WOMEN COLLEGES-ANDHRA PRADESH

Andhra Pradesh will add 100 more new engineering colleges in 2008, likely to be sanctioned form this academic year, about 30 are expected to be exclusively for women.The State already has 338 engineering colleges with a pool of 1.2 lakh seats. With the addition of new colleges, the number of engineering seats will touch 1.5 lakh.Apart from the growing preference of women for engineering courses, AICTE’s decision to relax rules for setting up women’s engineering colleges as a step towards women’s empowerment, had managements and societies queuing up before it with applications.The AICTE increased the intake of seats from 60 to 90 per branch in women’s engineering colleges and also relaxed the infrastructure norm of 10 acres of land to five acres as special concession.