As per AICTE’s new statement, the number of undergraduate seats will lower down by 1 lakh from the year 2018-2019. The colleges where the admission percentage is below 30% are asked to reduce their intake by 50% and the colleges which have failed to get any students, during this period, may have to shut down their institutes.

As per Indian Express, the decision to reduce the intake in courses with poor admissions by half from the next academic year is aimed at addressing the demand-supply mismatch.

AICTE Chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe told The Sunday Express:

“We received several representations from institutes that risked closure because of the announcement. They sought two years to plug the gaps in order to improve their admissions. We have agreed partially. While programmes with poor student intake will not be shut down immediately, we will cut down their sanctioned strength by 50 per cent,”

Related Facts as per AICTE's data:

• Engineering makes up 70 percent of the technical education seats in India.
• Management (MBA), pharmacy, computer applications (MCA), architecture, town planning, hotel management and ‘applied arts and crafts’ form the rest.
• There are 15.5 lakh BE/BTech seats in 3,291 engineering colleges across the country, over half (51 percent) were vacant in 2016-17,

The council has also decided to keep a check for the establishment of new colleges. The applicants must first get “No Objection Certificate” from the state government, which will highly rely on current market status, job opportunity, future trends and other such deciding factors if they plan to establish their new college.

The reason why AICTE took such bold decision is the decline in the number of applicants for UGC courses in past years. Last year, in the session 2017-2018, around 51% of seats were vacant. And the reason for such decline is poor infrastructure facility, meager placement record and deliberately disregarding regulations shown by the higher institute officials.

The council’s decision in a way is valid as it will narrow down student’s choice to colleges and increase the quality of knowledge imparted in these colleges, The number of new engineering institutes is at an all-time low (30 last year), while the number of closed colleges, 49, has set a new record.