The engineering education scenario has witnessed a complete turnaround from two decades ago, when a huge number of students applying for admission into engineering colleges had to opt for other streams because of lack of adequate capacity. Today 300,000 seats in the country’s 3,393 engineering colleges with an aggregate capacity of 1.48 million students are going abegging. Reacting, on March 19 the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex level accreditation authority for all ‘technical’ education (engineering, business management, pharmacy, hotel management, etc), announced a blanket ban on accreditations for new engineering colleges across the country from the academic year 2013. This is a volte-face from November last year when the council rejected appeals from the Maharashtra state government to freeze all accreditation applications to discourage the promotion of new engineering and business management colleges in the state. Quite obviously the huge unutilised capacity in engineering colleges countrywide has prompted a re-think. However, despite 37,000 engineering and 20,000 business management seats vacant in Maharashtra last year, and the state government’s reluctance to allow promotion of additional private colleges, the bullish edupreneurs community is unfazed, judging by the number of applications for promotion of new colleges pending before AICTE. Currently Maharashtra hosts 750 engineering colleges (80 percent privately promoted). Despite this, AICTE has already received 30 applications for promotion of new engineering colleges in 2012. “The largest number of applications is from Maharashtra,” confirms S.S. Mantha, the Delhi-based chairman of AICTE. As the apex-level accreditation authority for technical education institutions and courses, AICTE has been liberal in granting accreditation. The number of engineering colleges approved by the council has risen from 2,388 in 2008 to 3,241 in 2010 and 3,393 in 2011. In 2010-11, AICTE accredited the highest number of engineering colleges in Karnataka (159) followed by Uttar Pradesh (105). Although old-school socialists with control-and-command mindsets approve of a freeze on the promotion of new professional education institutes when seats are going abegging in existing colleges, some academics welcome the intensifying competition which will force mergers, acquisitions and closures, in the public interest. Dr. Jeyalakshmi Nair, principal of the independent Vivekananda Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Mumbai (estb. 1984), attributes unfilled capacity in some of the newer colleges to the abysmal quality of infrastructure and faculty they offer. “In excellent institutions which give students value for money by providing high quality education, the demand for admission far exceeds the number of seats available. Competition between engineering colleges is in the interest of students and the public as it raises standards of education,” says Nair. S.K. Mahajan, director of technical education in Maharashtra, concurs. “The demand for admission into colleges which provide excellent infrastructure, good faculty and placement record is rising every year. Students and parents are becoming more choosy and are not prepared to sign up with any college as in the past,” he says. In the circumstances, a rising number of academics advise against AICTE shutting its doors and freezing new college applications. Dr. S.N.V. Siva Kumar,…
