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AICTE may shut door on new colleges

With supply outstripping demand for engineering and management seats, the country may stop new professional colleges coming up from 2014. This firm stand was taken recently at a meeting of the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the country’s inspector which grants permission to new professional technical colleges. The decision follows requests from several states that want the council to reject proposals for more colleges. While many stages wanted the AICTE to immediately stop accepting applications, the process of setting up a college, like buying land and building the infrastructure, starts two years before a college trust approaches the AICTE for permission.


“So, we have decided that two years from now, we will review the situation and may stop accepting proposals for all new technical colleges,” said AICTE chairman S.S Mantha. 
States such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra told the AICTE to not to clear proposals for new institutes after waking up to the fact that the number of vacant seats in engineering and management colleges has risen dramatically over the last three years. India is now home to 3,393 engineering colleges that have 14.86 lakhs seats; today there are 3,900 management schools with a total student intake of 3.5 lakh. Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh have about 70% tech institutes. When admissions closed last year, AICTE estimated that nearly three lakh seats were unfilled. Despite the decision, many states have decided to not allow colleges to start this year, with state governments and the council embarking on a collision course.


This year, the AICTE received 204 applications for engineering institutes and 86 for MBA colleges. ”This year, we saw an interest in colleges again wanting to invest in engineering education. However, applications from southern states are down to a trickle,” added Mantha. 
Andhra Pradesh, with the largest number of engineering colleges, has dispatched merely eight applications this year and a similar number for MBA colleges. However, over time, with no plan, growth has been skewed. But if the AICTE’s optimism is anything to go by, the country will now see professional colleges springing up in areas like the northeast and in central India, still suffering from low enrolment in the sector. In Maharashtra, however, edupreneurs (education entrepreneurs) are bullish on the growth in this sector. The fact that 34,000 seats did not have any takers last year did not play spoilsport, as the AICTE received 30 applications to start engineering colleges and 15 for MBA institutes from the state this year. 

Posted on 02 Mar 2012