Dismayed with the declension of engineering courses across the nation the national technical education regulator All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) is planning ahead to cut the seats by 600,000.
Advertisement
The regulatory body will shut some schools and reduce the intake of students in some others over the next few years in order to stem a decline in the quality of education and address the issue of vacant seats. Odisha also suffers from problem of plenty as out of 1.5 lakh seats in technical institutions, just 88,000 have been filled in the State.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said: “With fast industrialisation and globalisation, the engineering and professional segments need to be treated differently to cater to the need for quality and skilled manpower”.
The quality of engineering graduates from the colleges have been questioned earlier by many leading companies and MNC’s. The report also mentions India’s IT Industry’s expenditure to make these graduates employable, which is estimated to be almost $1billion per year. In an official report, an education assessment company Aspiring Minds said that the employability of engineering graduates in various states ranges between 12% and 42%. Only 7.49% are employable in core engineering jobs like mechanical, electronics and civil engineering. “The capacity should come down for the betterment of all – students, education providers and employers”, AICTE chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe has been quoted as saying by Live Mint. The first CMAT which will be conducted annually, is going to be held in January 2016 soon after XAT 2016. However, they have made clear that no engineering school will be forced to shut down. Student intake at the undergraduate level in engineering colleges started picking up from 2006-07.
Moreover, with many engineering seats remaining vacant, AICTE said it has received 1,422 applications to close down institutes or departments.
Advertisement
Presently the number of students studying under AICTE is around 16.6 lakhs, which the council has decided to put down to 10-11lakh in the coming years. “We shall also ensure that educational lands or properties are not converted into a real estate business by education players”.
