Editorial

The century that has just gone by has seen a virtual explosion in the growth of knowledge. None of the knowledge fields has remained unchallenged with the pace of growth getting faster, literally by the day. The responsibility of the academia assumes an awesome dimension in times such as these. One of its overruling concerns today should be to carve out a judicious order so as to sustain the world for posterity. There is much that needs to be done globally and locally in the sphere of higher education. Older certainties seem less secure today and in education, as in social issues in general, the academia needs to reassert its dominant role, and to reemphasize its distinctive ideologies. A bold and imaginative vision is the minimal prerequisite for action.

This issue of Directions addresses some questions confronting engineering education today in the country in general, and in the IITs in particular. The role of the engineering profession in social reconstruction has never been more important than it is in the present times. The bearing that the profession has on the society is too profound to permit an ideological mismatch between engineering education and its practice. It is incumbent upon the practitioners in the field of engineering education to take stock of the situation as it obtains in the institutes of technical education, not merely because we stand on the shifting sands of time but because any time should be good enough for rethinking. The cover story raises some basic questions concerning the content of engineering education.

Among the other regular features, the Viewpoints examines the desirability of administrative services as a career option for the IIT students. The Technology section presents an exposition of numerical simulation techniques in Computational Fluid Dynamics and the Science section unravels the mystery of cosmic rays at high energies.

[back] [next]