BHUBANESWAR: With vacancies in technical colleges piling up, the Odisha Government’s request to AICTE not to give affiliation to new institutions has been turned down. AICTE Chairman SS Mantha on Sunday said the number of new institutes coming up must increase and the gross enrolment ratio in the country should go beyond 15 per cent.Asked about the Government’s disapproval of AICTE accrediting new institutes without taking its views, the Mantha said the council had written to the former asking why it is against new institutions but no answer has been received yet.Mantha said the AICTE had asked the State Government to generate scientific reports on courses that have job potential and also courses which are popular in the rural regions. Only after these reports are gathered can the vacancy problem be dealt with properly.At a workshop conducted by AICTE on e-governance and approval process for 2012-13, Mantha stressed on the importance of the data submitted by the institutes online. He asked the institutes to regularly fill up and update complete student and faculty data. Depending on the data, numerous statistical reports are generated that help give an idea about the situation and the trends, if any. If the faculty data is updated regularly, it will help AICTE track teachers’ movement too.According to AICTE calculation, they should ideally have the database for eight million students in the country, but in actual practice they have only six million students’ database. Many a time, the online database is manipulated and if that persists, the intake will be frozen for that institute, he cautioned.Explaining that there was no limit to the number of seats any course can have, Mantha added that the new institutes should not compromise on the quality of the education. Avenues need to be created first and then focus should shift towards quality.Talking about the complaints that AICTE receives from the institutes themselves about the frequent inspections, Mantha explained that the very existence of AICTE would be meaningless if its functioning is questioned at every step. No teachers, no classrooms, no visits equals no AICTE,” said Mantha.The AICTE, he informed, has been stressing on early admissions which will ensure the students of one state do not move to other states for admission. Mantha also asked the institutes to file the applications for accreditation or extension of approval by December 31. Also touching on the point of name change of the institute, Mantha said that changing name of an institute is allowed but name change of a society is not allowed.
Comments
0 comment