UGC Bars Affiliation to Technical Colleges

India’s higher education regulator, the University Grants Commission (UGC), has asked all 566 universities not to affiliate any technical or management colleges till guidelines and regulations for technical courses are put in place.

The UGC’s missive comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s April 25 judgment, which put management, or MBA programmes, outside the pale of “technical” education. The top court was of the view that approval from the technical education regulator, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), was not required for MBA programmes offered by private institutions.

The Supreme Court had said that AICTE’s role vis-a-vis universities was “only advisory, recommendatory and one of providing guidance, and has no authority empowering it to issue or enforce any sanctions by itself ”. Citing its order in the Bharathidasan University and Parshvanath Charitable Trust case, the court said that AICTE norms could be applied through the UGC. As a result, the AICTE cannot directly “control” or “supervise” these affiliated colleges.

UGC will evolve a suitable methodology to ensure that the standards and quality in technical and engineering colleges affiliated to universities is not diluted. In his letter to vice-chancellors, UGC secretary Akhilesh Gupta wrote, “It is of utmost importance that universities having power of affiliation exercise take due care and diligence while granting permanent affiliation or affiliation to new technical colleges. Any dilution of standards of technical education at this juncture would also belie the trust reposed by the Supreme Court in the sanctity of the autonomy of the universities.”

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has been considering an ordinance to address the legal lacunae highlighted by the court, which made it possible to put management programmes outside the purview of the AICTE. The Supreme Court had pointed out that MBA and MCA courses were brought under AICTE and included in its function through an amendment of its regulations without placing them in Parliament, which was mandatory under Section 24 of the AICTE Act.

HRD minister Pallam Raju had also said that the ministry was considering moving a review petition of the SC order.

Source: The Economic Times, June 13, 2013

Apex court allows private colleges to offer MBA, MCA sans AICTE nod

In a major decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that private colleges need not seek approval from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to conduct courses in computer application and management at the postgraduate level. However, AICTE Chairman S.S. Mantha said the Council would file a review petition against this order early next week.

“Our Act (AICTE Act) says which disciplines are covered. Suddenly, one can’t say that it isn’t correct,” Mantha said. The matter came up before the apex court in 2004 after the Madras High Court had ruled in favour of AICTE.

The Association of Management of Private Colleges and a few other private colleges in Tamil Nadu had filed the case on the grounds that MBA is not a technical course and should not be governed by the AICTE. They further argued that both MBA and MCA were brought under the purview of the AICTE after some amendments in 2000 without being placed before the Parliament as is the normal process.

Unregulated System
Mantha said the changes may not have gone through Parliament but were done in “good faith.”

“One should see the larger problem. Unregulated systems and unfair trade practices will start proliferating if this happens (if these courses do not require AICTE’s approval),” Mantha said, adding that thousands of students are likely to suffer the consequences.

Mantha said there are about 4,000 management institutions and 1,600 institutions running MCA programmes in the country. However, some private colleges running MBA courses feel that an independent body, on the lines of the Medical Council of India (MCI), should control management education in the country, instead of being governed by a body, which they say, is essentially meant for technical education.

The head of a leading private management institution, who requested anonymity, said that the AICTE had earlier impinged on the autonomy of private management colleges and that it was difficult for them to function efficiently under its stringent rules.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the AICTE can play an advisory role and prescribe standards of education by sending notes to the University Grants Commission for colleges affiliated to Universities. But colleges will not need AICTE approval to run these courses.

Source: The Hindu Business Line, April 28, 2013

AICTE allows firms with Rs. 1 billion turnover to start their own colleges

Aiming to bridge the gap between technical educational institutes and the expectations of those who employ their graduates, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to allow industries and businesses with Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) turnover to set up technical institutions of their own.

Such institutions will be allowed to admit double the number of students allowed at regular institutions, and would be able to start a single branch or theme institute of their choice, according to the AICTE’s notification inviting applications to start new institutes for the 2013-14 academic year.

“We often hear that students graduating from technical institutes are not industry-ready or employable. Hence, we want to bring in the best practices of industry and want them to participate in the higher and technical education sector,” AICTE Chairman S S Mantha told The Indian Express. “Accordingly, a private limited or public limited company or industry, with a turnover of Rs. 100 crore in the last three years, will now be eligible to apply to start a new institute.”

