34,801 seats remained unfilled after the first round
In the thick of the admission season in Mumbai, there are
some colleges that bear a deserted look. The admission counter is open but there
isn't a queue outside that window. Pratap Institute of Technology and Management
in Washim is one among them.
When the first round of seat allotments closed, there were around half-a-dozen colleges
which did not have a single student opting to join them. Ironically, they have all
the popular streams on offer computer science, electrical engineering, information
technology.
Data from the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), which conducts admission
to engineering colleges in Maharashtra, revealed that 34,801 seats remained unfilled
after the first round. This is a 75% hike compared to last year, when close to 20,000
seats were vacant after admissions closed.
It takes two to reach a stalemate. While the private sector has been pumping in
money to start new colleges, experts said that with scant attention to planning, the
government has been extremely lenient in allowing them to open shop.
In fact, if one takes into account the management quota seats, as well as seats
in minority institutes, where admission is not conducted by the DTE, there are 1.27
lakh seats available. This year, merely 1.10 lakh candidates have applied for admissions.
Also, the state recently relaxed the eligibility criteria for engineering aspirants,
from 50% in Class XII (in physics, chemistry, maths) to 45% for general category
and 40% for reserved categories.
To date, the DTE has assigned seats to 68,769 students; in all, there are 1.04 lakh
seats. Some students were not allotted seats because their preferences did not match
the seats available. In most cases their scores were too low, and the options, in
terms of the course and the colleges they selected, were not matching, said an officer.
This year too, most students preferred to join colleges in cities as compared to
those in the states hinterland. Most of the new colleges that have been set up this
year do not have any students. Not one candidate has applied to join them, said
a source.
Each year, the concentration of colleges is going up in certain parts
of the country. The growth in technical professional colleges is uneven. Bad planning
coupled with poor quality of facilities at these colleges is resulting in poor teaching-learning,
said a government engineering college principal.
Courtesy: Times of India
