TN engineering colleges: 'Only 1% perfect’
COIMBATORE: Tamil Nadu may boast of 1,450 technical institutions, including 486 engineering colleges, second in numbers only to Andhra Pradesh. However, the apex regulatory body All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), has found that just one per cent of these institutions absolutely meet the prescribed standards. “Almost 99 per cent of the technical institutions - be it engineering colleges, polytechnics, MBA degree institutions, pharmacology institutions, architecture campuses or hotel and catering technology colleges - suffer from one deficiency or the other. The deficiencies are in varying degrees. In some cases, they do not have the mandated faculty strength for a course or some equipment is missing in the laboratories. We found this recently while scrutinising the applications of colleges seeking extension of approval, increase/reduction in students’ intake and permission to start additional courses,” a senior official of the AICTE, New Delhi, told Express. The AICTE ha...