Saturday, Jun 01, 2002
Saturday, Jun 01, 2002 |
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Tamil Nadu
By K.Ramachandran
With only weeks to go weeks before engineering admissions begin, the concern among educators as well as college managements is whether last year's problem of 13,000 seats going unfilled will recur. But the large vacancy led to at least one positive fallout - a competition among colleges to improve conditions and facilities for students. Thus, the factor that will weigh on the minds of all engineering aspirants and their parents is `value addition' which individual colleges promise to offer in B.E/B.Tech courses. Tamil Nadu has 220 engineering colleges. Besides the Anna University and its constituent institutions (which, till recently, were government colleges), the State has about 205 self-financing institutions, offering more than 60,000 seats. About 40,000 of them would come under the single-window admission system, the rest being minority, management and NRI quotas. Last year, the problem of plenty was compounded by the All-India Council for Technical Education approving at the last minute the opening of 55 new colleges, that too after counselling had started. In the earlier years also, the Centre, to quote a senior Anna University professor, thrust on the States a large number of seats in electronics and computer-related courses during the IT boom period. These days the glamour of many an engineering discipline is waning fast, especially of IT-related courses, though academicians assert that this is a wrong perception. The nationwide recession and lack of job opportunities are having their effect. These factors, along with the prohibitive cost of technical education, is bound to weigh on the minds of students and their parents. The possibility of an increase in seats and courses in the existing colleges is also high, although the AICTE and the State Government have not fully resolved their disputes on this score.
Row over fee
It is this scenario that colleges as well as the Anna University face as the biggest challenge. Having invested crores of rupees in buildings, laboratories and other infrastructure, managements have started worrying about this year's prospects. The committee for revising the engineering fee structure is expected to give its recommendations within a fortnight to the Government, which, in turn, has to notify the new fee structure before admissions begin. Colleges seek a substantial fee increase. They argue that when many `payment' category seats remain unfilled, they will not be are able to maintain their institutions by merely filling free seats. They want the fee to be fixed at Rs.30,000 and Rs.60,000 for the two categories. More than that, the colleges are competing with each other to offer `value addition' in the form of extra computer hours, Internet connectivity, personality development courses and facilities such as snacks, improved bus transport, gymnasia and extra-curricular activities. The monolithic Anna University, to which all 220 colleges are affiliated to, also faces the problem of monitoring quality in these institutions. Even university insiders concede that the job cannot be done from Chennai. ``We may need some regional units of the university headed by competent people, who can connect the institutions to the university so that the latter does not remain an examination conducting body, but acts as a facilitator of quality technical education,'' says a head of department.
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