AICTE is one of the premier regulatory bodies for technical education in India. We are sure that you must have heard of the same. We will now in this article discuss what AICTE is in more details so that you get a better idea about the body.

We have already discussed about another body governing education in India namely the UGC or University Grants Commission. That has a different role to play but now we are talking about AICTE which stands for All India Council for Technical Education. It is a statutory body and a council that ensures the standard of technical education in India. It is under the control of two ministries and they are Department of Higher Education and the Ministry of Human resource development. The AICTE was started in the year 1945 which means even before independence.

Now that you have a brief idea about the AICTE we will move on to the other aspects of the organization. The main task of AICTE is to grant approval to graduation and post graduation degrees on some subjects. The AICTE has its head office in Delhi which is headed by a chairperson. It also has regional offices in all the metros of the country and some other cities.

The AICTE has an official website where you can get more information about the same. The AICTE was given a statutory authority in the year 1987. This was done to ensure that the AICTE becomes more powerful.

The main objectives of the AICTE are as follows:

1. To ensure that the design oriented teaching is given more importance in the institutes. This will give a practical angle to the study. Problem solving is also given a high propriety by the AICTE. The aim is to ensure that the student learns more from practice than theory. This is a very futuristic objective and really helps the students to perform better in life.
2. The second objective for AICTE is to ensure that the students are given more exposure to the industrial and manufacturing process. This will make the students more technical and make them successful as professionals. This will teach them how to implement the learning they are having in college.
3. The AICTE has another very important objective in its agenda. The objective is to ensure that the courses in the technical colleges include new technology in the syllabus. It also checks that the old technologies and theories are removed from the courses. This helps them to ensure that the students are at par with the latest technology. There is no point learning the old technology. When they reach the job market they will have to be aware of the latest technology. This indeed adds more value to the education process.
4. The last objective for the AICTE is to make the students all set for the professional world. The students are trained on soft skills. They are also made aware of how they should operate in the corporate world. The students are trained on communication skills so that they don’t face any issues when they reach the corporate world. This also gives them more confidence. Management education is given more importance in these institutes.

We are more or less done with the objectives of the AICTE. These objectives have been fulfilled by the AICTE quite successfully in the past. We hope that this prestigious organization will continue to do its role even in the future.

The AICTE has about nine bureaus. We will try to name some of them they are Faculty Development (FD) Bureau, Quality Assurance (QA) Bureau, Administration (Admin) Bureau, etc. Each bureau has been given a certain role to play and each bureau has a head. He is assisted by technical officers and supporting staff. These people are elected from the different institutes under AICTE and also from the government.

There were proposals to replace the AICTE with a body called National Board of Accreditation (NBA). Nevertheless, the AICTE still continues to operate.

If you are joining any technical course in India you must ensure that the degree is approved by the AICTE. If a technical degree for example an engineering degree is not granted approval by AICTE,  you might face some issues especially when applying for some specific jobs. Some people ask if MBA degree should be approved by the AICTE. Well the answer is yes. Even it is a distant MBA it must be approved by the AICTE. The AICTE also confirms the educational qualification of the teachers who would be teaching in engineering colleges. AICTE believes that a country can progress only when there is quality education. This is why the policies of the AICTE are aimed at ensuring best quality education.

We would like to state at this juncture that sometimes it so happens that a degree is approved by UGC but not AICTE, so what happens in that case. We will soon have a separate detailed article on this topic.

We hope that this article on what is AICTE will help you to understand the concept of AICTE better. This will also help you to understand how AICTE has helped the Indian education system. It is very strongly related to quality education. It is controlled by the government and is one of the most powerful bodies in India when it comes to education.