THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Educationalist R V G Menon, with the help of statistics, pointed out that the proliferation of self-financing engineering colleges have not increased the number of engineering graduates passing out of the colleges in the state.
He was speaking at the seminar on ‘lessons from Kerala, a vision for tomorrow: Higher education reforms in India’, organised by the Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) here on Thursday.
He said that the number of engineering seats in the state remained at 3,000 for 40 years after independence. It increased to 12,000 in the next 10 years following the decision to allot self-financing professional colleges under the Government-controlled agencies, he said.
In the next 10 years, the number increased to around 30,000 following the decision to allot self-financing professional colleges in the private sector, he said.
In 40 years after independence, the pass percentage for engineering was 90 to 95 percent. It stayed around 90 percent even as the seats were increased to 12,000. But, the pass percentage dropped to 40 percent following the proliferation of private self-financing professional colleges.
It means that the number of students passing out engineering colleges now are only around 12,000, the same as the number before self- financing professional colleges were sanctioned.
Only the owners of self- financing professional colleges are benefited on account of the higher fees being charged by them, he said.
KSHEC Vice-Chairman K N Panikker, Planning Board Vice-Chairman Prabhath Patnaik and MG University Vice-Chancellor Rajan Gurukkal attended the seminar. Later, Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan released two books, brought out by the KSHEC in association with the Pearson Education.
The book, ‘Emerging trends in higher education in India: Concept and Practices’ was edited by K N Panikker and M Bhaskaran Nair. The second book, ‘Quality, access and social justice in higher education’ was edited by K N Panikker, Thomas Joseph, G Geetha and M A Lal.