Engineering courses: Intake curtailed but vacancies rise

AHMEDABAD: Engineering courses no longer seem to draw a surge of applicants in the state. Despite a drop in the intake capacity by nearly 6% in degree engineering courses and 14% in master of engineering courses, around 50% of seats have remained vacant.
In 2018, the number of seats vacant in degree engineering courses was the highest in the history of Gujarat — over 52%.This happened after 4,629 seats were surrendered to the All India Council for Technical Education by colleges. This year, 63,848 degree engineering seats were available in the state against 68,113 in 2017. But the reduction in the number of seats made no difference to the vacancies. This year, according to officials, the lowest number of students were enrolled in three years: only 30,512 students took admission, registering a drop of around 23% over the 2016 percentage.
Interestingly, the data of the Admission Committee for Profession Courses reveals that 15% NRI quota and 10% management quota have been finding takers. Officials said that while vacant seats in the state quota — seats filled by the ACPC — were increasing, they were decreasing in the case of management quota. In 2016, 53% seats in the state quota were vacant; the figure rose to 59% in 2018. However, the percentage of vacant seats in management quota, which was 62 in 2016, dropped to 43 in 2018.
“This was an indication that students were veering to preferred branches in colleges of their choice even if it meant paying extra,” said a senior officer of the ACPC. As for Master of Technology, the number of vacant seats always remained around 55% over the past three years.
Janak Khandwala, the president of the Gujarat Technical Self-Financed College Management Association, said that there has been a steep decline in the number of engineering students over the past few years. “Reasons for the phenomenon can be the lack of good placements, high fees, faculty crunch, and the lack of good infrastructure in colleges,” he said. He said that there was a time in the 1990s when computer engineering was more popular than medical courses when there were no streams. “If one looks at the recent trend, the biology group is attracting more students compared to the mathematics group,” he said. “The trend is, however, cyclical in nature and is tied closely with demand.”