Important decision taken by AICTE - More seats to be available for students in top engineering colleges!!
Posted on: 27/Nov/2023 9:28:36 AM
The All India Council for Technical Education or AICTE has now proposed to remove the cap on the seats for individual branches from 2024-25 onwards. It is believed that this move would make many top engineering colleges in TN attract more students. It is known that currently a college can have a maximum of 240 seats in one particular branch. A mismatch between demand and supply has led to the introduction of an upper limit.
In its draft approval handbook for 2024-25, AICTE has mentioned how the council has proposed to remove the cap on the upper limit or intake allowed for colleges or programmes offered by the present educational institutions. This has been predicted in the NEP 2020 and nation`s proactive initiative towards the enhancement of GER or gross enrolment ratio.
The AICTE has clearly mentioned that the removal of the cap on the seats would depend upon the fulfilment of infrastructural availability, readiness and filled faculty positions etc. Through expert committee member visits to the engineering colleges, AICTE would ascertain infrastructure and faculty availability etc. Later on only approval would be given to increase the intake of students.
It must be noted that the educational institution must offer atleast 3 courses in the core branches and then only seat increase would be allowed. The important piece of information is that the top engineering colleges are happy about this proposed move from AICTE.
It was brought out by the vice chairman of Rajalakshmi group of Institutions, Mr. Abhay Meganathan that the colleges that provide quality education would be able to increase their intake and expand their campuses. He added that the quality of education would become better by this move. Point is that colleges in the USA etc have an average student strength of 30000 to 40000 whereas in India the average student strength was much smaller.
According to the director of Valliammai Engineering College Mr.B. Chidambarajan it was clear that the proposed move would create a huge gap between the top engineering colleges and mid level engineering colleges. He was of the view that the engineering colleges might not be able to provide quality education if there was a dip in the admission.
The VC of Anna University in Chennai, Mr. R. Velraj was of the view that this move from AICTE would accelerate the end of poor performing engineering colleges.
