Staff shortage affects Punjab Engineering College NIRF position

Chandigarh, August 2

Shortage of faculty at the Punjab Engineering College (PEC) affected its position in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) India Rankings-2022 released by the Union Ministry of Education recently.

National Institutional Ranking Framework India rankings-2022

Concerned over this, the UT Administration has decided to pursue the issue with the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) to increase the sanctioned strength of the faculty so as to attain the minimum desired faculty-student ratio of 1:15.

A meeting was held today under the chairmanship of UT Adviser Dharam Pal to review the ranking of PEC (deemed to be university). PEC was placed at the 87th rank in the recently released NIRF rankings.

The meeting was attended by Education Secretary Purva Garg, Technical Education Director Amandeep Singh Bhatti, CII Chairman Rajiv Kalia and CII Director Suman Preet Singh.

On the occasion, PEC Director Prof Baldev Setia gave a presentation on an analysis of the NIRF rankings. He apprised the members of the NIRF ranking process, the parameters affecting the ranking and the duration and period under record.

In the analysis, it was found that the institute had a shortage of faculty. Realising the fact that faculty was the single most-important factor, which influenced all parameters of the ranking, the Director mentioned that PEC had already begun working to remove the shortcoming and started regular faculty recruitments for 58 vacant positions for which 1,973 applications were received in recent times.

Summarising the presentation and envisioning a bright future of the institute, the Director also presented certain reforms, steps and initiatives being taken by PEC to improve its ranking. It included organising national and international conferences, workshops for students on a regular basis and revised course curriculum of MTech programmes to have a more focused approach towards core subjects.

Faculty members are also financially incentivised to conduct more research and publish more papers.

To promote research a central facility was being built for the students and faculty. The institute is also focusing on revival of existing centres, strengthening of the physical infrastructure by expanding hostel facilities for students and residential facilities for the faculty. The institution has also decided to go for external peer review.