Six States Urge AICTE Not to Approve New Engineering Colleges
- Over six states across the country are highly concerned over the poor response for engineering courses.
- The situation of engineering colleges can be considered as worst in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh with 74% of seats remained vacant in 2016-17.
Due to the increasing number of vacant seats in engineering courses, six states have urged All India Council for Technical Education not to approve any new engineering colleges. These states include Telangana, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana and they have been witnessing the poor response to engineering courses. Therefore, these states do not need any more new engineering colleges, which will be of no use.
These states also requested AICTE to impose a temporary ban on capacity expansion in technical institutes. According to the official data of AICTE, a total number of 3,291 engineering colleges offered 15.5 lakh B.Tech/ B.E seats during the academic session 2016-17. However, 51% of seats out of 15.5 lakh remained vacant during the previous academic session.
Chairperson of AICTE, Mr. Anil Sahasrabuddhe revealed that the regulator had accepted the suggestions of four states including Telangana, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Haryana. Based on the suggestions and views of these states, AICTE will give approval for the new technical institutes if necessary. These four states also submitted reasons for urging AICTE not to approve new technical institutes. However, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh have simply asked AICTE not to approve new colleges. These states did not submit reasons or state any perspective plan. Therefore, the request made by these two states was not taken into consideration, he explained.
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Percentage of Vacant Engineering Seats in 2016-17: -
Name of the State | Percentage of Engineering Seats Remained Vacant |
Himachal Pradesh | 74% |
Haryana | 74% |
Rajasthan | 67% |
Chhattisgarh | 63% |
Madhya Pradesh | 58% |
Telangana | 47% |
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The situation of engineering colleges can be considered as worst in Haryana and Himachal Pradesh with 74% of seats remained vacant during the previous academic session. Students are not evincing keen interest to join engineering courses in these states due to lack of adequate employment opportunities, poor infrastructural facilities in these colleges, lack of faculty and less scope for campus placements. However, some private engineering colleges in India and engineering universities in India are still popular amongst students. Karunya Institute of Technology & Science (KITS), Tamil Nadu has released the important dates for its engineering entrance exam KEE 2018.