Ban on starting engg institutes as student enrollment falls

No new institution will be allowed to start engineering and technical courses this year, as per the directions of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). This decision has been taken as there are surplus vacant seats for engineering streams in the existing technical institutes.

In Maharashtra, over 56 per cent seats in engineering institutes remained vacant in 2018-19. Ajeet Singh, Regional Officer, AICTE said, “There are surplus colleges in the city where seats remain vacant. The inclination towards engineering courses is declining and it is evident from the numbers. We cannot grant approval to more institutes when already there are empty classrooms in existing institutes.”

Along with the ban on new institutes, additional seats in mechanical, electrical, civil and electronics engineering streams in existing institutions will not be approved. According to AICTE data, six lakh engineering graduates secured jobs through campus placements in 2019-20, while in the same year, 13 lakh students secured admissions for engineering programmes. Singh added, “Both the number of students seeking admissions and those securing jobs through campus placements are declining.”

To cope with the downfall, engineering colleges and technical institutes are starting new courses and replacing those that are out of trend. A principal of a technical institute at Matunga said, “Students are now keen on courses that form a part of the current trend like data analytics, research, cyber security, data science and artificial intelligence (AI). We are analysing the student intake for the traditional streams and replacing those with some of the new courses.”

It is high time that institutes should provide a variety of new courses according to the demand, claim Rudraksh Sibal, a computer engineer. Sibal said, “Companies look for graduates with a different approach for jobs. We have been studying the same curriculum for years. We should have narrow streams like AI and robotics or data science instead of just an umbrella stream of computer engineering.” While Shruti Jaiswal, a student pursuing civil engineering said, “Even if we are keen about engineering there is a major lack of options. This is why most of us chose to shift to other courses because there is a higher variety in terms of courses and employment opportunities.”