Engineering Seats to be Reduced by 40% by AICTE to maintain Quality of Education

With increasing number of Engineering institution and seats in coagulation with poor education quality for aspiring engineers, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to cut its undergraduate seats by 40%. It has also decided to put a lockdown to some of the schools under its ambit and the number of admissions over the next few years. AICTE is a statutory body and a national level council for technical education that works under Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Presently the number of students studying under AICTE is around 16.6 lakhs, which the council has decided to put down to 10-11lakh in the coming years. Following the motivation it has already shut down 56 courses/departments of engineering colleges around the country in 2015. The problem arose when the recruiting companies of various engineering colleges started to complain about the quality of students. Due to poor infrastructure and faculty members most of the students from engineering colleges of non-repute suffered from lack of proper education during their courses. The poor quality of education in such institutes has resulted in huge unemployment among the engineering graduates in the country.

According to a Nasscom survey, 17.5% of the total engineering students could only manage to get employment in the year 2011. The huge number of engineering students passing out every year and limited job opportunities around the country is also a major problem that is giving rise to unemployability among these students. The intake capacity of many engineering colleges is much higher than the actual need in the market. There were at least 1422 applications received by the council this year which demanded permission to shut down their institutes. However the council has made this clear that no institution would be forced to shut down. It would also keep an eye over the fact that these educational properties doesn’t turn into a real estate business once they get shut down.