Bad news for the engineering aspirants—AICTE, which stands for ‘All India Council for Technical Education’, is planning to cut 600,000 engineering seats over the next few years. The main reason behind this decision is said to be the degrading quality of education across the country. They are planning to reduce the intake of students in various institutes, shutting down some institutes along with curtailment in the number of engineering colleges which were about to be established in near future.
AICTE New Plan- 6 Lakh Engineering Seats Reduced:-
Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairperson of the regulating body of technical education in India told media that they would bring down the number of engineering seats between 10 to 11 lacs from around 16.73 lacs at present.
Engineering Colleges in India:-
Engineering colleges have been springing up like wild mushrooms in India in the last few years. Their number has gone up from a not too modest 1,511 colleges in 2006-07 to an astoundingly high 3,345 in 2014-15. The state of Andhra Pradesh alone has more than 700 colleges.
If these figures are anything to go by, it would be easy to be led into believing that opting for a degree in engineering would be a wise career move in India. The fact, however, remains that 20-33% out of the 1.5 million engineering graduates passing out every year run the risk of not getting a job at all, points out Economic Times. For those who do, the entry-level salary is pathetically low, and has stagnated at that level for the last eight-nine years, though the prices of everything from groceries to vehicle fuel have shot up during the same period.
Why AICTE to Shut Some Engineering Colleges?:
Situation is simple, we already have about 1.5 million engineering graduates passing out every year and with engineering colleges opening up so frequently will certainly drop the quality of technical education. The state of engineering knowledge is so low-level in these colleges that even the newly founded start-ups are also looking from the graduates from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT’s, which are also increased in number, during recent times), National Institute of Technology (NIT’s) and some other prestigious institutes like BITS and other Private institutions where the standard of academics is still pretty decent as ‘compared to other colleges’. Now, I emphasized on ‘compared to these colleges’ because of the fact that IIT’s, which were once considered as the most premiere institute for engineering in India, and one of significant educational institutes in the world, are now suffering from a major decline in their academic rankings. Not a single IIT is in top 100 academic institutes now, which is a worrying matter for the Indian academicians.
“There is a much more intake capacity than the demand right now.” Sahasrabudhe said. AICTE had received over 1,400 applications asking for permissions to shut down various engineering departments and courses and only this year, more than 550 engineering departments have been closed due to lack of proper infrastructure and faculties.
Chairperson of AICTE said that they will make sure that the students studying in these kinds of colleges do not get stuck midway so he stated that they wouldn’t force the shutting down of the entire colleges but they will facilitate the closure in parts to ‘achieve the target’.
Whatever the AICTE will act, one thing is for sure, that this commendable decision of theirs is surely a first step towards improving the education standards of engineering in India.
