There was a time when students were struggling for the engineering seat. Engineering appears to be losing its attraction as one of the top career options among Indians. The number of students getting admitted to government and private engineering colleges and institutes — excluding Indian premium technical institutes — is set to come down by almost a lakh in the past two years. As per AICTE data, there are around 10,500 engineering institutes and around 37 lakh seats across the country, including polytechnic, engineering, pharmacy, management (and) architecture.
The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), as the regulator for engineering and technical education in the country, discussed the worrying trend and asked the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry to conduct a demand-supply analysis before granting approval to new engineering institutes.
The Council’s vice-chairman, Dr. M P Poonia ruled out the apprehensions that the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will close down engineering colleges that fail to fill up all their seats. AICTE has overhauled curriculum and plans to put emphasis on Hindi as a medium of learning in Engineering. AICTE is planning to have one single common entrance test for admissions to all engineering colleges in the country. Poonia, who was in Gandhinagar to attend the Gujarat Technological University Seventh Convocation.
Dr. M P Poonia was quoted saying by The Indian Express (IE) that “AICTE is planning to bring in many subjects in Hindi to facilitate students to comprehend the subject in their own language. The entire curriculum for engineering, management, and polytechnic has been revised and a uniform curriculum will replace the existing system to reduce pressure for students .”
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“AICTE has plans to put emphasis on Hindi as a medium of learning. They have changed the curriculum and a new national teacher training policy with a six-month probation period will be launched on January 24, 2018,” Poonia added.
Earlier there was news that the AICTE will mull over the reduction of seats, rather than closing Engineering colleges that fail to fill up vacant seats. Poonia has replied to this concern as quoted saying by IE, “We have a huge infrastructure in the country, and there is a need for that. The GER ratio for higher studies is around 25%, i.e out of 100 students who clear Class XII, the Board examinations, only 25 students get an opportunity to get into higher education. So, we are not talking about closing down colleges but reduce the number of seats up to 50 percent of the allowed seats.”
Poonia was quoted saying by IE over the Council’s steps against errant institutions that if the quality of education is not up to mark and institute fails to provide the justice in term of the quality of education and in terms of money spend by student on education, then AICTE being the regulator we will take stringent action against those institutes.
According to Poonia as quoted by IE, it would be difficult for AICTE to create the curriculum as per market demand. There are ups and downs for the demand of technical expertise in the market, and AICTE would not able to create the work as per market demands.
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New National Teacher Training Policy for Engineering
AICTE is working on a new national teacher training policy to be launched on January 24, 2018. Under this, all teachers or any postgraduate like MTech, who enrolled for teaching from 2018, will on probation for 6 months and will not be allowed to teach for that first six months.
Apart from the teaching module, the newly recruited teachers will have to work under the guidance of a senior faculty to point out the flaws and improvements, if any.
AICTE Plans to create a certificate program as eligibility criteria for any teacher to clear, before taking the class during their probation period. The candidate has to clear the certificate course of eight modules, covering planning and delivering lectures, question paper setting, values of a teacher, communication, and ICT skills.”
Among the solutions proposed is halting the expansion of colleges, revising syllabus, making bad colleges shut shop and focusing on the good ones. AfterGraduation, Wish that Maybe Engineers be in demand again.
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