Here's one example that highlights a serious fault line that's been developing in at least some of the premier technical education institutes in India. If you look, I think you'll find many such examples!
I was a visiting faculty at IIT Gandhinagar, Mechanical Engineering, for some time some years ago. I decided to offer a course in Fluid Turbulence that would be open to senior undergraduate and postgraduate students. Pretty much every flow of engineering interest is turbulent, so I anticipated a high level of interest.
Three students wanted to take the course. Just three. In an IIT Mechanical Engineering department! For a subject that's deeply relevant to their profession - every single flow they will encounter as mechanical engineers will be turbulent! (While at the same time taking EIGHT HUMANITIES courses during their engineering program? EIGHT!)
Now three is just too low a number for a semester long 42 lecture course to run. But I was enthusiastic about the course, so I said I would agree if two more students registered, i.e. a class strength of 5.
Didn't happen. The number stayed at three all the way till the first lecture. I still went to class as I wanted to see if there are any last minute walk-ins. Nope. And the course was called off.
We need to look into these things. Students going out from our institutes need to be serious about their subjects and need to be seriously well trained. This really matters as they will be executing real life engineering tasks that will affect everyone's lives.
I accept that we need humanities courses as part of education even in STEM. But not to the extent that students forego subjects that are centrally important to their profession in the first place!
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