Engineering courses that were once very popular seem to have lost their lustre. This year, some 26,000 engineering seats in state colleges are yet to be filled. According to the data released by the Karnataka Examination Authority (KEA), after the general casual vacancy round results announced on Thursday, 11,799 engineering seats were left vacant. According to Comed-K officials, after the first round of counselling 9,953 seats had no takers.
“Around 5000 seats are available under management quota. This means state colleges have more than 26,000 unfilled seats in their kitty,” said a representative of a private college. Many colleges have more than 200 unfilled seats. This list includes Shrinivas Institute of Technology, Mangalore (249), Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain College of Engg (201), Shridevi Institute of Technology, Mangalore (216), and Rao Bahadur Y. Mahabaleswarappa Engineering, Bellary (204).
A senior officer of the All India Council for Technical Education told this newspaper that several factors are responsible for the vacant seats. “The counselling process is still on. In our estimation this number may reach 30,000. Then, poor job opportunities and fear of recession are affecting the colleges. But as per our observation, there is still a great demand for engineering seats in some colleges. Students are paying up to `14 lakh for an engineering seat under the management quota in some colleges,” he said.
According to Prof. K. R. Venugopal, AICTE and the college managements must put in place a pragmatic admissions policy. The greed of college managements has led to this problem. “Every college is applying for more seats. This has led to this chaos. AICTE should consider local factors before sanctioning intake,” he said.