PRUNING OF SEATS BY AICTE OR PRUNING OF OPPORTUNITIES?

The All India Council set back the thought of many students of becoming an Engineer and gave them a push to preplan their career, when the Chairman of AICTE Mr. Anil Sahasrabudhe quoted this-“We would like to bring it down to between 10 lakh and 11 lakh from a little more than 16.7 lakh now. The capacity should come down for the betterment of all — students, education providers and employers,” as mentioned in Mint newspaper.

Supporter of this statement believes that this could be a way of improving the quality of engineers by decreasing the quantity.Our country needs good engineers; we don’t want a mass of engineers but a handful of engineers capable enough to direct and move a mass.While the reduction of seats may seem worrisome for engineering aspirants, academicians believe it will not pose any issues and may even help in improving quality of engineering education.

There have been some astounding facts regarding engineering seats in India. Take a look:

  1. A National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) study says engineering services will be a $40 billion worth opportunities for India by 2020, but only one in four of the 4, 00, 000 graduates passing out of the 3,200 engineering colleges every year will be Worse, only three out of ten of the teaching faculty are competent and qualified.
  2. In Bangalore, once India’s private college capital, 8,000 seats could not be filled in its 186 colleges for the 2010-2011 seasons.
  3. Andhra Pradesh is one state where the crisis is more stark than anywhere else in India. From 282 colleges with a sanctioned intake of 98,793 seats in 2006- 07, it has now 707 colleges with 2, 62, 221 seats in 2010- 11. While students were admitted to 88.45 per cent of the seats in 2006- 07, admissions rose over the next two years to 89.62 per cent of available seats. Thereafter, it has showed an alarming decline-75.24 per cent of the seats in 2009- 10 and 72.28 per cent, or a staggering 76,432 vacant seats, during the current year.
  4. In a country faced with an acute shortage of trained engineers, there are still no takers for at least three out of every ten of the 10.73 lakh seats in engineering colleges.

There are many such figures that will astound you. Somewhere down the line many have welcomed this statement but there is always an other side of the coin. Some are seeing this as a pruning of opportunities than pruning of seats. There are many people who do not welcome this thought of AICTE Chairman.

So the question prevails: “Is this a pruning of seats or pruning of opportunities to many engineering aspirants?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *