The Kerala High Court directive asking the state government to close down engineering colleges with a pass percentage of less than 40 has come as quite a shock for many but the court has, over the past two years, issued many directives to both the state and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), to raise the quality of higher education in the state.
A seven-member committee was constituted by the court to verify infrastructure in self-financing engineering colleges.
The committee inspected 107 colleges. It concluded that most self-financing colleges in the state do not have qualified faculty. The committee pin-pointed seven colleges that had very poor facilities.
On July 29, 2011 a division bench headed by Justice C. N. Ramachandran Nair had asked the state not to issue no-objection certificates for starting new engineering colleges in the state.
In an earlier order the court had held, "Going by the statistics, saturation point has been reached in Kerala where probably no more colleges can be started with qualified teaching faculty members.”
In its latest order the court said: “It would not be in the interest of the student community for the government to permit more engineering colleges without ensuring instructional facilities.
” The seats available in the existing colleges also outnumber the eligible students, the court said, citing the report.
Commenting on the quality of the faculty, the committee submitted that those with science degrees are teaching engineering.
The committee, headed by Dr G. Rajendran and Dr N. Vijayakumar said that colleges under Calicut University were among the worse as they shared faculty members between different institutions.
The committee found colleges affiliated to the University of Kerala were short of assistant professors. This is a senior post but those with just two or three years’ experience were holding the post.
At MG University, B. Tech classes were being taken by teachers who had no engineering degree and teachers from government-aided colleges were also teaching in self-financing colleges without any contract or obtaining the consent of the government.
Besides, colleges had failed to post details about their institutions on their websites as prescribed by AICTE.
‘Faculty members who possessed a science degree were found engaged at engineering colleges. There were only three colleges under Kannur University. The inspection of these colleges has been postponed,’ the report said.