Many Seats Vacant in Engineering Colleges in the Country- 2012 admissions

Many Seats found Vacant in Engineering Colleges

Surprising as it might sound, a large number of engineering colleges are vacant.

In Gujarat, an estimated 7,000 engineering seats, reserved for diploma engineering students to pursue engineering degree courses, are likely to remain vacant. The process of granting final admissions will be undertaken soon in the first week of August. ACPC officials said that many branches of engineering are expected to take a beating with seats likely to go vacant in the absence of interested students.

Similarly, after third round of online counseling by Punjab Technical University, around 15,000 seats are vacant in Punjab's engineering colleges. Sources informed, PTU head had removed all restrictions pertaining to any types of quotas in the third counseling and the only criterion was All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) merit.

Jadavpur University (JU) and Bengal Engineering and Science College (BESU) also had gone 175 unoccupied even after the end of the third round of JEE counseling. Last year too, there had been vacant seats in both the institutions. However, what has come as a surprise to many is the increase in the unoccupied seats. Last year, 60 seats were vacant at JU. This time, it has jumped to 115. Similarly, at BESU, the number of unoccupied seats has jumped from 32 to 55.

In Mumbai, this year too, up to 40,000 seats are likely to go vacant in engineering institutes. Around 2.8 lakh students had appeared for the engineering subjects (physics-chemistry-mathematics: PCM) in MHT-CET this year. Of them, only 1.2 lakh students have registered for the engineering admissions, while there are a total of 1.48 lakh seats in 363 engineering colleges in the state. According to an official from the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), the numbers of seats is likely to go up by at least 5% under the tuition fee waiver scheme (TFWS).

In Odisha too, after the declaration of the final allotment by the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE), the vacancies in the engineering colleges shot up to an all-time high. Out of the 46,000 engineering seats available under the OJEE, the final allotment showed only 17,242 students finalizing seats in the engineering colleges. Infact, there was a huge withdrawal that saw the allocated seat numbers dip further. Over 28,500 seats have remained vacant this year, more than the last year’s 25,000.

Tamil Nadu State has 502 engineering colleges and 22 schools which admissions are through counseling through TNEA. More than 40,000 seats fell vacant under the government quota and about 25,000 under management quota. Therefore, AICTE is thinking of freezing the number of institutions from 2014 as states like TN and AP have breached the 500 mark.

In Maharashtra also, there are over 50,000 engineering seats yet to be filled. These seats will now be filled at institute level across state. However, experts feel that around 30,000 engineering seats will go vacant this year.

The number of engineering colleges has risen four-fold in the country in the past six years — up from about 1,500 in 2005-06 to 6,043 in 2010-11. The increased number of colleges has led to huge seat vacancies too.

“The vacancies have mostly been seen in certain branches like production, instrumentation and construction engineering. But there is a huge demand for seats in civil and mechanical engineering, computer science and electronics.”