AICTE permits 14 engineering colleges to teach in regional languages

New Delhi: The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) permitted 14 engineering colleges to collectively admit over 1000 students in undergraduate programmes to taught in regional languages from the next academic year, reports The Indian Express.

It granted permission for select branches in which most of them are computer science, followed by electrical and electronic engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and information technology.

Out of the 14, eight of them- four from Uttar Pradesh, two from Rajasthan and one each from Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand- will teach in Hindi, while Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu will teach in Telugu, Marathi, Bengali and Tamil respectively.

This would be the first year engineering colleges going teach in 11 regional languages- Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam and Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi and Oriya- as per the fresh National Education Policy.

It was in November last year, the union ministry for education announced that they are moving forward to implement technical education in regional languages. The ministry had said that it would be implemented first in IITs and NITs from the 2021-22 academic year. But IITs aren't happy with the announcement, and most of them argued that since they admit diverse demography of students, it would not be feasible to offer B.Tech in several languages.

However, AICTE gave recognised colleges the option to offer courses in vernacular languages after consulting the result of a sample survey.

Prime Minister Modi had emphasised last week the need to develop an ecosystem of technical education in regional languages and translation of global journals to the same.

AICTE chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe told The Indian Express that they had already translated all available video lectures on engineering to eight regional languages on SWAYAM online platform, and translation to Oriya, Assamese, and Punjabi would also be done shortly.

Sahasrabudhe said that permission to teach in regional languages is given only to NBA (National Board of Accreditation) accredited programs. AICTE had finished SWAYAM lectures translation for first-year students and is roping in teachers to translate existing textbooks and related study materials, he said. It is also asking teachers to write their own texts in regional languages too.

He also added that the English terms for specific concepts in the material would be retained.