HYDERABAD: With the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University’s tough stance on regularising private engineering colleges yielding impressive results, the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) is now contemplating a similar measure to get private degree and PG colleges in the State back on track.
The JNTU’s inspections or raids - as some private engineering colleges came to realise - infused a sense of urgency and responsibility among them to put in place proper infrastructure. In fact, the JNTU had gone to the extent of withdrawing some errant colleges’ affiliation forcing them to recruit new faculty members and improve facilities to regain recognition. The TSCHE wants to leave it to the State universities to take action against private degree and PG colleges, which do not have adequate faculty members or facilities, after it completes its inspections. However, this entire process may take a month.
Currently, the TSCHE and State universities are busy with CETs and their own admissions. “Right now, we are all busy with the CETs and results. Once admissions begin, we will launch inspections,” T Papi Reddy, Chairman, TSCHE told Express. The TSCHE, which has already directed private colleges to upload details of their faculty members on its website, is making preparations to open a website for private colleges. The website will be launched in a few weeks, Reddy added.
Though the primary intention of the proposed inspections is to examine facilities in colleges, the authorities are also eyeing balancing the number of seats with the requirement in State. The introduction of fee reimbursement scheme has led to a flood of private colleges across the State and subsequently, created a huge gap between the number of available seats and actual requirement for graduation and post-graduation seats. Some districts in Telangana like Nalgonda and Nizamabad have three to four times more seats than the requirement. There are some cases where more than four private degree colleges are there against one intermediate college in the same town.
According to available data, there are around 1200 private degree colleges in Telangana. To control them, the TSCHE has denied permissions for new private degree and PG colleges for this year.