Such institutions can teach any technical discipline, including engineering, pharmacy, architecture and town planning, applied arts and crafts, and hotel management and catering technology. They can offer undergraduate or postgraduate or diploma courses.

“This is a paradigm shift in the higher and technical education sector in India where a regulatory body is reaching out actively to industry,” said a former UGC chairman, who did not want to be identified. “Until now, industries did not apply to AICTE to start an educational institute, probably because norms were not spelled out or because academia was lethargic in its attitude to reach out to them.”

Separately, AICTE has also eased norms to help students wanting to pursue a masters degree in computer applications (MCA). “Students who have completed their undergraduate education in any discipline can apply for MCA. But we have introduced a new rule in which students who have done their bachelors in any computer related subject like B.Sc IT/BCA/computer science, will get lateral or direct entry to second year of MCA,” said Mantha.

AICTE is also introducing a dual degree programme in MCA in which students will complete BCA and MCA in five years instead of six.

Source: The Indian Express, October 4, 2012

Academic factories in India churn thousands of engineers, barely 10% worth employing

Ashish got thrown out of the interview when he was shown a Vernier calliper and he called it a screw gauge. A mid-sized company had come to his engineering college in Bhopal to recruit fresh graduates. But the interview began on a bad note. Realisation soon dawned on Ashish that his four years in the college and the lakhs his family had spent on his education had been a total waste. Not the one to be deterred, he used those years to good advantage when film maker Prakash Jha came to the city to shoot for Aarakshan: Ashish brought in the extras — students from his college.

In one of the several engineering colleges that have come up in the outskirts of Chennai, Sentahmizh studies mechanical engineering. He hails from Ariyalur, a small town in southern Tamil Nadu, and admits that he doesn’t understand a word of what his teachers say, learns by rote and studies just enough to pass. He can’t speak English. The college, when he was seeking admission, had spun fantastic tales about multinational corporations falling over each other to recruit its students. Sentahmizh suspects that might never happen. He may soon join the ranks of unemployed engineers.

Carlos Ghosn may have marvelled at India’s frugal engineering skills, the fact is that a vast majority of the country’s engineering graduates are unemployable. Many engineering colleges are just churning out deadwood. Aspiring Minds, a company that works in the field of human resources, last year surveyed 55,000 students who had graduated in 2011; it found that just 17.45 per cent were directly employable in the information technology sector, the biggest recruiter of engineers these days, without any training.

When it came to direct deployment on projects, the number fell sharply to 3.51 per cent. And in IT product companies, which require higher skill sets, it slid further to 2.68 per cent. A few days ago, PurpleLeap, a Pearson and Educomp company, released the findings of its survey of 34,000 students from 198 engineering colleges across the country: only one out of ten graduates from Tier 2, 3 and 4 colleges is readily employable, and one-third are unemployable even after training. The survey, mind you, was restricted to students who had done well academically.

The tab for the poor output has to be picked up by the employers. IT companies, according to analysis done by NASSCOM and Evalueserve, spend $1.2 billion every year on training. Had the engineering schools done their job properly, this money would go straight to their bottom-line. If you have invested in IT stocks, this should worry you. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest provider of IT services, spends 2 per cent of its turnover ($10 billion in 2011-12) on training. It is now investing Rs 10 billion in a training facility for 15,000 people in Thiruvananthapuram. Infosys’s Mysore campus has trained 100,000 fresh graduates so far, at a cost of $6,000-7,000 per employee. That’s a whopping $600-700 million knocked out of the company’s profits over ten years. Incidentally, the campus started with a module of 14 weeks which got extended to 17 weeks and now stands at 23 weeks. “There is definitely a gap between what they study in college and the skills they need at work,” says Infosys Senior Vice-president & Group Head (Education & Research) Srikantan Moorthy.

There are 1.5 million engineering seats in India today, up from 500,000 five years ago. This is way beyond the demand for engineers. Himanshu Aggarwal, the CEO and co-founder of Aspiring Minds, says that the IT sector absorbs around 200,000 engineers in a year, and the demand from the other sectors can’t add up to more than that. If one-fifth seats go unfilled in engineering colleges, that leaves 800,000 jobless engineers in a year. But all of them may not join the ranks of the unemployed as many get enrolled in business schools. That’s another Pandora’s Box: there are over 3,000 of them in the country, many not more than holes in the wall. Some others take non-engineering jobs.

