Mumbai: Even as the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has lifted the moratorium on setting up new engineering colleges after three years, only two new institutes will come up in the state in the academic year 2023-24. These institutes will be set up in Nandurbar and Pune, respectively.
However, many of the existing institutes will start new courses and divisions, especially in Computer Science and Electronics branches and emerging areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, Machine Learning and Internet of Things (IoT). On the other hand, a sizeable number of colleges are shutting down or reducing the intake capacity of core engineering branches namely Mechanical, Civil and Electrical.
AICTE had put in place the ban on new institutes in 2020-21 due to poor demand for engineering programmes and a large number of vacant seats across the country. But the technical education regulator continued to allow existing institutes to add new programmes in emerging areas. The ban was lifted earlier this year, after AICTE found the demand increasing, especially in core engineering branches. The council also eased land norms to start new institutes.
While AICTE approved only a couple of new institutes in Maharashtra in the current approval cycle, it allowed 90 new courses and 157 additional divisions for BE/BTech programmes in the existing institutes. At the same time, the council shut down 18 courses and 88 divisions in colleges across the state. This has resulted in an overall 5,820 increase in capacity for undergraduate programmes.
As for post-graduation (PG) programmes, 32 new courses and 42 new divisions have been approved, while 36 courses and 28 divisions face closure this year. The intake capacity is set to drop by around 990.
The Computer Science branch witnessed the highest growth with over 4,100 additional seats in BE/BTech courses and an additional 3,300-odd seats for emerging technologies. The capacity for Electronics and allied branches also shot up by around 2,175. The core branches of Mechanical, Civil and Electrical Engineering faced the highest number of closures with their intake capacity reducing by around 2,200, 1,800 and 480 seats respectively.
A similar trend is seen in ME/MTech programmes.
According to Dr Prasanna Nambiar, Principal, Don Bosco Institute of Technology, Kurla, the closure of core engineering branches and growth in emerging areas is being driven by the current market trends, where students find IT/ITES jobs to be more lucrative compared to infrastructure and manufacturing sector. "The students, especially those in cities like Mumbai, are favouring Computer and Electronics over core branches. The colleges are also happy to shut down the core branches because they require significant overhead expenditure on laboratory and workshop equipment and machinery," she said.
However, Dr Nambiar cautioned that the students are gravitating towards emerging fields without evaluating their employment scope. "Currently, our software industry isn't creating any products related to AI and Data Science. We are still a predominantly service economy. Many of the students enrolling in these emerging courses may not find jobs according to their expectations," she said.
