OREANDA-NEWS. March 28, 2011. Metallurgical education in India is facing a paradigm shift in recent times as premier educational institutions have shifted their focus from metals to materials.  This is uniquely evident as the institutes have renamed their "Metallurgical Engineering" departments as "Materials Science and Engineering". Almost all the institutes face shortage of faculty in the field of Process Metallurgy. Consequently, the vastly-important subject of Iron making and Steelmaking has been reduced to a single course at the undergraduate level.  While focus on metal forming, deep drawing and formability is existent due to availability of knowledgeable faculty, such is not the case in other areas such as secondary metallurgy, continuous casting, hot rolling, cold rolling, long product rolling and mineral processing. Lack of adequate research facilities does not provide much motivation to the professors for continued research in the field of ferrous metallurgy.  While research activities in the field of mathematical modelling are on-going, they are seldom corroborated with physical models which, therefore, render their findings incomplete and inapplicable.  Other challenges include libraries that are ill-equipped with Steel Research journals. It would be apt to say that students at the undergraduate and post graduate levels are not being exposed to the subjects which can prepare them for useful employment at Steel Plants.

Due to the increasing technological gap between the industry and academia, need has come for industry to focus on developing its own manpower. An initiative in this direction is the establishment of Jamshedpur Human Resource Development Centre (JHRDC) in association with Veltech Dr RR & Dr SR Technical University, Chennai, which has a reputation of providing innovative industry-relevant and specialised industry-linked programmes at the UG & PG levels. The University has been successful in evolving 19 such industry-linked programmes with the partnership of leading industries and research Institutes in India. It is understood that by virtue of its deemed status, and the willingness of the University management, the approval process to start a focussed and industry need-based course would be simple.

A number of steps have been identified to make the JHRDC successful.  The proposed Post Graduate Diploma in Iron and Steel making (PGDIS) will be a self-funded, three-year diploma course after B. Sc., for employment in the officers' category.  The course will be rich in content, and will include exposure to industrial practices and projects in addition to classroom learning. The admission process will be stringent (B.Sc degree with high percentage, a written test and competitive interview).  The teaching faculty will be carefully selected and recruited.  Active involvement of Tata Steel, such as conditional placement of the successful candidates at the officer level, will provide credibility to the initiative as well as ensure valuable return over investment. Batch strength of 30 students is planned for the first five years of operations. While all successful students of the first batch may be absorbed in Tata Steel, only the top 15 rankers may be employed for subsequent four batches. It is expected that the University will be self-sufficient at the end of five years.

A MOU between Tata Steel Limited, Indian Institute of Metals (IIM) and Veltech has been signed and the course is scheduled to begin from July 2011.