AICTE frames guidelines for engineering, management, other courses for working professionals

NEW DELHI: The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has issued guidelines for institutions to run Bachelor of Technology (BTech), MTech, engineering diploma and management courses for working professionals on Monday, for the 2024-25 academic session. Institutions with more than 80% average enrollment in the last three years are eligible to start the course.

AICTE has now raised the distance limit and said professionals living within 75 km radial distance are eligible for admission. Earlier, the limit was 50 km.

The institutions can start up to three courses and they can run the courses only if there is one-third students approved intake in each course. The institutions operating in the aspirational districts – as per the central policy think-tank, NITI Aayog’s latest list – and institutions belonging to Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh and states in the northeast region can also apply to start courses for working professionals.

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Professionals working within 75 km radial distance from the institute will be eligible for admission. The candidates need to have a minimum of one year full-time or regular work experience.

BTech courses

In 2019-20 the regulatory body had withdrawn the three-year engineering degree (evening programme) for working professionals but reintroduced it in the 2023-24 academic session.

AICTE member secretary, Rajive Kumar, told Careers360, “Now we have only two modes of education, one is face-to-face regular mode and the second is Online Distance Learning (ODL) mode. The concept is to help the working professionals to enhance their qualification, we introduced this concept last year only. This year, in the coming 2024-25, we have opened for all institutions.”

Kumar added, “It is important for the institutions to transparently display all the information like class timings. It should be on the mutual consent of the faculty, students and the institutions. For this working professional initiative, we have been getting a lot of emails saying it is a wonderful facility.”

BTech, management seats, syllabus

The approved intake varies with the programme. The seats for working professionals in each course are as given below.

UG, PG seats for working professionals

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The syllabus will be the same for working professionals as that for regular students and institutions will also follow a similar examination pattern. For the working professionals, too, 40% of credit transfer will be permitted through Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) or through the SWAYAM portal.

Admission policy

The institutions will have to follow the admission policy of the university or state. In absence of any such admission policy, the institute can devise its own mechanism for short-listing the eligible candidates based on performance in the qualifying exam and in consultation with the relevant state’s admission or counselling authority.

The institutions will have to follow the reservation policy of the respective state or union territory is applicable.

However, one seat in every institute shall be reserved for candidates working in the central government and its organisations, industries, companies and bodies. In absence of any such candidates, the vacant seat may be transferred to the general category.