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Latest News |
| 31th
March 2010 / Times of India / Bangalore Edition |
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Govt may cap admissions in engineering colleges
Chennai: After having allowed engineering colleges to
expand without any checks, particularly in the southern
states and Maharashtra, the Union HRD ministry is now
finally planning to freeze student intake in technical
institutions.
“We went haywire on technical education allowing
anybody and everybody to increase intake capacity. Now,
for the first time, the government is thinking of putting
a cap on technical education admission,” M Anandakrishnan,
chairman, board of governors, Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT), Kanpur, said on Monday. The limit may be set at
540 seats every year, he indicated, and those with a higher
seat capacity may not be allowed to increase intake.
During an interaction with members of the Education Correspondents’
Association of India here, Anandakrishnan, who has been
on various expert committees appointed by the HRD ministry,
pointed out that presently, there was an “extraordinary
imbalance” between intake in different disciplines
of engineering.
With almost every engineering college preferring to offer
courses such as Electronics and Communication Engineering
(ECE), Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and Information
Technology, the All India Council for Technical Education
(AICTE), last year, made it mandatory for new institutions
to offer at least one core engineering course like civil
or mechanical engineering. The apex regulatory body for
technical education had also expressed concern over the
regional imbalance in the field of technical education,
with a majority of the institutions functioning only in
the south and Maharashtra.
“Students’ intake in existing colleges could
be capped at 540 seats each. Institutions which already
have a sanctioned intake capacity of 540-plus, will not
be able to increase even one seat. For new colleges too,
there would be a limit on the admissions,” Anandakrishnan
said.
In a related context, he said even when foreign universities
are permitted to enter the country, the designated clearance
agency could assess the demand and need for a course.
“Once the National Commission for Higher Education
and Research is in place, it will have some sort of a
roadmap on this. We have the authority to regulate the
undesirable proliferation of socalled popular courses
which is likely to lead to very high level of distortion
among the disciplines in this country,” he explained.
In Tamil Nadu, 440 engineering colleges have a sanctioned
students’ intake of 1.65 lakh. Besides, around 80
applications for new engineering colleges in the state
are pending scrutiny with the AICTE.
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