Kapil Sibal finally takes action on revamping of AICTE; Starts online approval system for new institutes

The AICTE is going to initiate an online approval process for setting up new technical education institutions from January 10. The AICTE will grant approval to only MBA and MCA courses to be conducted through the distance-learning mode.

Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on 7 January came up with a mixed bag for the technical education sector laced with a stringent approval and regulatory mechanism.

A new engineering institute will now be permitted to admit up to a maximum of 300 students (up from 240) and a new management institute 120 students (up from 60); management institutions will have a 25 per cent flexibility in allocation of seats among different disciplines of Post-Graduate Diploma in Management; they can have extended teaching hours and second shift to utilise their resources to the hilt; and they can co-opt for foreign experts on their Academic Boards.

Importantly, the land requirement criteria too have been relaxed giving a major relief to the institutes. Any applicant in a metro will now need to have just four acres of land (instead of five acres earlier) while those in the mega cities will need to have two-and-half acres instead of three acres.

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