1.6 lakh engineering seats cut in colleges across India
COIMBATORE: The apex regulatory body for technical education, AICTE, has cut down a massive 1.64 lakh engineering seats nationwide in both UG and PG courses. It has reduced the student intake by half (50 per cent) in colleges where admissions in the last five years were less than 30 per cent.
Through a series of actions, intended at ensuring quality, the AICTE has drastically reduced the number of seats up for grabs. While 83 engineering colleges across the country, including six in Tamil Nadu, have applied for closure, taking away a whopping 20,539 seats, another 14,423 seats have been lost due to the withdrawal of approvals.
Another 1.20 lakh seats have been cut down in 2,214 engineering colleges due to closure of the course or reduction in intake. Further, AICTE has not received applications for approval for 8,000 seats in 207 colleges.
“There are three reasons why we came to this decision,” says AICTE chairman Anil D Sahasrabudhe. “Some colleges did not achieve even 30 per cent admissions in the last five years, some others have applied to reduce seats or to shut down, and, finally, penal action was taken against some institutions for not maintaining quality standards, with respect to number of faculty or infrastructure.” Despite the reduction, there will still be a large number of vacant seats this year, assures the chairman.
The total number of engineering seats (UG & PG) has come down from 15.87 lakh last year to 14.66 lakh this year, a fall of 1.21 lakh. In fact, in 2014-15 academic year, the total number of engineering seats was 19.01 lakh.
Similar trend is witnessed in polytechnic colleges as well, with total number of diploma seats in the country coming down from 11.25 lakh last year to 10.25 lakh this year.
Likewise, intake in MBA courses have come down from 2.96 lakh to 2.80 lakh, PGDM from 75,950 to 65,812 seats, MCA courses from 73,911 to 62,172 seats and Architecture from 14,114 to 12764 seats.
Only exception was pharmacy courses. Pharmacy diploma seats have increased from 67,179 to 1,05,089 seats and pharmacy UG and PG degree seats have increased from 1.37 lakh to 1.57 lakh.
As far as Tamil Nadu is concerned, eight MCA institutions, six engineering colleges, two colleges each in polytechnic, MBA, pharmacy and one hotel management and catering institution were closed down this year.
