30 per cent teaching staff in tech institutes may lose job

ANANTAPUR: About 30 per cent of the teaching staff may lose jobs in technical institutions as AICTE increased the credits for online courses from 20 to 40 per cent. Securing marks through online course in a semester in the BTech / BE course will be made mandatory from 2021.

Fake agencies and online courses are mushrooming during the pandemic. AICTE is encouraging students to take up Massive Open Online courses offered by foreign universities and private agencies.

Remotely proctored exams have already been allowed for many institutes to comply with lockdowns and social distancing. Tools are available for remotely proctored exams that can stop the exam within seconds if anything fishy is noticed,” according to an AICTE release.

The regulator has virtualized the scrutiny of facilities using video conferencing tools. “Institutes are asked to give AICTE experts a virtual tour of their facilities, which is being recorded along with the GPS coordinates of the institute,” according to AICTE officials.

B.Tech programme is a credit-based programme having a normal duration of four academic years, spanning eight semesters. The maximum duration for a student is 10 years.

Every student has to complete 140 to 150 credits for successful completion of the course. Earning credits in the core courses is mandatory for B.Tech degree. If a student fails in an elective course, he can obtain credit through online course; and credit transfer is done.

Credit is a unit by which the course work is measured. It determines the number of hours of instructions required per week. One credit is equivalent to one hour of teaching or two hours of practical work / field work per week.

Minimum learning credits for the award of B.Tech course : For the award of B.Tech degree, a student has to acquire a maximum of 160 learning credits by learning and practicing in  various courses prescribed in the curriculum within the stipulated time duration.

For instance, assuming the total credits stipulated for a particular specialisation for first-year B.Tech is 42; and the aggregate of bridge courses – mathematics (2 credits), Physics (2 credits) and Chemistry (2 credits) is six credits. Then, the credit standing would work out to 36 credits. In this case, the student has to earn 124 credits, including the credits of bridge courses to receive his/her B.Tech degree.

In the present scenario, 40 per cent credits are mandatory through online / ODL courses. For example, 150 credits have to be acquired y the student for successful completion of degree. 150 credits - 60 credits (through online) = 90 credits; in remaining 90 credits - 30 credits for laboratory examinations = 60 credits remaining for offline.

Private colleges sacked thousands of teaching staff during 2018-2019 wherein the teacher-student ratio was 1:20.  Now they are looking for a golden opportunity to retrench 40 per cent staff, observed Dr. Suresh Babu, AP Praja Science Vedica.

The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has released a set of regulations to improve the quality of engineering and management courses that are offered online and through the open and distance learning (ODL) mode.

According to these regulations, which were released on March 3, institutions that wish to begin online courses in technical disciplines will now need an AICTE approval.

Currently, several unregulated engineering and management colleges offer distance learning courses that are not recognized by the AICTE. As a result, the council decided to come up with the AICTE (Open and Distance Learning Education and Online Education) Guidelines, 2021.

A lack of human interaction is prominent in these classes. Online classes are not under the strict supervision of government or concerned authority. So, the degree or certificate earned from online classes may not be original and it may not be recognised by institutions looking to hire on the basis of degree.

The advertisement has been the major source of income for every online platform imaginable on the internet. Each and every website is trying to grab your attention and your views to earn revenue. This can be highly distracting if you are trying to concentrate on learning a completely new topic, Suresh Babu observed.