Chennai: Tamil Nadu is next to combined Andhra Pradesh of all the states in the country in its number of engineering colleges. Of the 3,389 technical institutions in the country, Andhra Pradesh has 670 and Tamil Nadu 532. As the number of engineering colleges increases so does the number of them flouting AICTE norms. Prof.S.Vaidhyasubramaniam, dean (planning & development) at SASTRA University, which was started as a private engineering college in 1984 and got upgraded as a permanent deemed university in 2001, said,
“The AICTE pointed to a demand for technical education in the country and approved new colleges, but the manner in which approvals were given created an imbalance, resulting in the polarised growth of technical education in the southern states, especially in combined Andhra Pradesh and TN,” he said.Prof. Vaidhyasubramaniam added that the AICTE’s regional offices in the southern states failed to provide inputs about demand in states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, which led to the imbalanced growth.
Eminent academician Jayaprakash A.Gandhi was of the opinion that AICTE should come up with a moratorium for three years on approval of new engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu. “Mushrooming of private engineering colleges should be curtailed as we have had about one lakh seats going vacant in the recent past. Several of these colleges also churn out students who lack proper skill sets and if this trend continues these colleges will face a natural death,” he said.
Former VC of the erstwhile Anna University of Technology, Chennai, Prof. C.Thangaraj says that the government allowed several engineering colleges to come up in the state as it had presumed that there was a demand for engineering courses, so colleges could not be blamed.
