Coimbatore: Tamil Nadu tops the country in the number of technical and other universities, according to a recent survey by Deloitte and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The state has 59 universities of which 14 are technical institutions and contributes a significant 9.5 per cent of the total numbers in the country, says the survey. Andhra Pradesh takes the third slot with a total of 46 universities, behind Uttar Pradesh’s 56.
No state except TN has 14 technical varsities. It is followed by Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh with six technical universities each. Also, Tamil Nadu with 1,985 colleges has a share of 6.02 per cent of all colleges in India and is ranked seventh.
However, academics say that winning the number game does not mean topping in quality too. “We can say only about 40 percent of teachers are of high quality in the engineering colleges,” Prof. M Rajaram, vice-chancellor of state-run Anna University (AU), Chennai, told Deccan Chronicle on Saturday. The varsity has over 530 engineering colleges.
The Commissioner of Technical Education, Kumar Jayant, said: “In a huge gathering of college faculties, only about 15 people knew what NPTEL (National Programme on Technology Enabled Learning (NPTEL) is. NPTEL helps both faculties and students enhancing the learning, yet the faculties are unaware.”
He also regretted that many engineering colleges are ‘rampantly opening senseless courses’, which ultimately lands them in legal complications. “Some of the courses the colleges offer will not be treated as eligible for government appointments,” he said.
All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) advisor (Approval) M.K. Hada indicated that colleges did not have adequate number of faculties to teach, leave alone their quality. “Those without quality will go away. There are cases in India, where the AICTE have not given extension to even government run colleges, for want of quality,” he said.
AU V-C Rajaram said that the quality of faculty in TN colleges would be significantly improved soon, as they have taken up new faculty development initiatives. “The formation of quality improvement cells (QICs) in each engineering college is one such move to enhance quality of the colleges,” he said.
