The All India Council for Technical Education is avidly encouraging colleges to pursue autonomy. Autonomy would allow colleges to frame their own curriculum, tailored to the needs of the industry in the region and also improve the quality of workforce the colleges produce.
The idea of autonomy has been in the works for several years now, as it has been found that in colleges which enjoy it results are much better than those affiliated to a university. The recommendation of the Kaw committee was to make all colleges autonomous.
During his first meeting after taking over as AICTE chairman, Anil Sahasrabudhe had dwelt extensively on the issue.
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On Friday, Dr. Sahasrabudhe and other senior council officials held a meeting in Chennai with officials of private engineering colleges in the southern states.
The meeting included Vice-Chancellors from private engineering institutions from the southern region, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Karnataka.
Dr. Sahasrabudhe, who presided over the meeting, emphasised that the council would not be just a regulating body but also a mentoring institution. The aim was to involve stakeholders in improving engineering education in the country.
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The focus was to make students industry-ready. For this it was imperative to strengthen the teacher-student ratio and scaling their qualifications. There was also need to improve engineering pedagogy and offer technology-driven training for faculty.
Institutes have been recommended to reduce the teacher-student ratio from 1:20 to 1:15 and that at the associate professor level colleges could appoint candidates with Ph.D degree. An official of a private college said with not enough Ph.Ds in engineering subjects it would take time to achieve the target set by the council.
Dr. Sahasrabudhe also dwelt on innovation and research and development at the college-level.