Wednesday, 27 June 2018

As much as 50% of engineering seats remain vacant; Centre asks IIT-Delhi for help

As much as 50% of engineering seats remain vacant; Centre asks IIT-Delhi for help

To help alleviate the situation, the Centre has called upon the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Delhi, to chalk out a comprehensive plan for the coming decade.

In what has left the central government in dismay, according to data released by the All Indian Council for Technical Education (AICTE), out of 15.5 lakh Bachelor of Engineering (BE) and Bachelor of Technology (BTech) seats in 3,291 engineering colleges across the country, over 50% remained vacant in 2016-17. In 2015-16, too, half of 14.76 lakh engineering seats had no takers.

To help alleviate the situation, the Centre has called upon the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Delhi, to chalk out a comprehensive plan for the coming decade, which will ascertain current requirements in technical education, and suggest measures to match the same. In this endeavour, as reported by the Indian Express, IIT-Delhi will coordinate with IITs, IIMs, and NITs in each state, and prepare a draft national policy on educational reform within four months. It will also analyze job requirements in the industry, and predict the demand for technical courses in the near future.

In early June, the Joint Admission Board (JAB), which conducts engineering entrance examination for admission to various engineering colleges in India, in an unprecedented move, issued an extended merit list based on the directive of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD). In the first list, released on June 10th, 18,138 candidates had cleared the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE Advanced) 2018. However, as per the revised list, as many as 31,980 candidates cleared the test.
 
In a statement by IIT Kanpur, which organized this year's JEE Advanced exam, said, "There have been concerns expressed about the low number of qualified candidates in JEE (Advanced) 2018 as compared to previous years. Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, also expressed the desire of the ministry for increasing the number of qualified candidates so as to ensure that every category has at least twice the number of qualified candidates than the Number of seats." Now, more students have become eligible for getting admissions in IITs. 

No comments: