The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Cut student intake if teacher strength is inadequate: AICTE

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 14, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Cut student intake if teacher strength is inadequate: AICTE

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUCHI, APRIL 13. To enhance the quality of engineering education in Tamil Nadu, the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to direct colleges with inadequate teachers to reduce the student intake, from the coming academic year.

At present, about 75 per cent of self-financing colleges are functioning with just 30 per cent of the required teacher strength.

"If the colleges are not able to appoint teachers, they will be advised to wind up courses," M. Anandakrishnan, chairman, Southern Regional Committee of the AICTE, told presspersons here on Monday.

There should be a teacher for every 15-20 students and the teacher ratio has to be 1:2:4 (professors, assistant professors and lecturers).

But a self-financing college was functioning with just 25 teachers for 1,000 students.

The AICTE direction would serve as a warning to institutions functioning with a commercial motive, Prof. Anandakrishnan said.

The AICTE identified about 60 potential engineering colleges in the country to offer attractive scholarships and incentives to students intending to take up teaching for a certain period after completing M.E. and Ph.D. Each of these colleges was given a target of producing 100 teachers with a high level of motivation.

Prof. Anandakrishnan, who is also the chairman of the high level committee for revamping curricula for undergraduate engineering education, said the number of programmes would be reduced and a flexible system introduced in which a student could choose courses with a multidisciplinary approach.

Also, fast learning students could finish their courses within three years or as and when they completed 180-200 credits.

They could also opt for double degrees and complete courses in science and engineering disciplines or engineering and management disciplines simultaneously.

These initiatives would take shape from 2006 onwards.

Answering a query, he said information technology should be integrated with other engineering disciplines in keeping with the requirement rather than being offered as an individual course.

The AICTE also decided not to permit colleges to offer biotechnology. Requests would be evaluated carefully.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu