In a move aimed at strengthening the country’s technical education sector, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has permitted a private company to start a chain of technical institution in the country.
The industrial firm would set up its first institution in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The Centre had allowed private and public companies with a turnover of at least Rs 100 crore per year over a 3-year period to set up technical institutes to meet the increasing demand of such institutes. They can establish new technical institution in engineering and technology, pharmacy, architecture and town planning and hotel management catering technology.
“We had received four applications last year and permission was given to one,” S S Mantha, Chairman AICTE said on the sidelines of a function organsied by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and AICTE to release an industry-technical institute linked survey report.
Sharing the key findings of the survey with media on Wednesday, Mantha said that initiatives such as this survey were important to improve the quality of higher education. The survey initiated in 2012 by AICTE showed a maturity level in its very second year which surpassed the expectations of both industry and academia. From 156 entries received in the first of its kind survey of industry linkages of technical institutes last year, the number zoomed to 1,050 this year-a phenomenal 673 per cent jump.
Commenting on the process of the survey and its findings, Dr YS Rajan, senior distinguished professor of ISRO and chairman of NIT, Manipur, who headed the jury of the survey, said, there is a need to raise the average and this survey is not only about celebrating the winners. “It is a mirror in which the institutes can evaluate where they stand and how they need to improve on various parameters to come up the bell curve,” Rajan remarked. This year, the scope of the survey was substantially expanded to include all streams of engineering and also the disciplines of management, pharmacy and architecture.