10-year term soon for college principals

College principals are likely to have a fixed term of 10 years. The review committee set up by the University Grants Commission (UGC) has made this recommendation at its last meeting on Friday. If approved, all new appointments for college principals will be for 10 years. The principals can, however, have a second term of five years. At present, the principals retire at 65.

The UGC, in June 2010, had limited the tenure of the post of a college principal to five years in its new regulations for appointment of teachers and other academic staff in universities and colleges. The regulations on fixed term for college principals were opposed and the committee was asked to review the norms.

The UGC's regulations say that "the term of appointment of the college principal shall be of five years with eligibility for reappointment for one more term only after a similar selection committee process". In its final meeting on Friday, the review committee chaired by vice-chancellor of Delhi University, Dinesh Singh, recommended that the term of appointment of the college principal shall be of 10 years with eligibility for reappointment for one more term of five years only.

'Over 80 technical, management colleges closed shop this year'

Over 80 colleges in the area of technical and management studies have closed shop this year so far, with majority of them being management colleges, a top AICTE official said on Monday.

"81 colleges have closed down this year and out of which 50 colleges are of management and 8 are engineering colleges and rest in other streams," All India Council For Technical Education (AICTE) chairman SS Mantha told reporters here.

"Maximum number of colleges which closed down their operations are in Andhra Pradesh," Mantha said, adding that 41 technical colleges across the country wound up their operations last year.

When asked about the reason behind the closure of such a large number of management colleges, Mantha said that at present, only those management schools or colleges were being preferred that had tie-ups with the industry to provide practical training to students to improve their skills.

Currently, there are over 11,000 technical colleges including 3,700 polytechnic, 3,900 engineering and 3,800 management schools, operating in the country and bulk of these colleges are located in the southern part of the country.

Asked about number of new colleges coming up this year, Mantha said AICTE has received requests for opening up of 315 colleges so far, out of which 174 are polytechnic ones.

According to an estimate, about 25 lakh passouts from all ITIs and polytechnic colleges in the country while the industry requirement is of about 1.3 crore.

"AICTE has even launched a National Vocational Education Qualification Framework (NVEQF) to attract more students and provide them skill in different industry verticals to make them employable," Mantha said.

A significant part of this framework would be that students would be given multi-level entry and exit options to enable them to seek employment after Class XII, he added.