AICTE move to close colleges with less than 30% intake welcomed

This, colleges said, would help in running institutions better and ensure that students complete their courses in colleges of their choice.

Nearly 27 lakh seats are vacant in engineering colleges across the country while in Tamil Nadu nearly 50 per cent of seats open for counselling through Anna University i.e. around 2.70 lakh seats are yet to be filled.

Recently, AICTE chairman Anil D Sahasrabuddhe, revealed that closure action would start from next year (2018-19). Statistics reveal that India has 10,361 engineering institutions approved by the AICTE with a total intake of over 37 lakh students.

Asked about the AICTE threat, Dr MA Maluk Mohammed, chairman, of the Tiruchy-based Master Group of institutions, said, “I feel it is a good move. If there are less than 30 per cent of the total strength in engineering institutions, then it will be difficult to pay staff salaries.”

Echoing a similar view Dr R Srinivasan, principal of K Ramakrishnan College of Engineering,

said, “Students need not have to worry about whether they will be able to complete the course in the colleges they have joined.” On the contrary, Chennai education consultant and advisor

V Murthy said, “AICTE should have thought about this when they started sanctioning engineering institutions at will. Colleges in rural areas perform yeoman service and the AICTE move will sound the death knell for rural aspirations.” He also said, “Most institutions have borrowed heavily from

banks and if AICTE makes good its threat how are they expected to repay their loans?”

Another issue, according to Murthy, which nobody seems to have thought of is that when students from an affected college are shifted to another institution, the latter gets additional strength without facing the problems which a college naturally faces. “That is totally unfair,” he said.Tamil Nadu has a total of 538 private, unaided engineering colleges with a student intake of 2,70,692. This year, only 1,38, 800 students have enrolled which is slightly less than half the sanctioned intake.

In 2017-18, 66 engineering institutions put down shutters in

Andhra Pradesh. Telangana,

Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Punjab, AICTE sources revealed.

AICTE decided to crack the whip when it realised that granting permission to open engineering colleges throughout the country resulted only in commercialisation.

According to Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE), “Supply outstripping demand was the reason for most of the colleges getting less students.”