Shantanu Prakash, Managing Director of Educomp Solutions, says that there was a shortage of engineers in the country a few years back and that precipitated a mad scramble amongst businessmen, big and small, to set up engineering colleges. “And now, all of a sudden, there is a glut,” he says. From almost zero a few years ago, private colleges own almost 92 per cent of the engineering seats in the country — such has been the rush. There are 35 colleges in Bhopal alone. In Madhya Pradesh, there are 200 engineering colleges with over 100,000 seats on offer. The state that has seen maximum growth is Andhra Pradesh — it has 671 private colleges that offer 320,000 seats.

Engineering education is regulated by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). It has a fairly stringent check list that all engineering colleges need to fulfill: not less than 2.5 acres of land, not more than 300 students per acre, corpus of at least Rs. 10 million for operational expenses, student-teacher ratio of not more than 15, student-personal-computer ratio of at least 4, etc. But that’s hardly proved a deterrent. Setting up an engineering college can cost upwards of Rs. 150 million, depending on real estate prices, and payback happens in seven years. On the other hand, the demand will never see a slowdown. Indian parents, it is universally acknowledged, never flinch before spending large sums of money on their children’s education. Higher education in India is immensely valued. That explains the glut.

And it’s severe. Of the 320,000 seats in Andhra Pradesh, says an education consultant based in Hyderabad, more than 120,000 will go vacant this year. In Maharashtra, 30,000 of the 110,000 seats on offer went vacant last year; this year, the number is expected to climb to 40,000. Some colleges have appointed touts to get students. Business Standard contacted two such agents, one in Ghaziabad and one in Mumbai, to secure admission in some reputed engineering colleges in Delhi and Pune. The admission was guaranteed, albeit at the cost of a few hundred thousand rupees. Some engineering schools are ready to shut down and cut their losses, and quite a few are up for sale. Though AICTE reduced the minimum marks required in Class XII, to be eligible for admission in an engineering college, from 50 per cent to 45 per cent in 2010-11, it hasn’t helped — there are no takers for a large number of seats. Moved obviously by the plight of these colleges, the Maharashtra government wrote to AICTE earlier this year not to approve any new college in the state. Still, AICTE has given its nod to 11 new engineering colleges!

AICTE is actually in no mood to relent. Shankar S. Mantha, its chairman, is convinced the country needs more engineering colleges. “Given the low gross enrolment ratio of India (18-20 per cent), there is a need to make available more higher education opportunities for this huge chunk of students who remain outside the system,” says he. It is only two years later that the council will revisit the issue — that’s how long it takes to build an engineering college — when the colleges approved now will be up and running. Besides, says he, some redundancy needs to be built into the capacity as some streams lose favour and others gains currency. Mantha is convinced that engineering colleges will run out of seats once Indian students who go abroad to study prefer to do so in India. “Even in the US, the top six or seven management institutes are all full; but in some of the better institutes, around 50 per cent of the seats are vacant. I expect in another year or so the entire sector will undergo a sea change and you will find more institutes will be needed,” he says.

In the bargain, the quality has hit rock bottom. The Aspiring Minds employability study had found that states with fewer engineering colleges produced more employable engineers. There is therefore an inverse correlation between quantity and quality. Prakash of Educomp says that it is a highly regulated sector where colleges often cut corners to stay afloat. AICTE fixes the admission norms, the fees that colleges can charge and the salaries they can pay their teachers. “It’s a business where the input costs as well as the output costs are controlled,” says Prakash who runs an engineering college in Greater Noida.

As a result, the infrastructure of many new colleges is poor and the faculty inexperienced. Worse, everybody involved seems to acknowledge it. “Do they (the new engineering colleges) have trained and skilled faculty to teach modern courses,” Madhya Pradesh’s director of technical education, Arun Nahar, asks. Several schools have hired those former students as teachers who failed to get jobs outside. Badam Singh Yadav, who runs the IES Colllege of Technology in Bhopal, says most of his time is spent grappling with government rules and solving the “petty” issues of his students. “Does anybody care,” he says with fair bit of irritation, “that most of our students come from a rural background?” Engineering students in Chennai say the teachers often lack the motivation to help them out.

