Probable Mergers For Dying Colleges?

4633 courses and over 527 institutes have shut shop in the last 5 years in the country. In Maharashtra itself, 921 courses and 69 institutes were shut down in the same time period. These include colleges offering management courses, engineering, Polytechnic, hotel management, architecture courses, etc.

Thus, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is planning to merge two colleges that are in the vicinity of each other or even accepting proposals of buyouts. This is being done to resolve the issue of vacant seats in about 800 technical colleges. These colleges have asked the council to either postpone the decision on shut down for 2 years or allow the merging of such institutions.

While the council is seeking legal advice on such probable mergers and buy outs, this decision had come to shut down the non-performing institutions with less than 30% enrollments in the last 5 years. Employability and good quality education is what needs to be achieved and thus only the good institutes will be allowed to function.

The council will review all 800 colleges to give them an opportunity of hearing and if there are enough sources of revenue besides the fees and the institutions is able to maintain the student teacher ratio and pay the faculty according to the norms, the council will not shut them down.