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The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has announced that corporates registered as non-profit entities under Section 25 of the Company’s Act, 1956, may set up technical varsities in the country.

Corporates may set up their campuses through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) or Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) models in 241 districts of the country which do not have AICTE-approved institutions at present. However no joint ventures will be allowed to set up an institution. “India is quality-deficit as far as quality manpower is concerned. Corporates can look for future expansion through this route and improve the quality of engineering and management students for the future,” said Sanjiv Marwah, Director, Era Business School.

J.K. Goyal, Director Jagannath Institute of Management studies (JIMS) seconded Marwah’s view saying that this would boost Indian higher education. He said, “The corporates will have to first register themselves under the Section 25 Act and then set up an institute. However, they cannot make profits out of it. The profits that they make will have to be ploughed back for educational purposes.” This is a great move by the government and entrepreneurs like Shiv Nadar and Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, should come forward to invest in higher education in India.

AICTE has also increased the number of seats in engineering and architecture disciplines from 40 to 60. The ceiling of a maximum intake of 540 students has also been removed.  According to Human Resource Development Minister, Kapil Sibal, this move will diminish the gap between demand and supply in technical education. However, sceptics pointed out that about two lakh seats in engineering colleges were vacant this year, and the increase in seats will not make a big difference.

Many academics also feel that the increase in number of seats may adversely affect the quality of teaching. “The government seems to be focusing on increasing the gross enrolment ratio. The quality of education is likely to deteriorate from here onwards,” said Marwah. But according to Goyal the increase in number of students has to be in compliance with the availability of infrastructure.

The land requirements to start a new institution have also been relaxed to 2.5 acres for urban areas and 10 acres for rural areas.

All PGDM courses will have to compulsorily be of 24 months duration. The Executive PGDM courses should be for 15 months. The admission to these courses will have to start only from April 1 of the academic year. Based on their areas of expertise, all the AICTE-approved institutions may pool with other institutions or industries and run evening courses to develop various skills in their students.

The new norm has also discarded the voluntary tuition fee waiver scheme of AICTE for 10 percent students and has made it mandatory for each institute to reserve five percent of its total seats for economically backward students whose family income is less than Rs 2.5 lakhs per annum. These students will not have to pay any tuition fees during the tenure of their course. The institutions will now also be able to run two courses in the same campus in order to facilitate optimum utilisation of resources. These could be architecture, pharmacy, management, hotel management and catering or engineering courses.

The minister also said that B.Sc. students, who have had mathematics at class XII or during their B.Sc. course, could also enrol into a second-year B.Tech course.

The institutes that complete a batch or more will be made eligible to run two courses on self-disclosure if they have adequate facilities and infrastructure. However, any violation of the norms by any institute won’t be under scan because of the lack of any measures to check the same.