Apart from technical knowledge, most graduates are woefully short on soft skills. Wipro, says Senior Vice-president & Global Head (Workforce Planning & Development) Deepak Jain, runs a 12-week course for fresh graduates to upgrade their technical as well as soft skills. Ajoy Mukherjee, the global head of human resources at TCS, finds that engineering graduates lack soft skills such as the ability to work in a team and communicate effectively more than technical knowledge. The company’s three-month training programme, which every recruit has to undergo, looks to address these gaps, and focuses on converting students to professionals, says Mukherjee. “The inability to communicate is a serious concern, especially not being able to talk in English, form grammatically correct sentences, etc. When 94 per cent of your revenue comes from overseas, it is essential that you know how to communicate in English,” he says.

A recent report by Aspiring Minds, based on a study of 55,000 students from 250 engineering colleges, said 25-35 per cent students are unable to comprehend English. That shouldn’t have been a problem, except that most books and instruction manuals are in English. Only 57 per cent can write grammatically correct sentences in English, less than 48 per cent understand “moderately sophisticated” words, and almost 50 per cent possess grammar skills no better than a Class VII student. Not more than 30 per cent of the students, who go through stress and exhaustion while preparing for engineering college, are acquainted with the word “exhaust”. “Absurd” is a word not understood by 50 per cent. It’s a mess out there.

Source: Business Standard, August 4, 2012

States lukewarm to CET rollout from 2013

The Centre’s hopes, that states would adopt a single format for undergraduate engineering courses, were met with a lukewarm response on Tuesday, with only a fraction willing to accept the revised formula from the next academic session. This means that the `one nation, one exam’ proposal will be restricted only to central institutions for 2013.

While Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Kerala and Tamil Nadu are opposed to adopting the new formula, Uttarakhand and Chandigarh expressed willingness to use the JEE (Joint Entrance Test) results and adopt the same pattern of admission as the NITs and IIITs immediately. Other states, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Assam and Rajasthan, have expressed their approval to the format but are likely to adopt the new pattern by 2014. West Bengal, which had opposed the move in the last meeting, did not even send a representative.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had recently announced a common entrance test (CET) for all centrally funded engineering institutions, including IITs, NITs and IIITs, with weightage being given to class XII board exams from 2013. For admission to IITs, students will be shortlisted on the basis of their cumulative score for class XII and the main test (50% weightage each). Class XII marks will be standardized on percentile basis by a formula worked out by the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI). The merit list will be decided on the candidate’s performance in the advance test. NITs and IIITs will give 40% weightage for performance in class XII, 30% each to the student’s scores in JEE-main and JEE-advance tests.

The ministry has left it open to states to use the JEE score and streamline their board results with the JEE exam and so far not stipulated a timeframe keeping in view of the unenthusiastic response. Led by Bihar, state education ministers also expressed opposition to the two different formulations for aspirants of IITs compared to IIITs and NITs. Considering their views HRD minister Kapil Sibal agreed to incorporate in the minutes of the meeting that “the states were of the opinion that IITs should also adopt the same format” as that for for IIITs and NITs.

However, the overwhelming opinion was in support of the common test, Sibal said in his concluding remarks. He also said flexibility is given to the states which are under no compulsion to join the CET for institutes under their jurisdiction. “The states were requested to convey their decision on the year of joining the common admission process and the relative weightages to class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-main and JEE- advanced by June 30 to enable preparations to be made accordingly,” he said.

It was also clarified at the meeting that where a state intends to join the common test for admission to engineering institutions in the state, the exam papers would be also available in the regional language of the state in addition to English and Hindi. The states also demanded access to central funds to implement the 25% quota for economically weaker sections complaining that private schools would not admit poor children unless funds were increased. The ministry, however, remained firm that it was too cash-strapped to provide additional funds.

Source: The Times of India (Online Edition), June 6, 2012

One nation, one test for engineering schools

But for the exception of two states, India is poised to move to a single entrance test for admission to engineering colleges across the country possibly as early as next year. This was decided at the state education ministers’ conference convened by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) in the Capital on Tuesday. The country has around 4,000 engineering colleges and at least 1.5 million students enter them every year.

