The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) approved 171 new institutes in the academic year 2020-21. The decision marked a drop of 138% as compared to last year when it approved over 945 new institutes across professional courses.
According to the experts, the lower number is observed because of the complete ban on private engineering and pharmacy institutes in the country, despite year-on-year seat vacancy of over 50%.
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As per the AICTE, up to 70% of the institutes that were recognized this year are government-run whereas, in the last few years, private institutes have upper hand in engineering and pharmacy sectors.
Anil Sahasrabudhe, the chairman, AICTE, stated, “While originally the ban on new engineering and pharmacy institutes was supposed to be until 2022, we received complaints and decided to go lenient on proposals for government-run engineering institutes only in those states where certain districts don’t have enough colleges for students.”
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This year, the maximum number of institutes that have been approved are for management programs, followed by engineering. Although under engineering programs, almost 75% of the approved institutes would be government-funded.
Furthermore, Maharashtra received approvals for seven institutes this year, that includes five management institutes along with two government-aided engineering institutes.
Apart from this, Experts feel due to the ongoing pandemic and delay in the admission process may result in professional courses seeing vacant seats this year, despite the yearly hike in management seats.
R K Srivastava, Professor and Head of Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education, (SIMSREE), stated, “In any recession or pandemic-like situation, unemployment usually goes up and this forces many youngsters to opt for higher education courses like MBA [master of business administration].”
“However, this year, due to the high number of uncertainties across sectors, colleges might have to brace for vacant seats because many are also unsure about being in a position to pay the annual fees,” he added.
Based on the records of 2020-21, the highest number of closures for technical institutions had been witnessed in the last nine years, with 179 institutes shutting down. Another 44 institutes had applied for reduction of seats and 762 professional institutes had withdrawn their approvals for the academic year 2021.
Additionally, the total number of seats for professional courses were reduced by over 2.63 lakh in 2020-21 compared 2019-20 across the country.
As a part of AICTE’s blanket ban policy, new institutes were banned as well as additional seats in traditional engineering areas of mechanical, civil, electrical, and electronics have also been banned.
Further, the committee suggested that AICTE should focus more on existing institutes introducing undergraduate engineering programs in new-age courses, including artificial intelligence (AI), data science and analytics, blockchain, machine learning, cloud computing, and robotics.
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Since the two-year ban on new engineering institutes was implemented at the beginning of 2020, several institutes have asked for approval to commence fresh branches in these areas.
Gopakumaran Thampi, Principal, Thadomal Shahani Engineering College, in Bandra, informed, “Several branches of engineering including civil and mechanical are attracting very few students of late due to the few jobs offers they get. The software industry, on the other hand, is continuously evolving and thus attracting good jobs and students.”
He added that fewer seats in redundant branches and promoting new dimensions in the field are being welcomed by engineering candidates.
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