Colleges to move court against AICTE’s norm to begin new courses

Colleges to move court against AICTE’s norm to begin new courses

Ragu.Rama@timesgroup.com

Chennai:16.03.2021 

As engineering colleges battle poor admission trend and the pandemic, the new rule introduced by the All India India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) which mandates 50% overall admissions last year to be eligible to apply for new courses for 2021-22 has faced strong opposition from engineering colleges. They have decided to challenge the rule.

The council in its approval process handbook for 2021-22, said it would allow new courses only in engineering colleges which had more than 50% overall enrollment last year. In 2020, colleges without NBA accreditation were allowed to start new courses in emerging areas such as AI and data science, by closing a course or reducing their existing intake.

The core committee of Federation of Self-Financed Technical Institutions which met in Chennai on Sunday has decided to challenge the norm in the Supreme Court. "When the overall admissions in engineering colleges is 37% at all-India level, fixing 50% admissions would render 80% of colleges ineligible to apply for new courses. Without new courses, these colleges will have natural death as they cannot survive with poor admissions," said R S Munirathinam, chief patron of the federation.

T D Easwaramoorthy, secretary of the federation, said there were no migration of students from neighbouring states in view of the pandemic this year. "Our engineering college is situated near Kerala border in Coimbatore district. Before Covid-19, we had 65% of admissions. In 2020-21, we were able to fill only 37% seats as our college did not have any students from Kerala. Due to the new rule, we cannot apply for new courses," he said.

KVK Rao, general secretary of the federationsaid, "The deemed universities which are admitting students over and above the sanctioned strength, collecting higher fees have not been properly regulated by agencies including AICTE and UGC. We will challenge the inaction of the regulatory authorities in the court."