HRD minister Kapil Sibal said at the end of the meeting that “the proposal for a common examination process for admission to engineering programmes was supported unanimously”. A uniform national test will reduce the demand for capitation fees that engineering institutes normally command, just as it will ease the stress on aspiring students, who otherwise have to take multiple entrance examinations. It will also diminish the influence of coaching centres on entrance preparation and re-emphasize the importance of class XII board exams across India.

Unlike the central government-funded technical institutions (CFTIs), including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) — which are willing to begin the process from next year — most state governments prefer to roll it out from 2014. A final decision will be made after the states submit their points of view on the starting year as well the relative weights to be accorded to the class XII results and performance in the the joint entrance examination (JEE) main and the JEE advanced exam.

Assam education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “We are in favour of a common entrance test, but in 2014. We need time to prepare ourselves and bring changes in the school board, and it will take not less than two years and also we want to give students a two-year window to adjust to the new system.” Endorsing the move, Rajasthan education minister Brij Kishore Sharma said a common entrance will help the state board improve standards and will bring an end to capitation fees. The move is expected to have an impact on coaching schools, including those located in clusters such as Kota in the state. Sharma, however, declined to comment on the impact of the move on such schools. He said one entrance exam will allow students even from backward areas to compete at the national level and the move will reduce the money spent on having to sit for multiple entrance exams.

P.K. Shahi, Bihar’s HRD minister, said, “In principle, we support the idea of common entrance exam for engineering, but (the) IITs should not stay away from the common format.” Assam’s Sarma and Gujarat education minister Ramanlal Vora also supported the idea that the IITs should adopt the process. “We also support the decision of HRD (ministry) to count the marks of higher secondary for admission,” Vora said. “This, we believe, will remove regional imbalances and the urban bias in the selection procedure for IITs.”

According to the formula agreed to at the IIT and NIT council meeting on 28 May, the selection will be based on three tests — the class XII board exam, the JEE main exam and the JEE advanced exam. All the CFTIs, except the IITs, will give direct weightage to these three sets of examinations in the proportion of 40:30:30, respectively. For the IITs, the class XII board exam and JEE main exam will work as a filter to screen students. The top 50,000 students thus screened will be eligible for admission to the IITs; their ranking, though, will be based on the advanced test that is conducted on the same day as the JEE main.

On queries raised by the states, it was clarified that the academic body to be constituted for the JEE main test will have representation from states in an appropriate manner, the MHRD said in a statement. The Union government also underlined that the entrance can be conducted in a specific regional language as well. “It was also clarified that where the state intends to join in the common test for admission to engineering institutions… exam papers would be also available in the regional language of the state in addition to English and Hindi,” the ministry statement added.

Anirudh Aggarwal, an IIT aspirant from Panchkula, said the measure will reduce stress since most students appear for six-seven different entrance exams. But there is a risk in that the latitude for failure will be reduced. “If you don’t perform on a single day, then one whole year will be wasted,” he said. He said that to reduce the influence of coaching institutes, schools need to provide better education. “If I can understand everything in school, then I will not go to a coaching centre,” said Aggarwal, who appeared for three entrance tests this year.

Kerala education minister P.K. Abdu Rabb, however, said that the Centre cannot impose a test on the state, to which Sibal said he wasn’t making it mandatory for the states. Although at least 20 education ministers attended the conference, neither the minister nor the secretary for West Bengal were present.

Source: Mint, June 6, 2012

Professional courses see fewer takers, fall in seats; but MBA still popular

Going by the number of new institutes sanctioned by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), professional courses like architecture, pharmacy, hotel management and computer applications have lost some of their popularity. However, MBA courses continue to hold sway among students. Professional courses account for 19% of the total higher education enrolment and except management programmes, all other technical and professional courses in the country have seen a decline in the number of institutes and seats.

The AICTE sanctioned 12% fewer institutes for master of computer applications (MCA) programmes in 2011 and 15% less for architecture courses compared with 2010. Hotel management and catering technology (HMCT) programmes have been hit the most with the council reducing the number of approvals by 20% in 2011. The council has also decided not to approve new engineering colleges from the 2013-14 academic year due to a growing number of vacant BE/BTech seats in existing colleges. Engineering institutes saw a minuscule increase of 0.69% despite being the most popular professional stream in India, accounting for about 10% of total higher education enrolment.

