Committee headed by IIT Hyderabad Chairperson suggests barring new engineering colleges for 2 years

Committee headed by IIT Hyderabad Chairman has suggested the decision of barring new engineering colleges for the next two years and allowing new courses only in emerging areas as over 50 per cent seats in engineering colleges across India are vacant, said All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) Chief Anil Sahasrabudhe.

Speaking on the 50 per cent seats being vacant and AICTE barring new engineering colleges for two years, Sahasrabudhe told ANI, "Committee headed by IIT Hyderabad Chairman B V R Mohan Reddy has suggested this decision and new courses will be allowed only in emerging areas."

"If the existing engineering college programmes like civil or mechanical engineering courses are shut down and new areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, data analysis are opened, then we will permit (to open new colleges)," he added.

The AICTE chief added that when the system of private education commenced in the 1980s since then many engineering colleges were given approval. The requirement of the number of engineering colleges and seats were never taken into consideration. For seven to eight years, around 50 percent of seats remain vacant.

"Following this, we thought that there should be a committee to look after these things and study them properly in order to move ahead as per our requirement. This decision will solve many problems. Seats which are filling, even those students are not getting jobs so that should also be considered," said Sahasrabudhe.