The All India Council for Technical Education has made the approval process tougher to comply with keeping in line with its decision on course correction and improving the quality of engineering education. College administrators are feeling the impact now.
The council has held stakeholders’ meeting in Mumbai and Delhi so far. Another will be held in Andhra Pradesh for colleges in the southern region. In the last two meetings, college administrators have been reiterating the same point though.
The principal of an autonomous college from the western region, who participated in the meeting held in Mumbai on Monday, said that AICTE Chairman Anil D. Sahasrabudhe had responded only to 25% of the queries raised by colleges.
“I am heading an institution with a long-standing reputation but even we will have difficulty in increasing the teacher-student ratio from 1:20 to 1:15. We need at least a year to change over but the chairman did not respond to this plea,” he rued.
Teachers welcome the council’s move to reduce the MCA programme to two years, but say this could mean the excess staff would have to be sent out.
The council’s emphasis on accreditation of 60% of courses in a college as mandatory for approval has caused consternation. “Only a handful of colleges, including the CEG manage to fill PG seats. Most others have only three or four students. Under the new regulation, we will have to close PG sections. But then in a few years we may not have sufficient teachers,” the principal pointed out.
This academic year, the admission was less than 30% in more than 100 colleges. With the council introducing new norms for admission, it is only going to get more difficult to run colleges, said P. Selvaraj, secretary, Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu.
According to sources around a dozen colleges in the State may opt out of admission for academic year 2020-21.
R.M.Kishore of the RMK group of institutions, who is attending Wednesday’s meeting, said he would appeal for more time. “The deadline to submit for approval is February 29. Even if it is extended by a week, we can’t recruit teachers,” he said.
From next year, the council has decided that Chemistry is not required for B.E, B.Tech admission. Instead, students could have taken biochemistry, vocational or computer science as a subject in Class 12. Teachers say this could deny level-playing field for students, who would have made better choice had they known it earlier.
Deadline extended
On Thursday, Anna University announced an extension of deadline for colleges to apply for affiliation. It was earlier February 10. It has been extended to Feb 17. With late fee, institutions can apply till Feb 21.
