AURANGABAD: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has brought down the intake of direct admission to second-year engineering courses for diploma holders from 20 to 10% of the approved seats from the upcoming academic year (2019-20).

Thiruvananthapuram: The AICTE's latest proposition that engineering colleges swelling with vacant seats may start arts and science courses to overcome the crisis is unlikely to work out in favour of a majority of engineering colleges in the brink of closure in Kerala. Latest statistics show that 50% of seats in self-financing engineering colleges in the state remains vacant after the completion of admission procedure. While the state government is yet to make up its mind on the policy decisions to be taken to restore order and quality in engineering education sector, engineering college managements too have not yet been able to develop a long-term strategy for quality assurance and survival.

With more than half the engineering seats falling vacant every year, a government committee, headed by IIT-Hyderabad chairman B V R Mohan Reddy, has advised the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to stop setting up new colleges from 2020 and review the creation of new capacity every two years after that.

Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar has announced a 25 per cent increase in seats across educational institutions to ensure that the 10 per cent reservation recently given to the Economically Backward Section (EWS) does not disturb existing quotas for the sheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes. The changes will be carried out from the 2019-2020 academic session, he told reporters at a press meet held in the national capital today.