Chennai: In a move to ensure quality in engineering education, Anna University did not give affiliation to any courses in 10 engineering colleges this year as they did not have required faculty members, facilities such as labs and classrooms. These 10 colleges cannot take part in the engineering counselling scheduled to take place from July 20 to Aug 30.Further, the university also took action against 54 engineering colleges by not giving approval to one to five courses for not meeting the norms.“Overall 431 engineering colleges applied for extension of affiliation from Anna University this year. After the inspection, we found 363 engineering colleges have fully complied with all norms and had zero deficiency,” Anna University registrar (in charge) V Kumaresan said.“Out of 54 colleges with deficiency, 28 colleges did not get affiliation for one programme while 14 colleges did not get affiliation for two programmes,” he added. As many as nine colleges did not get affiliation for three to five programmes.Meanwhile, four colleges did not pay the inspection fee and the university did not inspect them. These colleges also cannot take part in the counselling this year.Overall, Anna University granted affiliation to 417 engineering colleges this year. The 20 university constituent colleges will not go through the inspection process.The university is also planning to introduce several new measures to ensure transparency and make students informed choices in the counselling.“We will publish the 43,167 engineering faculty members’ details on the portal with the faculty identification number (FIN) and other details such as college, department. Students who are planning to select a course in the college can check the faculty members available in the department on this portal. This will help students to make informed choice,” Kumaresan added.The university also plans to maintain a live database of faculty members, and colleges and faculty members can give request to change the details if they hire new faculty or existing faculty join another college.During the physical inspection, the inspection teams handed over the reports to respective college principals to ensure transparency. “The physical inspection with faculty identification number has completely ruled out the fake faculty members this year,” he said.Anti-corruption NGO Arappor Iyakkam found that 353 individuals were working in multiple engineering colleges for the 2023-24 academic year. Following this, Anna University’s internal probe found that 2,000 faculty positions were shown with fake faculty members by engineering colleges for 2024-25. This led to several reforms in verification of details of engineering faculty members and physical inspection of engineering colleges.
