PRESENT STATUS AND CHALLENGES OF WOOD SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION IN INDIA

 This article summarizes the present status and challenges of academic programmes in the field of Wood Science and Technology (WST) in Indian universities and other institutions, with special emphasis to post graduate education. Though the WST education has been running since several decades in India, there is very slow improvement in terms of the number of institutions offering this programme, when compared to many other professional courses. Now there are only 8 institutions in the country for the wood technology programmes including diploma, post graduate diploma and post graduate courses. There is scope for more institutions to enter into this field. Institutions having expertise and facilities for training activities on improved, better and efficient utilization of wood and other lignocellulosic materials, may be encouraged to start suitable academic programmes in WST.  Timely update of the current curricula followed at present by the institutions should be done with rigorous discussions with industries, government authorities and academics in order to improve the quality of wood technology professionals. The curriculum should be at par with those of developed nations so that the graduates could be familiar with the global trends. The government should support the organizations engaged in novel and practical methods of collaborative academic programmes with the objective of improving the quality of education in the field like the one being practiced in Dual Mode recently in Kerala. Regarding the job opportunities, the wood-based industries including the furniture units should facilitate the recruitment of wood technologists, considerably reducing the number of candidates employed from non-technical professions for managing their manufacturing and quality control facilities. In order to ease many of the aforementioned challenges, efforts are needed to prod the Central Government for the establishment of a statutory body under the Ministry of Science & Technology, with more authority to coordinate/monitor and promote all institutions and industries associated with the research and training activities in the field of wood science and technology.