12K SEATS TO BE AXED FROM COLLEGES

Over 12,000 UG and PG seats will be scrapped in professional colleges affiliated to JNTU-Hyderabad the coming academic year.

This includes nearly 7,000 B.Tech seats in private engineering colleges while the rest are M. Tech and M.B.A seats.

Reasons like lesser enrollment of students, failure to get required faculty as per norms have prompted several engineering colleges to revisit their plans.

Accordingly, over 80 colleges have sought permission to close down a few courses completely while some have decided to cut down on the intake number from the earlier 180 seats to 120 seats.

In all, 300 UG and PG courses are likely to be discontinued by colleges.

JNTU earlier instructed colleges to seek affiliation for the next academic year by February 25, but the date has now been extended to March 4. Last year, nearly 90,000 B. Tech seats were kept available under convener and management quota in government and private colleges.

This figure is likely to come down by nearly 10,000 seats by the time the authorities hold counselling to fill seats in various colleges based on Eamcet-2017. Electrical, mining, metallurgy etc. are some of the courses that colleges want to discontinue.

Meanwhile, most private colleges have decided to drop M. Tech courses from their list due to strict guidelines for compulsory Ph.D faculty for each of the PG courses.

Although colleges tried to seek an exemption, the university made its stand clear that it would not compromise on quality of education. Hence, several colleges decided to discontinue M.Tech study. According to sources, nearly 3,000 seats will be scrapped because of this decision. MBA colleges association president Kota Sudhir said one of the reasons was financial troubles. “Each month, it is becoming a problem to pay salaries to staff, meet other expenses etc.”