AICTE Relaxes Eligibility Criteria
AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) has now made eligibility 
for MBA and eligibility for Engineering simpler for students to get admissions into various colleges. This has been made possible as the council has lowered the eligibility criteria from 50% in Class 12 to 45% (in Physics, Chemistry and Math) from this year. This criteria will be applicable to Engineering, Hotel Management, Pharmacy and Architecture courses. The good news is that for the reserved category, the cut-off will now be 40%. This decision was taken in a meeting held in Delhi on 28th June.
According to chairman of AICTE, SS Mantha, after considering representations from all states, it was decided to make eligibility uniform for all. Last year in Maharashtra 22,000 engineering seats went vacant after the admission process.
On the contrary, there are voices according to whom, the lowering of cut-off will fill seats in colleges that have vacancies. But on the other hand, it will deteriorate the quality of students and also the quality of engineers and architects produced. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies there is a handful of quality engineering graduates in the country, who have the right technical skills like fluency in English, teamwork and presentation skills.
The admission processes for technical courses have started in the state and Directorate of Technical Education is waiting for the AICTE circular to implement the new criteria.
New Regulations for Part-Time Courses
From this year onwards, individuals having two years of work experience can join Executive Part Time course for Management and Engineering. Also, if colleges are offering both part-time and full time courses, they cannot hold evening classes for their full-time course batch.
These norms were introduced by AICTE for part-time courses working professionals on 28th June. According to S.S Mantha, chairperson of AICTE, earlier there were no norms to regulate part time courses and thus every college interpreted part-time courses in their own manner. Now all of them will follow the same rules.
The new regulations also state that the credits earned in a part-time course will equal a full-time course. Event the faculty break-up for these courses has been outlined 20% regular staff, 30% staff from the full-time course and 50% visiting faculty. The intake capacity of part-time courses has to be half of the full-time course strength.
Source: Prachi Srivastava (Shiksha Team)
Date: 1st July, 2011
