179 professional colleges shut down in India in academic year 2020-21, says AICTE

According to data released by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on Monday (July 27), 179 professional colleges, including engineering colleges and business schools, shut down in India in academic year 2020-21 due to lack of job opportunities and the lockdown imposed due to coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak.

The AICTE data showed that number of closures is the highest in nine years and is twice the number reported in 2019-2020 academic year. The AICTE data revealed that 134 more institutions did not seek approval from the government for fresh batches in this academic session, sending a clear message that the coronavirus outbreak has badly affected the higher education sector.

"A pragmatic shift in the annual approval process was necessitated and adopted by AICTE by innovating the entire process through a novel online mechanism for undertaking the scrutiny of documents and virtual visit of the technical institutions. The lockdown imposed due to the outbreak of COVID-19 had created severe challenges to all sectors of governance. AICTE converted the current crisis into grand opportunity by adopting e-governance mechanisms thereby reducing the costs with no travel and enhancing the reliability, accuracy and overall transparency of the regulatory process," AICTE said in a statement.

The approval process for year 2020-2021 was a considerable departure from the previous years on several counts. Due to the imposition and subsequent extensions of
lockdown, the approval process was delayed. It was initiated in the month of May 2020 and was completed in end Jun 2020. Moreover, the rigorous scrutiny which heretofore was undertaken physically at various regional offices was conducted via an online process," added the statement. 

AICTE said a total of 762 institutions reduced intake because of course closure or division closure, which means that around 70,000 seats will be affected in these technical schools. According to AICTE, 92 institutions were closed in 2019, while the number was 89 in 2018.

But the good news is that 164 new institutions got AICTE approval in this academic year and 1,300 institutions sought approval for increasing intake by a total of 140,000 seats. It is to be noted that AICTE regulates 9,691 technical institutes, including engineering and business schools, across India.