AICTE chairman Prof Anil D Sahasrabudhe on Sunday announced that a new curriculum for different engineering programmes has been designed to make world-class engineers in India.

Prof Sahasrabudhe was in Guwahati on Sunday to lay the foundation stone for the new AICTE regional office complex at Jalukbari. At present, the AICTE Guwahati regional office operates from the Assam Engineering College campus.

“The industry tells us that the engineering curriculum or syllabus is old or obsolete in India and the level of knowledge of the graduates is of the 1950s or 1960s, and we are in the 21stcentury now. So, we brought together some of the finest teachers from the IITs and even from the industry to design the new and modern curriculum,” the AICTE chief said.

Prof Sahasrabudhe said the new curriculum has already been uploaded on the AICTE website, and urged the engineering colleges and universities to start following the new course outline to make the students world class and market-ready. “You need not follow it totality. But, start adopting 70 to 80 percent of it in a phased manner and asses the difference,” he said.

AICTE has now started students’ induction programme to help the new students to adjust in the new environment of the technical colleges. “They (students) come from different socio-economc background and often find it difficult to follow lectures in English,” Prof Sahasrabudhe said the induction programme will help the students to smoothly sail through the four years period.

The AICTE chairman said engineering colleges should start setting up incubators in their campus to encourage the young and enterprising students to dream of innovative start-up companies. “If the colleges can set up incubators, after passing out, the graduates will not ask for jobs, and will be in a position to offer jobs to 10 others,” he said.

“When I came to the northeast in 1986 as a faculty of the Mechanical Engineering Department of NERIST, there were very few engineering colleges in the northeast. And now, it has grown leaps and bounds in both government and private sectors,” Prof Sahasrabudhe said.

The AITCE chairman will be at Yupia in Arunachal Pradesh on Monday to attend the convocation of the National Institute of Technology.