800 engg colleges with low enrolment face closure

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) may order closure of 800 engineering colleges across the country next year in order to ensure quality of education in engineering colleges. These are colleges with less than 30% enrolment of their capacity for five years.

According to Anil D Sahasrabudhe, chairman, AICTE, less than 30% enrolment reflected badly on the quality of education in these colleges and the closure was inevitable to ensure quality of teaching at engineering colleges.

"The decision to close about 800 colleges was taken after much deliberation based on the analysis of data of these colleges in the last few years. Students studying in these colleges would be shifted to nearby colleges that have sufficient student strength,” he said.

Infrastructure is inadequate, while quality of teaching is not up to the mark in these colleges, affecting the learning process, he said.

Out of 10,363 engineering colleges across the country, a large number of seats fall vacant every year. The number of vacant seats in colleges in Karnataka alone for 2017-18 is over 29,000.

Single entrance unlikely next year

He said that there would not be a single entrance test across the country for admissions to engineering colleges along the lines of NEET for medical course from 2018-19.

"The Class XII curricular of all states need to be realigned so that they are on par with the NCERT syllabus before the introduction of a common examination," he said.

"Students will largely benefit from the single entrance test. Those who have performed better in the test will have the option of applying to all good colleges across the country," he said.

Students in Karnataka should write multiple examinations to vie for a seat in an engineering college at present.

The Common Entrance Test (CET) ranking decides admissions for government and government-quota engineering seats.

Private and deemed universities conduct their own entrance tests.

Students are forced to appear for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for admissions to the Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology and other Centrally funded technical institutions.

Managements of private colleges allocate seats based on the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (ComedK) rank.