JOIN USSeats in engg, management courses hiked
Here is some encouraging news for prospective engineering and management students. The government on Thursday announced substantial increase in seats as well as a series of measures that would make engineering education widely available in the country.
In the engineering discipline, architecture would see an increase from the existing 40 to 60 students per division, Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal told reporters here.
Neither the minister nor AICTE chairperson S S Mantha provided any definite statistics. Some estimates put the margin around 2 lakh seats in engineering, 80,000 in management and 2,200 in architecture.
Subject to availability of infrastructure and facilities, all institutions completing more than one batch are eligible to get two courses per programme/level/ shift on self-disclosure, the minister said.
Additional students
While a course will have an additional 60 students or one division, the government is also doing away with the earlier sealing of 540 for intake of students.
The minister also revealed that the proposal to convert women-only institutions into co-ed will be processed only after an expert’s visit confirms that they have necessary infrastructure.
The space required for starting technical institutions has also been reduced to 10 acres for rural areas and 2.5 acres for urban areas. The move will help students in 241 districts of the country that did not have All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)-accredited institutes. Companies registered as non-profit entities under Section 25 of the Company’s Act 1956 will be allowed to set up technical institutions.
The AICTE had also made a number of provisions for the PGDM (Post Graduate Diploma in Management) programme, including fixing the academic session from June 1 to May 31. Admission should not start before April 1 of the academic year.
The course will have a duration of 24 months, while the Executive PGDM programme will be of 15-month duration.
In a nutshell
*5% quota for economically backward
*Doors opened for corporates to set up tech institutes
*Corporates can also set up campuses through public-private-partnership or build-operate-transfer mode
*Institutes can offer standalone PG programmes
*Now these are allowed only under graduate programmes
*BSc students can seek lateral entry to a 2nd year degree programme