Polytechnic education faces crisis in Telangana over proposed shift to Skills University

Telangana’s polytechnic education system is facing uncertainty following GO MS No. 97 proposing to move polytechnics from SBTET to the Young India Skills University. Students and staff have raised concerns over academics, fees, careers, cadre structure and ECET.

Hyderabad: For more than seven decades, polytechnics have played a vital role in producing diploma holders who readily landed jobs in companies or pursued undergraduate engineering education.

However, this polytechnic education, which has produced millions of technical and supervisory workers in the State, is now facing an existential crisis in Telangana.

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The crisis stems from the Telangana Congress government’s GO MS No. 97 to move all polytechnics from the ambit of the State Board Technical Education and Training (SBTET) to the framework of the Young India Skills University established as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) under the Shakti department (formerly labour department).

In addition to polytechnics, the order mandates bringing the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and Advanced Training Centres (ATCs) that are part of the Labour department under the YISU ambit.

Questions are being raised over the decision as ITIs and ATCs train skilled and semi-skilled workers, while polytechnics produce diploma holders for the supervisory cadre. In addition, polytechnics also form part of the higher education system, while ITIs and ATCs come under the Labour department.

In a series of protests, students across the State have demanded that the government not play with their careers and future. They expressed concerns over the proposed scrapping of the Engineering Common Entrance Test (ECET), through which diploma holders gain lateral entry into undergraduate programmes.

Every year, nearly 50,000 students enrol in the polytechnics and 80 per cent of them graduate with diplomas. Polytechnic students also expressed concerns about their academics as they have a 50:50 or 60:40 practical-to-theory ratio, while the ITIs and ATCs have an 80:20 practical-to-theory ratio.

Compounding the issue is fee fixation. Currently, the Admission and Fee Regulatory Committee revises the fee structure of professional courses. With polytechnics moving out of the higher education department ambit, the university decides the fees.

“Since the university is under the PPP mode, there is a possibility of exorbitant fee hikes. The government is trying to make diploma holders labourers who can work for private companies for lesser salaries,” said a student from Government Polytechnic Masab Tank.

Plans are on to move some polytechnic staff from the Technical Education department to the Labour department. Teaching staff have raised concerns over such a move, particularly pay scales, cadre and promotion levels, stating that polytechnics, ITIs and ATCs have entirely different cadre structures and AICTE pay scales.

“The polytechnics follow AICTE rules and regulations, and the syllabus here is released after approval from the NITTTR, which is not the case with the ITIs and ATCs. We sought clarifications on the concerns raised by students and staff from the government,” said Shravan Kumar Goud, general secretary, Telangana Polytechnic Joint Action Committee.

This decision also impacts SBTET, which was created in 1957 under the Technical Education department to handle the academic and examination systems of the polytechnics.

“We are unable to understand why polytechnics are moved from the SBTET, a successful institution, to the Skills University that is yet to have buildings and infrastructure in place. The country has hundreds of universities but there are hardly 20 Boards, and ours is the largest board among the southern States,” official sources said.