Seven States including Chhattisgarh with a vision to rationalising the approval process of technical institutes have submitted plans to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) which has approved preparation of perspective plan for Technical Education at State level, the Central Government has informed.
The other States are Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana which have submitted their plans to AICTE.
AICTE doesn’t close down the Engineering Colleges on its own. However, some engineering colleges have been granted approval for closure by AICTE based on their request, it informed.
The actual enrolment in the engineering colleges is based on demand-supply condition which is attributed to location of the institute, academic & research infrastructure and placement prospects.
Notably, it may be recalled that Chhattisgarh is among 12 states including Union Territories (UTs) where Ministry of Human Resource Development will be deploying highly qualified and motivated graduates recruited from IITs and NITs to teach in Engineering colleges.
To fulfill the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide thrust to good quality technical and higher education in the backward areas of the country, the Ministry of Human Resource Development has recruited more than 1200 highly qualified and motivated graduates from including IITs and NITs to teach in Engineering Colleges in States/UTs like Andaman & Nicobar, Assam, Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Tripura, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand etc.
This is the first time that such a measure has been taken to improve the quality of education, a Ministry press release informed.
A public appeal was given to the MTech and PhD students from the premier institutions to express interest to work in these backward areas and serve the nation. There was an overwhelming response to the call, and more than 5000 highly qualified persons applied. The interviews were conducted in 20 NITs by constituting expert teams.
The entire process of giving a call and selection has been completed through a competitive and rigorous process of selection done through NITs in a record two-month period. Finally, 1225 candidates were selected and they have joined 53 colleges in these states. The new faculty will train the youngsters in host of technical institutions for the next three years.
Each of the new faculty will be paid Rs 70,000 per month and the Government is planning to spend about Rs 375 crore in three-year period on this initiative. With this measure, more than one lakh engineering students in the most backward areas would be benefited with better quality education.
The reason for backwardness was essentially because of lack of quality teachers in these areas.
In many of these institutions have vacancies of teaching faculty (some of them have 40% vacancies), The States have requested Ministry of HRD to help to find teaching support.