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AICTE lowers the eligibility criteria
All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has lowered the eligibility criteria for the students taking admission in engineering colleges. It has been done both for the degree and the post-graduate diploma levels, it has been lowered from 50 per cent to 45 per cent aggregate in class XII.
This news may sound exciting for some politicians, students and college promoters but the bad thing about this is, it will flood the country with dodgy engineers. AICTE explained that they took this decision because many state governments wanted it for the sake of inclusion. Students coming through the state board find the 50 per cent eligibility criteria too high to get through. So, in order to give the students with lower marks a chance to become engineers, AICTE has lowered the eligibility criteria.
In India, about 40 per cent engineering institutes find it hard to fill up its seats. Recently, for this reason, about 12 engineering colleges in Karnataka decided to reduce the number of seats in certain courses or even shut down some departments. Of the total 76,000 odd seats in the state’s engineering colleges, about 14,500 seats remained vacant. Moreover, the state government has reduced more than 700 seats in colleges which lack infrastructure or faculty.
With the lowering of the eligibility criteria, about 12,000 students in Karnataka alone would be qualified for the engineering seats. So, the question is, where will these students be admitted? The answer could be that with more than 14,000 seats lying vacant, these additional students can easily fill up the vacant seats.
It should not be assumed that the seats are lying vacant because there are not sufficient students with qualifying marks. It may be mainly because of the parents’ reluctance to admit their children to colleges with poor academic records, bad infrastructure and faculties. So, instead of fixing all that and improving the overall standards of the institutes, AICTE has made it convenient for the ‘bad’ institutes to stay ‘bad’, as their market has been expanded.
Of the 3,000 engineering colleges in India, let’s assume that each institute has 600 seats, which means a total of 1.8 lakh engineering seats are available in the country, of these government colleges have less than 40,000 seats. Now, the number of aspirants is about eight lakh students considering the students appearing for the AIEEE. The students among the top 35,000 in the entrance examination have a chance of getting admission in a well-reputed government institution. Those within the top 100,000 can find seats in excellent to acceptable government or private colleges. The last remaining 80,000 seats could be filled up by those students who are willing to take risks.
This is the situation with the national entrance test when the cut off is 50 per cent. Now, since the eligibility criterion is lowered, the question is, will there be more seats available for the new eligibles? The government has an answer to that stating that it is going to start second shifts in institutes wherever required. This is a good solution to the scarcity of infrastructure. But the government doesn’t have an answer on the quality of the faculty members.
Even if all the students get their respective seats and the faculty problem is taken care of, the quality of the engineering graduates will still become aggravated. Most industries are of the view that only few of the engineers produced by India’s education system are capable of doing any real engineering job.
About 64 per cent employers in India are not satisfied with the quality of engineers they have hired. The skill gaps are predominantly severe in the higher-order thinking skills. This is based on a recent study done by World Bank on employability and skill sets of newly graduated engineers in India. It suggested that India’s education regulators need to gear the engineering institutes to replace the basic curricula with problem-solving and creative engineering curricula.
One of the most dangerous outcome of lowering the eligibility criteria is that once lowered, it would be difficult to raise it again because of political pressure. It was 60 per cent earlier but it got reduced to 50 per cent and the results of this can be seen in the dissatisfaction shown by the employers.
This news may sound exciting for some politicians, students and college promoters but the bad thing about this is, it will flood the country with dodgy engineers. AICTE explained that they took this decision because many state governments wanted it for the sake of inclusion. Students coming through the state board find the 50 per cent eligibility criteria too high to get through. So, in order to give the students with lower marks a chance to become engineers, AICTE has lowered the eligibility criteria.
In India, about 40 per cent engineering institutes find it hard to fill up its seats. Recently, for this reason, about 12 engineering colleges in Karnataka decided to reduce the number of seats in certain courses or even shut down some departments. Of the total 76,000 odd seats in the state’s engineering colleges, about 14,500 seats remained vacant. Moreover, the state government has reduced more than 700 seats in colleges which lack infrastructure or faculty.
With the lowering of the eligibility criteria, about 12,000 students in Karnataka alone would be qualified for the engineering seats. So, the question is, where will these students be admitted? The answer could be that with more than 14,000 seats lying vacant, these additional students can easily fill up the vacant seats.
It should not be assumed that the seats are lying vacant because there are not sufficient students with qualifying marks. It may be mainly because of the parents’ reluctance to admit their children to colleges with poor academic records, bad infrastructure and faculties. So, instead of fixing all that and improving the overall standards of the institutes, AICTE has made it convenient for the ‘bad’ institutes to stay ‘bad’, as their market has been expanded.
Of the 3,000 engineering colleges in India, let’s assume that each institute has 600 seats, which means a total of 1.8 lakh engineering seats are available in the country, of these government colleges have less than 40,000 seats. Now, the number of aspirants is about eight lakh students considering the students appearing for the AIEEE. The students among the top 35,000 in the entrance examination have a chance of getting admission in a well-reputed government institution. Those within the top 100,000 can find seats in excellent to acceptable government or private colleges. The last remaining 80,000 seats could be filled up by those students who are willing to take risks.
This is the situation with the national entrance test when the cut off is 50 per cent. Now, since the eligibility criterion is lowered, the question is, will there be more seats available for the new eligibles? The government has an answer to that stating that it is going to start second shifts in institutes wherever required. This is a good solution to the scarcity of infrastructure. But the government doesn’t have an answer on the quality of the faculty members.
Even if all the students get their respective seats and the faculty problem is taken care of, the quality of the engineering graduates will still become aggravated. Most industries are of the view that only few of the engineers produced by India’s education system are capable of doing any real engineering job.
About 64 per cent employers in India are not satisfied with the quality of engineers they have hired. The skill gaps are predominantly severe in the higher-order thinking skills. This is based on a recent study done by World Bank on employability and skill sets of newly graduated engineers in India. It suggested that India’s education regulators need to gear the engineering institutes to replace the basic curricula with problem-solving and creative engineering curricula.
One of the most dangerous outcome of lowering the eligibility criteria is that once lowered, it would be difficult to raise it again because of political pressure. It was 60 per cent earlier but it got reduced to 50 per cent and the results of this can be seen in the dissatisfaction shown by the employers.
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