State govt grants academic,financial autonomy to eight engineering colleges

Purani said that the autonomous institutes will prepare their own syllabi depending on what they wanted to teach to the students as per changing trends in the profession or requirement of the industry. They would also conduct their own examinations.

Another DTE official said that these institutes would have freedom to generate revenue from other sources like running consultancy services etc. They can also get financial assistance from central government’s “technical education quality improvement programme” (TEQIP) meant for autonomous institutes only. TEQIP grants,according to DTE officials,are huge and run into crores annually and have helped autonomous institutes in other states develop into centres of excellence. The official said that the academic standards of regional institutes of technologies in various states,including Sardar Vallabhai National Institute of Technology (SVNIT) in Surat,went up and became centres of excellence only after they were granted autonomy.

LDCE principal M N Patel said that earlier,he could neither raise money from its own sources to purchase lab equipments that were costly nor even make purchases for materials worth beyond Rs 500 without the permission from DTE,even if the college had the funds. “These restrictions retarded the academic growth of the college,” he pointed out. “With these restrictions gone now with the college getting autonomy,colleges can take decisions about overall improvements from equipping the lab to upgrade syllabi on their own,” said Patel.

He said that the Institute of Technology,Nirma University at Ahmedabad,developed into a leading technical institute because of its autonomy though it is just a decade old. And LDCE remained behind though it is 64-year-old.

But the state government would still be responsible for filling up teaching and non-teaching vacancies. Patel wanted the state government to ensure that all the posts lying vacant in these institutes were filled up at the earliest to achieve the target and raise technical education in the state at par with other states.

Gujarat was so far among a few states without autonomous engineering colleges. Southern states like Tamil Nadu,Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka accorded autonomy to dozens of government and private engineering institutions decades ago. This,according to academics in the field of engineering,gave boost to the growth and excellence of engineering education to a number of institutions in those states. But Gujarat,without any such initiatives,did not progress much on this front though it had engineering institutes like LDCE,the oldest among technical institutes in the country.

The government colleges that have been granted autonomy include Ahmedabad-based LD College of Engineering. Others include government engineering colleges at Morbi,Patan,Rajkot,Bhavnagar and Gandhinagar. The only grant-in-aid college granted the autonomous status is BVM College of Engineering at Vallabh Vidyanagar.