CHENNAI: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has debarred six institutions in Tamil Nadu from admitting students this year after they were found violating the council’s norms. Among the institutes, five are engineering colleges (two in Kancheepuram and one each in Coimbatore, Tiruchy, and Vellore districts), and one polytechnic in Pudukkottai. The AICTE has stopped admission in 34 institutions across the country.
“This year, we did not conducted a surprise inspection at technical education institutions. We only took action on colleges against which we received complaints. The violations include not maintaining faculty-student ratio, and not having required infrastructure, including land, among others,” said an AICTE official.
The AICTE allowed 108 technical institutions, including 18 in TN, to wind up operations, after the latter felt it was not viable for them to function. Further, four new institutions in TN (two MBA colleges, one MCA college, and one offering MBA and MCA) have been allowed to open.
‘Close poor-quality colleges’
E Balagurusamy, former Vice-Chancellor of the Anna University, opined that over 100 private engineering colleges in TN that do not have proper faculty, infrastructure, labs, and have poor admissions and pass percentage needed to be closed.
“We do not need so many colleges and many of them are economically not viable, either not paying the faculty properly or paying them poorly. Both the Anna University and AICTE are not taking action against these erring colleges. It is high time they act against these poor-quality colleges,” he argued.
The trend of closing down engineering colleges has been on for the past five years, and another 10 to 20 colleges could be closed in the coming year, opined TD Easwaramoorthy, joint secretary of the Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in TN. He hoped that engineering admissions might go up this year.