All India Council for Technical Education’s Appellate Committee new chairman and Vice-Chancellor of Centurion University G.S.N. Raju said engineering colleges and other institutions affiliated to AICTE should give utmost priority to skill-oriented training programmes and internships.
Dr. Raju, who is also former Vice Chancellor of Andhra University, has been selected for one of the important posts of the AICTE, the highest authority to oversee the affairs of technical education in the country.
In an exclusive interview to The Hindu ahead of the beginning of the academic year, he spoke on the importance of training in digitl skills, in accordance with the guidelines of National Education Policy-2020. “The colleges that concentrate on digital skills would get more admissions,” he added.
“All colleges should give priority to the improvement of infrastructure. There is a need for many colleges to improve their infrastructure in accordance with AICTE’s new rules and regulations to avoid cancellation of permissions and approvals. AICTE’s appellate authority cannot help them if they fail to follow norms of the Council,” he said.
“It has been observed that some colleges ignore the appointment of faculty members. As a rule, each department should have one professor, two associate professors and six assistant professors. As the Union government is also keen on effective implementation of NEP guidelines, AICTE cannot ignore the continuous lapses,” said Dr. Raju.
He said that the colleges would get better ranking from National Assessment and Accreditation Council(NAAC), National Board of Accreditation(NBA) and other organisations when they followed norms in letter and spirit.
He said that the colleges would get better ranking from NAAC, NBA and other organisations when they were able to follow norms with letter and spirit,” he added.