In a first, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has roped in over 700 senior faculty members from premier institutions such as the IITs, NITs and other top government colleges across the country to carry out inspections in technical colleges affiliated to it, a move aimed at strengthening the quality of education in these institutes under the new approval process, said officials.
The AICTE released its approval process handbook for the period from 2024-25 to 2026-27 last month where it removed the upper limit on student intake for courses offered by “well-performing” existing institutions, provided the quality of education is maintained. Until now, colleges were allowed to have a maximum of 240 seats in one branch. The Council also allowed well-performing institutions to get approval for three years at a stretch.
While the Council has allowed much relaxation to institutes, it needs to ensure that the quality of education imparted and the facilities available are up to the mark.
“It is the first time that we have roped in faculty members from premier institutions such as IITs, NITs and other government-run colleges to do the inspections in terms of qualifications of the recruited faculty, the infrastructure, such as the equipment available in the labs and if it confirms to the experiments mentioned in the curriculum, what is the kind of curriculum and if it’s being adhered to, among others parameters. We feel deputing faculty from top institutions will help largely solve the issues,” said a senior official.
There have been instances of inadequate infrastructure and unfilled faculty positions with many institutes, which just increase student intake, but the learning outcomes have been below the mark.
According to AICTE member-secretary Rajive Kumar, the faculty identified for the task are all senior members not below the rank of associate professor.
“We got the faculty from these institutions on board for this exercise. The faculty members will be distributed in teams to carry out inspections in the institutes that have applied for an increase in intake or approval as such. The teams will give their recommendations, which will form the basis on which approval shall be granted, or not. This is an important step taken to ensure the quality of education in all institutes since there’s no cap on the number of seats anymore,” said Kumar.
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The Council has organised training sessions for these faculty members before they make the visits, the first meeting for which took place on January 1 at Bengaluru and was presided over by its chairperson TG Sitharam. A series of training sessions were scheduled in different locations till January 10 including Lucknow, Pune, Hyderabad Chennai and Chandigarh.
The sessions for these teams will be held in the virtual mode as well including AICTE officials who participated in the development of the approval process.
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