Minister gives highlight of new bill on technical/professional colleges

By our correspondent, Gandhinagar, 26 March 2013

Speaking after tabling the Gujarat Professional Technical Education College – or Institutes ( admission and fee ) Amendment Bill 2013, the Education Minister said that students from other states will be able to get admission in Gujarat’s self finance colleges in vacant seats, thanks to this bill. He added that enough care has been taken to see that Gujarati students don’t suffer.

“In last ten years, there has been 300% increase in degree, diploma, engineering, pharmacy, MBA seats in Gujarat. Students from Gujarat are not able to fill all these seats. In 2012-13, as many as 26466 seats stayed vacant, of them the share of self finance colleges was 25669 seats which is almost 90%. Therefore this amendment in section -7 has been made through this bill to allow students from other states to get admission on vacant seats,” he said.

“In 2001-02, there were total 136 government, government-aid and self finance colleges in Gujarat with 26720 seats. In 2007-08 there were 289 colleges with 47507 seats. In 2012-12 there are 642 colleges with 145451 seats. Thanks to this, the students of Gujarat no more need to go to other states,” he added.

“The amendment in section-10 in the bill is about formation of high-level committee that will announce institutes of high standards as Center of Excellence. Such institutes will be exempted from certain, or all rules. This will provide them opportunity to achieve the standards of IIT and IIM,” he further added.

“The amendment has provision that a few institutes that run best professional courses will be able to decide their fees independently. Such institutes will be selected by a high level committee very carefully, by applying strict parameters,” the minister said.