Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) : Not all institutions offering engineering and management courses attract students like the premier colleges to which students make a beeline. This was once again proved when a whopping 221 institutions of technical education across the country applied to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) for closure from the coming academic year.
In the last five years, the apex regulatory body for technical education had permitted the closure of 507 institutions — 122 in 2016-17, 125 in 2015-16, 77 in 2014-15, 111 in 2013-14, and 72 in 2012-13, according to a senior AICTE official.
In Tamil Nadu, there were 30 closures in the last five years — 12 each in 2014-15 and 2015-16 and three each in 2013-14 and 2016-17. In 2012-13, no institution was closed down in the State.
On the other hand, the AICTE received 477 online applications to open new institutions. There were also 10,337 online applications for extension of approval from existing institutions.
Information in this regard, specific to Tamil Nadu and separate figures for engineering and management colleges, were not immediately available, the official said.
Commenting on the scenario, T D Eswaramoorthy, secretary of All India Federation for Self-financing Technical Institutions, said, “In the last couple years, a large number of technical institutions in Telangana were closed as the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University is following rules strictly.”
“In other parts of the country, the majority of colleges closed were part of groups. Some managements had opened many colleges to overcome the earlier restrictions on the number of students a college could admit… The promoter of a technical institution has to spend around Rs 25 crore in the first four years. The break-even point can be reached only in the 12th year,” he added.
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