50,000 engg seats likely to go vacant

50,000 engg seats likely to go vacant

Mumbai: With supply outstripping demand for the engineering course, once again this year thousands of seats will remain unfilled. One in every three seats will have no taker.

The states Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) received about 1.15 lakh applications from students for around 1.62 lakh seats across engineering colleges. Though the number of seats in engineering has gone up by almost 7,000,the total count of applications has risen by only 2,000 compared to last year.
The growth of new engineering colleges has been rather lukewarm, but the number of candidates interested in pursuing these courses is growing at an even slower pace.

Last year, too, the story was not different. This time around, close to 50,000 seats are likely to go vacant. The figure is equivalent to the entire capacity of engineering colleges in Kerala.
The irony is that there is still a huge demand for seats in top colleges, a DTE official said. But students no longer want to go to institutes that are poorly run the ones that do not have enough teachers and quality faculty.

Poor placements in such institutes force many students to opt out. The situation in the state could have been worse if not for a new norm.

This year for the first time, chemistry has been made optional, a DTE official said. Students could have chosen either chemistry, biology or other vocational courses to meet the eligibility cut-off of 45%.There is a slight increase in applications as more students are now eligible with the new norm. 

The situation across the country is the same and of the 14,85,894 seats in engineering colleges,2,82,320,or 19%,remained unoccupied in 2011-12.Similarly,66,988 seats, or 19% of the total 3,52,571 positions in business management schools, were vacant last year, according to data from the All India Council for Technical Education.

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