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| Tuesday, Nov 07, 2006
No question of scrapping CET: AICTE chairman
"Supreme Court has made it clear that entrance test is mandatory"
Chennai: Despite the State Government attempting to enact legislation to abolish the common entrance test for admission to undergraduate professional courses from the next academic year, it seems the final word on the controversial move is not said yet.
"The Supreme Court has clearly said an entrance test is mandatory for admission to professional courses. As far as we are concerned, there is no question of scrapping the CET," Damodar Acharya, chairman, All-India Council for Technical Education, said on Monday.
The AICTE was taking steps to regulate the quality of engineering education, especially by making it mandatory for colleges to disclose their performance/infrastructure record while seeking affiliation, Mr. Acharya told reporters after delivering the convocation address at the 27th convocation of Anna University.
Several regional and nodal centres of the council were on the anvil; even retired professors were permitted to teach in engineering colleges to tide over the shortage of faculty members, he said.
In his convocation address, Mr. Acharya said though one million students were being admitted to technical courses ever year in the country, it accounted for only 15-20 per cent of students in the appropriate age group. The wide gap had to be bridged, and enrolment for technical education was likely to double in the next five-seven years.
There was a serious regional imbalance in the growth of technical institutions and capacity. While Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra accounted for 70 per cent of the capacity in technical education courses, many northern and north-eastern States showed zero growth. Also, there was an acute shortage of manpower in civil and mechanical engineering branches.
Anna University was planning to set up a technology business incubator, besides establishing zonal centres, Vice-Chancellor D. Viswanathan said in his annual report.
Governor Surjit Singh Barnala conferred degrees and diplomas on 65,280 students. A total of 55,842 undergraduate degrees and 9,242 degrees were conferred on students of the constituent colleges and affiliated colleges, besides 123 doctoral degrees.
Two distinguished alumni of the university — K.B. Chandrasekar, founder of the Anna University-K.B.Chandrasekar Research Foundation, and Sivaramakichenane Somasegar, corporate vice-president, Microsoft Corporation — were awarded honoris causa degrees.
Minister for Higher Education K. Ponmudi was present.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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