The engineering education scenario has witnessed a complete turnaround from two decades ago, when a huge number of students applying for admission into engineering colleges had to opt for other streams because of lack of adequate capacity. Today 300,000 seats in the country’s 3,393 engineering colleges with an aggregate capacity of 1.48 million students are going abegging.

Reacting, on March 19 the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex level accreditation authority for all ‘technical’ education (engineering, business management, pharmacy, hotel management, etc), announced a blanket ban on accreditations for new engineering colleges across the country from the academic year 2013. This is a volte-face from November last year when the council rejected appeals from the Maharashtra state government to freeze all accreditation applications to discourage the promotion of new engineering and business management colleges in the state. Quite obviously the huge unutilised capacity in engineering colleges countrywide has prompted a re-think.

However, despite 37,000 engineering and 20,000 business management seats vacant in Maharashtra last year, and the state government’s reluctance to allow promotion of additional private colleges, the bullish edupreneurs community is unfazed, judging by the number of applications for promotion of new colleges pending before AICTE. Currently Maharashtra hosts 750 engineering colleges (80 percent privately promoted). Despite this, AICTE has already received 30 applications for promotion of new engineering colleges in 2012. “The largest number of applications is from Maharashtra,” confirms S.S. Mantha, the Delhi-based chairman of AICTE.

As the apex-level accreditation authority for technical education institutions and courses, AICTE has been liberal in granting accreditation. The number of engineering colleges approved by the council has risen from 2,388 in 2008 to 3,241 in 2010 and 3,393 in 2011. In 2010-11, AICTE accredited the highest number of engineering colleges in Karnataka (159) followed by Uttar Pradesh (105).

Although old-school socialists with control-and-command mindsets approve of a freeze on the promotion of new professional education institutes when seats are going abegging in existing colleges, some academics welcome the intensifying competition which will force mergers, acquisitions and closures, in the public interest. Dr. Jeyalakshmi Nair, principal of the independent Vivekananda Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Mumbai (estb. 1984), attributes unfilled capacity in some of the newer colleges to the abysmal quality of infrastructure and faculty they offer. “In excellent institutions which give students value for money by providing high quality education, the demand for admission far exceeds the number of seats available. Competition between engineering colleges is in the interest of students and the public as it raises standards of education,” says Nair.

S.K. Mahajan, director of technical education in Maharashtra, concurs. “The demand for admission into colleges which provide excellent infrastructure, good faculty and placement record is rising every year. Students and parents are becoming more choosy and are not prepared to sign up with any college as in the past,” he says.

In the circumstances, a rising number of academics advise against AICTE shutting its doors and freezing new college applications. Dr. S.N.V. Siva Kumar, director of the SIES College of Management Studies, Nerul, Navi Mumbai, believes that AICTE has been ill-advised in imposing a blanket ban on new colleges. “AICTE’s mandate is to ensure quality of technical education. Therefore the onus is on promoter societies and trusts to draw up proper plans before promoting them. If they fail to do so, they have themselves to blame. It’s not AICTE’s business to protect sub-standard colleges which can be merged, sold or shut down. Imposing a blanket ban on new colleges will hit students in states such as Manipur, Meghalaya, UP and Bihar which don’t have a sufficient number of professional education colleges, very hard,” warns Siva Kumar.

But entrenched socialist mindsets die hard.

Jayanthi Mahalingam (Mumbai)

Differing aspirations

Even as Maharashtra’s populist political parties, especially the Shiv Sena and the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena headed by Raj Thackeray, Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s estranged nephew, have been deriving considerable mileage by stoking the sub-nationalism and parochialism of the majority Marathi-speaking people of the state (pop. 112 million), generation next has been quietly rejecting Marathi for English-medium education. A recent survey conducted in Pune indicates that the number of students enroled in English-medium private primaries has surpassed the number studying in government and private Marathi-medium schools for the first time. This despite English-medium schools levying stiff tuition fees which the city’s Marathi-speaking households can ill afford.

These numbers were revealed at a general meeting of the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) held on March 23, when the corporation approved its Budget 2012-13 in which the education board, which manages 294 primary schools in the city, was allocated Rs.252 crore. Currently, Pune hosts 165 Marathi-medium schools with 87,955 students and 202 English-medium schools with 96,322 students. While most private Marathi-medium primary schools are aided i.e receive government grants, only two English-medium schools are aided by the state government.

“What is interesting to note is that although unaided schools levy high tuition fees, most parents — even staunch supporters of the Marathi language — prefer to enroll their children into English-medium schools because of the reality that the best jobs are available only to those fluent in English,” says Medha Kulkarni, a PMC corporator. On average, the tuition fees charged by independent English-medium schools is eight times higher than of aided schools and 15 times higher than PMC-run (mainly Marathi-medium) schools.

Private primaries in Pune also offer Gujarati-medium education (two schools, 472 students); Hindi (four schools, 1,268 students); Urdu (10 schools, 6,470 students) and Tamil (one school, 10 students). The fact that one day the aggregate enrolment in English-medium private schools would overtake its Marathi counterparts in the city of the Peshwas, was clear to the PMC way back in 2002. This prompted the corporation to start its own English-medium schools whose number has risen to 46 with an aggregate enrolment of 5,373 students. “However, there is a large number of dropouts in PMC’s English-medium schools. An earlier study shows that of 3,299 students in junior KG, the number depleted to 127 by class VII in PMC-managed English-medium schools, either because of poor teaching, migration or lack of interest on the part of parents and children,” adds Kulkarni.

A typical case study of how and why even conservative families are enroling their children for English-medium education is provided by the Khedwala family comprising Yusuf, his wife Zainab and their son Burhan. Although Yusuf, a self-employed construction materials supplier, attended a Marathi-medium school while his wife went to a Gujarati-medium school, they have enroled their son in Pune’s top-ranked English-medium Bishop’s School. “I don’t want my son to study in any other than an English-medium school for the simple reason that English fluency will open up doors all over India and even foreign countries when he looks for employment. Marathi-medium education will confine him to Maharashtra. We cannot restrict children’s opportunities this way,” says Yusuf. Burhan is currently studying in class II and is already conversant with the internet and text messaging in English — skills which make his parents proud.

Although Maharashtra’s heads-in-the-cloud political class — including elected PMC corporators — don’t seem to be aware, the distance between sub-nationalist politicians and people’s aspirations is widening.

Huned Contractor (Pune)