. According to him, a teacher should have an M.Tech degree or a PhD to teach M.Tech students. "When we don't have any teachers with an MTech degree, how can we start the MTech course? When we have teachers with PhDs, then we can think of starting the MTech course. Printing is one branch that does not have an M.Tech degree. To solve the problem in the long run, we are thinking of initiating research facilities for teachers from this institute, from other institutes, as well as for industry personnel. We say that a PhD is a requirement for teachers, which in turn requires technical expertise. We start with the applied sciences and technologies, then we take the candidate to printing and hope that some of the printing students will do doctoral work."

Although the number of M.Tech graduates in printing technology and institutes offering the degree are few, there are some institutes in South India, which do provide a part-time MTech degree in printing technology. But the fact on the ground is that imparting an MTech in printing technology in India seems to be another foolhardy exercise when we see that the printing schools are not equipped even to offer proper education at the Bachelor's level. The responsibility of equipping the institutes with real hardware lies mainly with industry.

Closing remarks

"We are very keen to collaborate with IPP Services, Training and Research Private Limited (ippStar). We could benefit from your expertise and directions in our projects. Possibly there can be some academic and technical exchange between the two institutions. There is definitely a commonality of interests between the two institutions."

At Hisar, we encouraged the teachers to participate in ippStar Open Houses. In our interaction with the final year students we invited them to the national recruitment event on June 3 and 4 at IppStar, Noida. The faculty were supportive.

keywords: education, training, print, engineering