AICTE: Corporate companies to start Engg Colleges

Four corporate companies to start new engineering colleges across India with All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), New Delhi permission.

AICTE has received the applications from four corporate companies namely, Madras Cements from Tamil Nadu, Bharat Forge from Maharashtra, TechMahindra from Andhra Pradesh and, a company from Jharkhand.

AICTE chairman S S Mantha, said "A total of four companies have applied in the first year. A decision will have to be taken soon,"

"We want industries to participate in the process of delivering quality education. We genuinely feel that the industry should participate more than they are doing now. An initiative like this is a step in that direction. It will facilitate introduction of best practices of the industry," he said.

Earlier, the industry was only involved in organising lectures and specific projects at AICTE-approved technical colleges.

The AICTE's decision to allow a private limited or public limited company or industry, with a turnover of Rs 100 crore each year for the past three years, to start an under-graduate, post-graduate or diploma institute, is aimed at addressing the corporate sector's complaints that students graduating from technical institutes are not industry-ready or employable.

A V Dharmakrishnan, chief executive officer, Madras Cements, said: "Madras Cements currently has schools across its factories in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. We also have a polytechnic institute from where we recruit. The only missing link is an engineering institute.

We need a lot of manpower and we felt that this is the right time to start an engineering college as we already have the expertise. The construction of the college building has started and AICTE officials have inspected the site. We are expecting approval soon."