“There are no takers for these programmes and we have a surplus of institutes which is much more than the requirement. This overcapacity along with lesser popularity for such courses is the problem,” said a senior AICTE official, adding that of the 74 institutes approved by the council this year, the majority are engineering colleges. However, there is a decline in the institutes that offer other professional programmes. For instance, from 1,169 MCA institutes sanctioned in 2009-10, the number fell to 1,026 in 2010-11 while in the same period the number of AICTE sanctioned pharmacy institutes declined from 1,080 to 982.

“The existing colleges are not filling up and there are no takers for private institutes. Moreover, poor quality of teaching and defunct curriculum drive away potential students,” explained Shobha Mishra Ghosh, Director, FICCI’s Education Committee. The lack of qualified faculty, and the inability of these institutes to maintain the standards set by AICTE or to pay the salaries fixed by the AICTE have also led to closure of many such institutes in the country. Close to 134 institutes have submitted applications for closure of programmes due poor student strength this year. According to an AICTE official, “There are many fly-by-night operators that impart poor quality education. This is also the reason that students are not interested in such courses any more.”

The number of AICTE-approved technical institutes was 5,269 at the beginning of the 11th Five Year Plan period and currently stands at 10,139. The Planning Commission is targeting an additional enrolment of 10 million in the 12th Five Year Plan period to bring India’s gross enrolment ratio (GER), which stands at 11% and is half the world average and way behind developed countries (54%).

Source: The Financial Express, April 6, 2012

Engineering, management colleges cut back on growth

There was a time when India used to add nearly 100,000 seats to its professional colleges every year. This time around, a measly 175 engineering and management colleges with about 50,000 seats will start operations across the country, signalling the slowing of this sector.

Yet, one pattern prevails: expansion is uneven. Five Indian states continue to propel the increase — Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh. This year, Maharashtra has added 5,640 engineering seats and student intake in management colleges will be up by 1,080. Last year, the total number of seats in professional colleges rose by about 20,000 in the state.

“Across India, growth has dampened because of two reasons: Our norms are now a lot more structured and specific now. So managements wanting to start new colleges can no longer fudge their documents. Secondly, there is a perception that seats are lying vacant and entrepreneurs are a bit wary about starting new institutes,” said S.S. Mantha, Chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

When admissions closed in 2010, close to 200,000 seats in professional technical colleges went abegging in the country. The regulatory body will allow institutes which have not fulfilled certain norms to appeal once they fill the lacunae. “So, another 300 colleges may appeal to start this year,” added Mantha.

Most new engineering colleges will offer popular streams like electronics, mechanical engineering, computer engineering and civil engineering. “In Maharashtra, most of the growth is concentrated in Pune. But we feel that the number of seats should go up a bit during the appeal phase. We will declare the total number of seats once all the colleges receive a letter of approval,” said S.K. Mahajan, Director of the state’s Directorate of Technical Education.

Of the 27 new colleges, 12 colleges will offer management and two new colleges will start in Mumbai. For years, several academicians have worried about a fundamental disconnect between quality and expansion in India’s professional education. “Can the country boast of 100 engineering colleges that impart cutting edge education?” asked a principal of an engineering college based in Pune.

But the AICTE has for long felt that meeting the massive demand for professional education is imperative. Twenty years ago, merely one per cent of aspiring engineers got a seat, while now nearly 80% manage to find places, noted AICTE officials. But it is time, said educationists that an ever-increasing intake capacity must stop masquerading as an asset in the educational sector.

Source: The Economic Times (Online Edition), June 16, 2011

Soon, virtual varsity for tech education

Here is good news for the students wishing to take up distance learning but apprehensive of the lesser value attached to the technical degrees obtained from these courses as compared to those from regular streams. The Centre is planning to establish a virtual university that will impart training on diverse technical areas to the undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as the newly recruited teachers through flexible, credit-based correspondence courses.

The proposed Virtual Technical University (VTU) will offer programmes in the fields of science, technology, management, architecture, pharmacy and other areas of applied knowledge. It would come up as part of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), an initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).

“There is no question on the feasibility of the virtual university because the world is moving in that direction. We only need to implement it and though the idea has not come before the board as yet, we expect the varsity to be there in the current Plan period (2007-12),” said M. Anandakrishnan, Chairman, Board of Governors, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur.

