The Hindu : AICTE chief happy over education quality in colleges

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 07, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Visakhapatnam

AICTE chief happy over education quality in colleges

By Our Special Correspondent

VISAKHAPATNAM, MARCH 6. The Chairman of the All India Council for Technical Education, R. Natarajan, has expressed satisfaction over the quality of education being imparted in engineering colleges in the State. "The quality is improving,'' he felt.

He said here on Saturday that it was for the State Governments to decide whether there was need for more engineering colleges or not depending on their own projections of the need. While universities supervised admissions, conduct of examinations etc, the AICTE ensured that they maintained norms and standards. The AICTE had tightened the accreditation procedure to improve quality. More than this, the market forces compelled the colleges to create better infrastructure. "As students flocked only to good colleges, the bad ones vanished automatically,'' he said.

Asked whether there was need for more engineering colleges in the country, he said it depended on various factors. There were 380,000 engineering colleges for over one billion population. While there were 110 engineering graduates for 1000 population in Japan, there were 55 in the US and only 3.5 in India. In India too, the development was skewed. While Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharastra had highly favourable ratios States like Bihar had only 0.1 engineering graduate for 1000 population. He hastened to add that the AICTE did not want to restrict the number of colleges and left it to the discretion of the States. He expressed happiness that Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnatka had decided not to sanction any more engineering colleges because they faced the problem of unfilled seats in existing colleges.

Earlier, Dr. Natarajan, participated in the 15th convocation of the Integral Institute of Advanced Management and gave away certificates to students. The former Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University, Gopalakrishna Reddy, presided. Dr. Natarajan also inaugurated e-learning and research centre at GITAM central library. V.V. Kutumba Rao, principal, said that Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education had rated GITAM best among private engineering colleges in the State. The GITAM president, M.V.V.S. Murthi, said the institution would celebrate its silver jubilee next year.

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