AICTE ASKED
COLLEGES TO SHAPE UP
Of the 324 technical and management institutes issued
show-cause notices in the country, Tamil Nadu tops the list with 71 institutions
In an interview to The Hindu Education Plus, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)
chairman S.S. Mantha said issuing show-cause notices to colleges should not be
viewed as a punitive measure but rather as an exercise to understand the
deficiencies and bring about corrective measures and that this was the right
step towards improving quality in higher education institutions. The AICTE had
issued show-cause notices to institutions offering engineering, MBA, MCA and
polytechnic courses, after surprise inspections in May. Tamil Nadu topped the
list with the AICTE sending show-cause notices to 71 technical and management
institutions for various academic, infrastructural and administrative
deficiencies.
Show-cause notices were issued based on two processes,
one after reviewing the institution on receipt of complaints or PIL, and the
other after surprise visits by AICTE officials.“Institutions have been reviewed
and show-cause notices issued to as many as 324. The process is still on. The colleges
are being allowed to appeal. So it is too early to say what will be the outcome
of the reviews. Last year the AICTE issued withdrawal notice to 30 institutions
and some were also asked to reduce their intake,” Mr. Mantha said.In Tamil
Nadu, 140 institutions were served show-cause notices last year and four were
debarred from admitting students.Asked what was the major deficiency that the
AICTE had noticed so far from the surprise visits made, he said it was shortage
of faculty. Since the quality of faculty was the major determining factor in
the quality of education, Mr. Mantha said this was a serious factor to be taken
into consideration.
“Many of the institutions are not paying the University
Grants Commission pay scales according to the Sixth Central Pay Commission
norms. Interventions have to be made to address this basic problem. Most of the
colleges have adequate infrastructure. So, this is not made out to be a major
deficiency,” he said.Another major area of concern was the quality of intake of
students. Since the “access to higher education is so large, many students from
vernacular background get admitted to technical courses.”Pointing out that the
role of AICTE in addressing this problem was insignificant, he stressed that since
the curriculum was within the framework of universities, they had to come up
with viable solutions to address this chunk of students. They should also be
provided additional coaching, he said. Explaining the role of the States in
improving higher education, Mr. Mantha said the States should ensure that
institutions were given permanent locations to put up base. The AICTE had
written to the State Governments to do a review of the education status in
their respective States and give a review report within a year’s time to enable
the council decide on approving additional colleges from 2014.
On affiliation, he said affiliation as such was not bad,
but what could be done within the ambit of affiliation should be critically
decided. When it came to large number of affiliations, he said that in that
case the university would only be concerned in conducting examinations and
declaring results. “With 600 or 700 affiliations what can you expect ?” he
queried. “There is an optimal number which a university can handle and this
should be preserved,” he added.With regard to improving and sustaining quality,
Mr. Mantha said the observations made from colleges through the surprise visits
would be consolidated to find out where the colleges lacked. “We will try to
understand what is ailing the system and then bring in methodologies to improve
it. The AICTE is allotting more money for schemes for the colleges as well as
polytechnics to bring in improvements,” he said. [The list of institutions
issued show-cause notices could be found at http://www.aicte-india.org/AICTE, technical instituties, management institutes, show-cause notices, Tamil Nadu, faculty shortage
Prof.
John Kurakar
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