123 institutes in state running courses not approved by AICTE

123 institutes in state running courses not approved by AICTE

Think twice before enrolling in a technology course — the institute might be of good repute, but does the specific course has the required accreditation? The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), in January, announced a list of institutes running unapproved courses. The list, available on AICTE’s official website, names more than 320 institutes across India. Maharashtra features highest, with 123 institutes, including Atharva College of Fashion and Art (Malad), Elphinstone College, ITM Institute of Financial Market (Navi Mumbai), and Vasantdada Patil Institute of Management Studies (Sion). According to an AICTE official, “It is not necessary that entire institutes have not been AICTE approved. But an institute’s name features on the list because it is running one or more courses that have not been approved yet.” S K Mahajan, director, Directorate of Technical Education, Maharashtra, said, “We are planning the required investigation and action on the institutes featured in the list. However, there are some institutes on the list without proper addresses, making it difficult for us to reach them. Even we do not know where AICTE got some of the names. Also, sometimes the unapproved course’s name is not specified. There are some institutes that have shut down their unapproved courses, after action was taken on 55 institutes based on the previous AICTE list. Some names have been repeated in the new list.” The Maharashtra Navnirman Vidyarthi Sena (MNVS) is planning a protest at the DTE on Tuesday. “The technical education minister had promised strict regulations , but there are no such regulations,” said MNVS leader Gajanan Kale.