Sibal's New Year gift may find few takers

Kapil Sibal’s New Year gift may not cheer many management and engineering institutions. The human resource development minister yesterday allowed an additional 200,000 engineering, 80,000 management and 2,200 architecture seats.

But data obtained from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) showed that in 2010, around 60,000, or 30 per cent of the existing 200,000 management seats remained vacant. This is the highest vacancy ever in management education, with institutions even accepting money and selling seats to students without entrance test scores.

Ditto with engineering institutes, where nearly 530,000 seats or 40 per cent of the total 1.32 million seats remained unoccupied.

S S Mantha, officiating chairman of AICTE, however, refused to accept the figures. “Management and engineering seats do go vacant every year. But the numbers cannot be that high.”

WHAT SIBAL PROPOSED

• Corporate sector to be allowed to start AICTE-approved courses under Company's Act 
• 5 per cent engineering seats to be reserved for economically backward sections 
• Institutes in rural areas will have to be housed in 10 acres, in other areas it can be 2.5 acres 
• Engineering institutions will be allowed vertical expansion 
• Institutes can have more than one engineering/architecture/ pharmacy or management institutes on a single campus 
• Fixed deposit receipt paid by institutes to AICTE will be converted into money deposit 
• Institutions with more than one batch shall be eligible to get two courses 
• Institutions can be allowed evening courses for skill development

Mantha explained that on request of over 2,000 B-schools, AICTE has allowed institutes to increase the seats by 120 in every AICTE-approved institution. This, however, is subject to the infrastructure facility available at the institute. “We have to find eligible students for these institutes. This will only be possible if we have increased number of seats,” he said.

But the academic community and test-preparing institutes are not enthused. In 2010, many regional B-schools in the northern, north-eastern and southern parts of the country admitted students who were ready to pay a hefty fee to sidestep the admission criteria.

These new management schools charge anywhere between Rs 4,00,000 and Rs 6,00,000 for a two-year management programme. The institutes are supplied students by consultants for a commission — anything between Rs 15,000 and Rs 60,000 per student. The cost of such admissions is adjusted in the fee.

“New B-schools do not have placement records to lure students with, so they recruit a liaison officer who approaches many coaching institutes and graduate colleges to get students. Students will not join institutes if they do not see a good return on investment. AICTE has facilitated the mushrooming of substandard B-schools in the country and this move will do no good to the sector,” said a manager from an MBA test-preparing institute. At engineering institutes, many seats have gone vacant for streams like instrumentation not known to be popular with students.

AICTE officials, however, said this move is in the interest of increasing the gross enrollment ratio (GER), which at present is 0.4 per cent against 82 per cent in the US and 75 per cent in Russia. “We have done this to achieve a gross enrollment ratio (GER) of 30 per cent by 2020. We have since long been seen as a regulator. We want to tell people it’s not a licence raj. This will provide an option to institutes (good ones) if they wish to increase the seats or not,” said a senior official of AICTE. To achieve a GER of 30 per cent, India would need another 700 universities and 25,000 colleges. AICTE, in 2010, had received 2,176 applications from various states and individuals to open technical institutes. In the last one year, AICTE received around 12,100 applications seeking other approvals.