Picture for representational purpose only. (Photo: File/Archive)
Bengaluru: The state government is likely to relax rules for engineering colleges in order to bring down the cost per student to ensure that the Karnataka Unaided Private Engineering Colleges' Association (KUPECA) agrees to charge the same fees and seat matrix as last year. According to sources, this will help the 80 per cent of engineering colleges in the state that are in a financial crisis because there is poor demand for their seats.
The Affiliation of Colleges Offering Technical Education by Universities Regulation 2014, vests all the powers of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) in the Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU). As VTU is under the direct control of the state government, it can relax some rules for engineering colleges in order to bring down their expenses.
Speaking to this newspaper, an officer of the higher education department said that presently for post-graduate programmes the student-teacher ratio is 1:15 and at under-graduate level it is 1:20.
The state government is likely to relax these norms. The state government is also expected to relax rules related to minimum land required to set up a college and building requirements prescribed for colleges. Relaxing the rules in this manner is not necessarily a good thing. The principal of a private engineering college pointed out that "if the government relaxes norms, it will definitely harm the quality of higher education, beside bringing down the employability of the students passing out.”
“Students are opposing the 2006 Act because if it is implemented, they have to compete with students from the rest of the country. But the government is expected to reserve more seats for state students through the amendments,” said an office-bearer of COMED-K.
( Source : dc correspondent )
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