The Directorate of technical Education , Maharashtra State , was established in 1948 with Prof. J.A. Taraporwala, the Principal of College of Engineering, Pune as it’s first Director . The organisation is currently headed by Prof. N.B.Pasalkar.
The organisation is responsible for all major technical courses conducted in Maharashtra State.The courses include Engineering , Architecture , IT , Hotel management, MBA etc.The DTE comes directly under the Ministry Of Technical Education , Government of Maharashtra .
Various activities undertaken by the DTE include , admissions to the above mentioned courses, setting up of new institutions, keeping a check on the quality of technical education provided by the various universities in Maharashtra state, allocation of funds to government run colleges, appointments of technical staff in various institutions.Apart from these , DTE is to co ordinate between state run educational institutions and the UGC.
Of all these functions, the admission process is the one which has made this organisation famous as well as notorious. We are used to seeing the admission notifications of various courses under the DTE banner. ’’ Centralised admission system ’’ is the brainchild of the DTE. Under this scheme, all the government run colleges , irrespective of the university are pooled together for admissions throughout the state. Unfortunately this process also puts more pressure on the university which has more students and keeps those where there are less students without any work. There have been many problems with this scheme. It has been widely appreciated because, now a student from nagpur need not come all the way till Mumbai to get admission in a government college like VJTI. On the other hand, due to large number of students in cities like Mumbai , the admission for local students in the government run colleges like VJTI becomes more tougher.The end result. Some universities can not manage the total number of students and some are going with nearly 6000-8000 seats vacant.
Another function of the DTE , which has come under sharp criticism is the over eagerness of the DTE in sanctioning of technical institutions without proper evaluation. Many times it has been seen that the colleges have been sanctioned, though they lack the proper infrastructure. As always, corruption has not left even this department clean. Political pressure is always there. The grading of educational institutions is a major controversy. The founders of the colleges are politicians who call the shots in the administration of the DTE. So its a walk on the rope for the officials there. This over sanctioning of technical colleges has caused a great imbalance in the university system.There is excessive load on the university , when it comes to results. The bottom sufferer in this case is the student who has to wait for his results till eternity. The sufferer isnt the student alone. The fifth pay commission has increased the salaries of all the staff members of the colleges. Accordingly , the fee structure has also been revised , but, the staff of many private colleges in Maharashtra are still underpaid. It is the responsibility of the DTE to see to it , that the revised scale is implemented properly throughout the state.But this has not happened as yet.The reason. Colleges which should have been reprimanded are owned by politicians.
All this apart, the DTE has been doing a fairly good job in implementing the guidelines set forth by the AICTE ( All India Council for Technical Education) in terms of recruitment of technical staff in colleges and other administrative functions.But clearly a lot can be done to improve the situation. It has always been the irony of any state government organisation, that it can never function properly, if it has to evaluate the organizations headed by state government ministers, who are responsible for their appointments. So it would be really worthwhile if the DTE could function under the Central Government . This would ad some teeth to the organisation which has become a puppet in the hands of State government and its ministers.Until then the common student /staff of universities has to suffer.