In the final year examinations conducted last year for the engineering students in various colleges recognized by the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala, only 46 per cent of the students cleared the examination. In the previous year 56 per cent students had cleared the final year examination. When we consider the engineering colleges individually, the situation is more shocking. There are colleges where just three out of the sixty seven passed and the previous year it was 12 out of 61. In another college, only one out of 64 managed to clear the final examination.

It is an urgent requirement that our government and different regulatory bodies in higher education take necessary steps to bring about a solution.

Increasing number of self financing engineering colleges

In a small state like Kerala, there are as many as 150 engineering colleges, and it is even difficult to calculate the exact number as it keeps on increasing every day. Out of this more than 100 of them fall in the self financing category. There are about 60,000 engineering seats in all these colleges and about 10,000 of the seats remain unfilled every year.

This is a result of the desire of every parent in the state to make their child either an engineer or doctor. Such desire is not backed by the rationality of merit. So with so much demand, many of the business men and even the so called trusts came forward to set up engineering colleges. It is now considered as a lucrative business in Kerala, with good return on investments. It doesn’t mean that every college fall into this category and there are engineering colleges set up by individuals and trust with whole lot of commitment towards the society. Such institutions are few in number and they operate for the betterment of the society by imparting quality education. They consider education as a service rather than business and they consider it as their mission. There are many other government run and government aided colleges in the state which cater to the need for quality engineers.

Lack of proper infrastructure and faculty

There are even self financing colleges which do not have the basic requirements such as proper infrastructure, quality faculty and the proper atmosphere for learning. More over there are instances where the engineering colleges are put for sale.

The ultimate result is that more than 33 per cent of the students from self financing colleges end up without obtaining an engineering degree. The worst of it is that those students who are weak in mathematics manages to get an engineering admission somehow and they will fail in examinations and ultimately end up with more than 80 per cent of the subjects as backlogs. Such students will never earn the engineering degree and the four years they spend in the college is a waste of time and resource. In many of the cases, parents pay the heavy tuition fees by taking bank loans (education loans in most cases paid by parents) and by mortgaging assets. Finally the money that is spent and the time spend for the engineering studies become a total waste.

Steps taken by the Higher Education Department

Of late, the higher education department of the state has come up with steps to enhance the quality of engineering education in various self financing colleges across the state. With the remarks made by the High Court of Kerala which are critical in nature, the state government and the board were forced to take steps to ensure quality is maintained in the case of self financing colleges. The court had blamed the state government and the AICTE for the deteriorating quality in the self financing colleges, where they were responsible for awarding sanction for setting up these many number of colleges across the state.

The High Court has directed the State government to strictly adhere to the norms and regulations by the AICTE while granting no objection certificates for starting engineering colleges in the state. As a result the department of higher education has issued an order which sets out conditions for extension of approval and sanctioning approval in the case of self financing colleges. The department is asked to consider the factors such as infrastructure and faculty while giving sanction to self financing engineering colleges.

Even though the increase in the number if engineering colleges in the state has increased the accessibility to engineering education, it has made a negative impact in terms of quality. The expert committee set up bythe government has prepared a list of suggestion to be followed to regulate the growth of self financing colleges in the state. The suggestions were made taking into account the interests of the students too.

Based on the suggestion made by the committee, the higher education department has decided to extend the approval of self financing engineering colleges in the state in 2012-2013. The department has made it clear that from 2013 to 2014 the extension of approval will be based on minimum average pass percentage. It is suggested that there should be a minimum pass rate of 25%, 30% and 35% respectively in the 4th, 6th and 8th semesters during 2013to 2014. And during 2014 to 2015, it should be 30%, 35%, and 40% respectively.

The managements concerns

However the managements don’t seem to be unhappy with the kind of urgency at which the department is trying to implement the recommendations made by the committee. The management representatives say that it is not fair to blame the management alone for the decline in quality of education in self financing engineering colleges. They say that they are giving admission to students who have been allotted by the government on the basis of the performance in the entrance examination conducted by the state government. The managements say that the students fail even after sincere efforts are being made by them.

Improving the quality of education in self financing engineering colleges require strong intervention from the part of the government, which will not neglect the interest of the students and will also consider the issues raised by the managements.