Hyderabad: The All India Council for Technical Education, the regulator for technical institutions in the country, is all set to switch back to its earlier policy of onsite inspection of colleges before granting approvals.
The then UPA government brought the online approval system where approvals were given based on information provided by managements’ online sites and carrying random inspections.
All India Council for Technical Education feels that this method resulted in a drastic fall in engineering education standards with managements submitting fake documents online to secure more intake in existing colleges and set up new colleges easily.
Besides, accreditations by the National Board of Accreditation will be made mandatory for all technical education institutions functioning for over eight years.
It may be recalled that AICTE had in Sept. this year announced plans of reducing engineering seats by 40 per cent across the country from the next academic year (2016-17) in a bid to tackle the problem of degrading education quality for aspiring engineers.
After the NDA government came to power in 2014, Prime Minister, Narendra Modi gave utmost significance to technical education and announced several schemes to improve employability of students through technical education and AICTE was asked to amend its policies accordingly.
Following this, the AICTE is preparing a new “Approval Process Handbook 2016-17”, which is scheduled to be issued in Dec. first week, based on which fresh approvals will be given as per stringent norms.
“All these new changes will be finalised within a week. They will be placed before the council meeting in the last week of Nov. for approval. Necessary changes will be made, if any, as decided in the council. The new rules will be issued in Dec. based on which fresh approvals will be given,” said Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, chairman, AICTE.
