Opening of technical institutes down by half in three years

Only 494 new management and engineering & technology institutes have so far sought permission from All India Council for Technical Education in FY14, compared to 892 in FY 12

Call it the slowdown effect. For the first time in three years, the number of new management and engineering and technology institutes being opened has come down by half.

Consider this: In FY12, a total of 892 new management and engineering & technology institutes were opened in India and in FY13, 626 new institutions were launched. In FY14, only 494 new management and engineering & technology institutes have so far sought permission from the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the country's technical education regulator, to set shop.

Among the states that lead in setting up new institutions are Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, followed by Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Kerala.

While Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh have seen 73 new management and engineering and technology institutions being set up in the current financial year, Andhra Pradesh has seen 51 institutes and Maharashtra has seen 48, respectively. Kerala has seen 21 new institutes being set up.

"Shrinking of the numbers is a course correction. It is better to have a lesser number of institutions. The focus should be on quality of institutions at the national and global level. We have thousands of B-schools but hardly a few of these figure in the top 500 at the global level," said Harivansh Chaturvedi, director, Birla Institute of Management Technology, Noida.

 

  Chaturvedi added that starting a new B-school during the downturn is full of challenges. "Only long-term players will survive," he added.

 

Despite the fall in the number of new institutes, seats are going vacant. In Maharashtra alone, out of the total 45,700 MBA seats available, only 12,800 have been filled so far, leaving around 32,000 vacant. This has resulted in many B-schools converting the minority quota seats into general category seats. Over 35 B-schools have already converted the minority seats. In Tamil Nadu, 80,700 seats in engineering colleges have found no takers.

"There is no direct relationship between seats remaining vacant and the shutting down of institutions. In a country where the gross enrolment ratio is hardly 19 per cent, you need more people to come into the system and should look at the supply side. In fact, the rate of enrolment is increasing every year. That is the good point. I am not worried about seats going vacant and new colleges starting," said Shankar S Mantha, chairman of AICTE.

So far in the current financial year, a total of 116 engineering and management institutes have shut down, compared with 100 last year and 79 in FY12. Andhra Pradesh saw the highest number of institutes downing shutters, 49, followed by Uttar Pradesh at 16 and Maharashtra at 13.