TN engineering colleges: 'Only 1% perfect

Tamil Nadu may boast of 1,450 technical institutions, including 486 engineering colleges, second in numbers only to Andhra Pradesh.

However, the apex regulatory body All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), has found that just one per cent of these institutions absolutely meet the prescribed standards. “Almost 99 per cent of the technical institutions - be it engineering colleges, polytechnics, MBA degree institutions, pharmacology institutions, architecture campuses or hotel and catering technology colleges - suffer from one deficiency or the other. The deficiencies are in varying degrees. In some cases, they do not have the mandated faculty strength for a course or some equipment is missing in the laboratories. We found this recently while scrutinising the applications of colleges seeking extension of approval, increase/reduction in students’ intake and permission to start additional courses,” a senior official of the AICTE, New Delhi, told Express.

The AICTE has now pointed out the deficiencies to each institution and directed them to rectify the same within a stipulated timeframe for a review of their status.  “Most of these deficiencies are rectifiable in nature. However, we found that around 20 engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu critically lack basic infrastructure and teaching staff. We are dealing with these institutions separately and we may even withdraw approval for them before the admission begins,” he added.

The AICTE’s Southern Regional Committee will consider the applications, documents, deficiency reports and scrutiny committee reports along with views of concerned State Government / UT and affiliating University / Board, if any, and shall forward the recommendations of the applications for further processing for issuance of Letter of Approval or otherwise to the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee in its meeting shall finally recommend the Letter of Approval or otherwise. As per the current schedule, the first list of approved institutions would be released in phases from June 11 onwards. “Institutions which are denied approval would be permitted to file their appeals before the regional office from June 11 to 17,” the official said.

Thereafter, their cases would be reviewed and the findings notified on June 30. Appeals filed by new institutions would be heard from June 14 to 18.