The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has granted approval to all the affiliated colleges for offering engineering courses in regional languages from the next academic session 2021-22.
AICTE is translating the online and offline content related to the courses in 11 different phases. However, the first phase plans to offer courses in 5 regional languages- Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali.
The introduction of regional languages in engineering courses is an step towards the implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 which emphasizes the usage of indian languages in education system.
This step will ensure that no students faces discrimination in higher education institutes due to the language barrier. Students who have interest in completing degree in their mother tongue will now have an option.
At the beginning of this year, AICTE conducted an open survey with around 83000 undergraduate engineering students regarding their language preferences. Out of this, 43.79% students showed interest in regional languages.
To study the results of this survey, a committee was constituted by AICTE to consider the possibilities of imparting the policy of technical education in regional languages for IITs, NITs and other colleges.
However, several IITs have expressed disagreement towards the use of regional languages for delivering courses due to the unavailability of trained faculties and lack of quality resources in this languages.
Across nine states in the country, a total of 14 AICTE-affiliated institutes are ready to offer engineering courses like Computer science, IT, civil, electrical, mechanical and electronics in regional languages.
The AICTE has informed that english will be a mandatory subject for students choosing multilingual engineering courses. The english language course will be common throughout all the 4 years.
It is also strictly mentioned that the scientific and technical terms used in curriculum will be used as it is and will not be translated into regional languages in order to maintain uniformity across different streams.