EDUCATION

Demand for seats falls even as the AICTE cracks the whip on errant engineering colleges to fall in line

All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) chairman Anil D. Sahasrabudhe is ringing a warning bell for the country’s engineering colleges well ahead of the start of academic year 201617. “At least 100,000 seats of the close to 1.7 million seats for engineering will cease to exist. Over 100 colleges across the country will shut down even as 200 new colleges opened in 201516,” he cautions. The ‘dropout rate’ is likely to climb as more colleges opt for progressive closure—stopping admissions while marking time for existing batches in different years of the fouryear course to pass out of their portals.

Early trends also indicate a perceptible fall in demand for engineering education in 201617. There are fewer takers for seats, particularly in states where colleges have mushroomed in the past two decades. In Telangana, 83 engineering colleges have been denied affiliation and another 35 slapped with notices to put in place labs and other infrastructure (according to prescribed standards), while another 58 have decided against renewing their affiliation to the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTUH), for 201617. Some of these colleges have already shut and a few have even leased out premises to private institutions or schools.

“The sudden closure will jeopardise careers as students will not be able to appear for exams,” says JNTUH registrar N. Yadaiah. He says errant colleges have neither applied for closure nor bothered to seek affiliation for those students admitted in past years. Meanwhile, this year just 63,777 students are applying for the reduced number of 79,705 seats available (dim job prospects and other more lucrative streams are cited as reason).

Among the upwardly mobile middle class, there is also a preference for the medicine stream. In Maharashtra, for the first time, a record number of 141,000 students preferred to appear for the medical common entrance test (CET) in contrast to 126,000 students for engineering CET. Consequently, in the 201516 academic session, about 64,000 of the 160,000 engineering seats were not filled in the state.

Ditto in West Bengal, where two of five seats remained vacant. On discovering that only 15,000 from a pool of 88,000 students who got through the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) sought admission through counselling, the state authorities diluted the norms—to the extent that anyone with a minimum of 40 per cent marks in the qualifying examination and a position in the JEE could seek a seat. Even after that, only 26,000 of the 40,000 seats were filled. Reputed institutions like Jadavpur University and Bengal Engineering and Science University had to forego seats as there were no takers for courses even in niche areas like mining and metallurgy. “The manufacturing industry is unable to absorb engineering graduates because of sluggish growth. Graduate engineers are being forced to take jobs as technicians and supervisors,” says B.B. Paira, advisor, higher education, Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata.

Meanwhile, in Karnataka, which has seen six colleges shut down from 201617 in Bengaluru itself, college promoters are now eyeing the realty