The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) has a virtual university that enables off-campus students to avail of the facilities offered to a normal on-campus student registered under the same programme and get a degree from BITS. “The piecemeal approach to distance learning is leading to its misuse and a quality check is needed. The education system is large enough to accept another type of distance learning model besides IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University),” added Anandakrishnan.

The university will use video courses, web-based learning material and live lectures using satellite and internet-based technologies. The VTU will have a repository of video courses created by experts in the field, a website that will host learning material while live lectures will be delivered using satellite and Internet technologies. The virtual university may also have five different schools — one each on developing teaching methodology, engineering sciences, natural sciences, management sciences and human sciences.

The school of education will look at developing inner and outer strength of the individuals and their emotional intelligence while that of engineering would focus on different disciplines of engineering. The school of management sciences will look at industrial and management engineering. Human sciences like economics and humanities would be catered to by the school of human sciences. A high-powered panel set up by the ministry for faculty development in technical institutes had recommended that each school float a suitable number of courses in order to cater to the need of various disciplines associated with the school.

It was envisaged that VTU shall have at least 300 courses for the school of engineering sciences and engage a large pool of talented faculty from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and other institutions and retired faculty.

Source: The Financial Express, May 16, 2011

>Government yields a bit on new technical college norms

>Caving in to pressure, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has partially rolled back the changes in the guidelines governing setting up of new technical institutes. Earlier the MHRD had revised the guidelines and made it mandatory for new institutes to pay Rs. 90 lakh (Rs. 9 million) as security money for a period of 10 years. Now, it has rolled this back to the original level of Rs. 30 lakh (Rs. 3 million), but inserted a condition wherein this sum would have to be paid in cash to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex regulator of technical education in the country. In turn, AICTE would invest the money in a fixed deposit and retain the interest earnings in a special account.

Private colleges and institutes were, however, disappointed with the changes and wanted the government to restore the original guidelines. They believe the move is a dampener to setting up new institutes at a time when the cash-strapped government is unable to make similar investments. Earlier, institutes were required to only furnish a bank deposit receipt for eight years and were allowed to retain the interest earnings.

AICTE member secretary M.K. Hada confirmed the development. According to a senior MHRD official, who requested not to be named, increasing the security money to nearly a crore rupees “sounds little unfair” as it will hinder new institutes coming up. “When the focus is on increasing access to education and making gross enrollment ratio (GER)in higher education to 30% from the current 13%, you should not discourage education entrepreneurs. But, we have to closely monitor the quality,” the ministry official said.

Currently around two million students are pursuing technical education such as engineering, management, pharmacy, architecture among others. And overall, less than 15 million Indians are pursuing higher education, which is just 13% of those who are eligible or in the age group. HRD minister Kapil Sibal has reiterated on occasions that India would like to add 30 million more students in the higher education space and the country needs over 20,000 more colleges in a decade’s time.

Last year, the government approved at least 600 new institutes and if all of them submit a security money of Rs. 30 lakh (Rs. 3 million) each in cash, then AICTE will have a corpus of Rs. 180 crore (Rs. 1.8 billion) on which it will earn an interest. Moreover, the council will keep the cash in a bank fixed deposit for 10 years, according to the new rules.

H. Chaturvedi, Director of Birla Institute of Technology at Greater Noida and Alternate President of the Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI), an industry lobby, said, “At an interest rate of 9-10%, AICTE is expected to earn above Rs. 1,000 crore (Rs. 10 billion) from this process in a few years. They are a government body and should not become a fund accumulator.”

AICTE’s Hada said the regulator is not making money rather it will help students in case of an institute shuts down. He said AICTE has encountered few instances when colleges furnish some fake receipt or withdraw the money before the expiry of the stipulated period. This will guard against any such attempts.

Private sector owns over 70% of the over 10,000 technical colleges in the country and Chaturvedi argued “government should not make private education unviable that too when government cannot fulfil the demand for such colleges.” Chaturvedi indicated that this was part of a trend as earlier AICTE had imposed a charge Rs. 5,000 for each of the 10,364 technical colleges following the introduction of e-governance, earning it Rs. 5.18 crore (Rs. 51.8 million).

Source: Mint, April 21, 2011