Higher Education
Colleges in South India
Educational News Today
Friday, July 09, 2010
Chennai: Tamil Nadu is in for a round of massive expansion in technical education with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on Thursday approving 42 new selffinancing engineering colleges. The state is now just two short of 500 engineering colleges; only Andhra Pradesh boasts of a higher number.
With this, the cumulative number of seats in undergraduate courses in engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu will go up to a mind-boggling 1,85,525, an increase of 10,080 from the previous year. In addition to this, 21 deemed universities offer engineering courses with no restriction on the intake of students.
“The growth is astounding. We have witnessed a 111% increase in the number of self-financing engineering colleges in six years. In 2005, we had just 224 private engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu; now this number has gone up to 473. In addition, we have six government colleges, three government-aided colleges and 16 Anna University constituent colleges,” pointed out a higher education ministry official.
“The first massive expansion was witnessed in 2008, when the AICTE approved 72 new colleges. Then last year, 80 new colleges were added in the private sector alone,” noted out a higher education ministry official.
“We cleared applications for establishing 42 engineering colleges, 6 management (MBA) institutions and one architecture college today. Our teams will re-inspect six more engineering colleges shortly to decide on their approval,” AICTE southern region chairman P Mannar Jawahar said on Thursday.
Tamil Nadu’s technical education sector expanded rapidly only in the last three years. In 2004, the state had only 213 private engineering colleges; the number increased to 224, 238 and 263 in the subsequent three years.
What has surprised observers is that private players are boldly entering the technical education sector notwithstanding the fact that a significantly high 51,883 BE/BTech seats in self-financing engineering colleges had no takers last year.
On the other hand, the number of private players establishing arts and science colleges is lower. The state government opened up the higher education sector to private players during 1984-85. But while the number of self-financing engineering colleges has rapidly grown, ostensibly due to the hype over campus placements with fancy salaries in the information technology sector, Tamil Nadu last year had only 383 private arts and science colleges. The total number of such colleges is just 578, which includes 62 government-run institutions and 133 government-aided colleges.
Commenting on the figures, senior academic and former member secretary of the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education S Muthukumaran said: “Considering that around seven lakh students complete schooling in the state, about one-fourth of them can now be accommodated in technical education. If you compare this with a developed country like Japan, our numbers have not gone beyond what is prevalent there in the field of technical education.”
However, he expressed concern over two aspects. “One, the quality of technical education must be ensured. Second, it is not a good thing to have over 95% of your technical institutions to be administered by the private sector. The government must establish more engineering colleges or take over the bad self-financing institutions and administer them so that everyone who is qualified can afford technical education,” he argued.
Manonmaniam Sundaranar University vice-chancellor RT Sabapathy Mohan does not see the mushrooming growth of engineering colleges as a threat to the arts and science institutions.
“Even today, in almost all the 66 affiliated arts and science colleges of our university, 85-90% of the seats are filled. We have increased the seats up to 75 in each class in courses like BA English and BBA. Our arts and science colleges have their own glamour quotient and attract students with 80% marks for basic science courses and integrated mathematics,” he insisted.
Tamil Nadu to get 42 new engineering colleges
“The growth is astounding. We have witnessed a 111% increase in the number of self-financing engineering colleges in six years. In 2005, we had just 224 private engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu; now this number has gone up to 473. In addition, we have six government colleges, three government-aided colleges and 16 Anna University constituent colleges,” pointed out a higher education ministry official.
“The first massive expansion was witnessed in 2008, when the AICTE approved 72 new colleges. Then last year, 80 new colleges were added in the private sector alone,” noted out a higher education ministry official.
“We cleared applications for establishing 42 engineering colleges, 6 management (MBA) institutions and one architecture college today. Our teams will re-inspect six more engineering colleges shortly to decide on their approval,” AICTE southern region chairman P Mannar Jawahar said on Thursday.
Tamil Nadu’s technical education sector expanded rapidly only in the last three years. In 2004, the state had only 213 private engineering colleges; the number increased to 224, 238 and 263 in the subsequent three years.
What has surprised observers is that private players are boldly entering the technical education sector notwithstanding the fact that a significantly high 51,883 BE/BTech seats in self-financing engineering colleges had no takers last year.
On the other hand, the number of private players establishing arts and science colleges is lower. The state government opened up the higher education sector to private players during 1984-85. But while the number of self-financing engineering colleges has rapidly grown, ostensibly due to the hype over campus placements with fancy salaries in the information technology sector, Tamil Nadu last year had only 383 private arts and science colleges. The total number of such colleges is just 578, which includes 62 government-run institutions and 133 government-aided colleges.
Commenting on the figures, senior academic and former member secretary of the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education S Muthukumaran said: “Considering that around seven lakh students complete schooling in the state, about one-fourth of them can now be accommodated in technical education. If you compare this with a developed country like Japan, our numbers have not gone beyond what is prevalent there in the field of technical education.”
However, he expressed concern over two aspects. “One, the quality of technical education must be ensured. Second, it is not a good thing to have over 95% of your technical institutions to be administered by the private sector. The government must establish more engineering colleges or take over the bad self-financing institutions and administer them so that everyone who is qualified can afford technical education,” he argued.
Manonmaniam Sundaranar University vice-chancellor RT Sabapathy Mohan does not see the mushrooming growth of engineering colleges as a threat to the arts and science institutions.
“Even today, in almost all the 66 affiliated arts and science colleges of our university, 85-90% of the seats are filled. We have increased the seats up to 75 in each class in courses like BA English and BBA. Our arts and science colleges have their own glamour quotient and attract students with 80% marks for basic science courses and integrated mathematics,” he insisted.
Courtesy: Times of India
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