Parents and students appear to be disenchanted with the once-coveted engineering courses this year, leaving thousands of seats vacant in colleges in different States.
Supply is well in excess of demand in Kerala, and nearly half of the engineering seats have found no takers so far. The State’s oversight committee has decided to push all the vacant seats — around 16,000 — to the Non-Resident India (NRI) quota, providing the assurance of higher fees.
The situation is no better in Tamil Nadu. Since the first day of counselling through the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions, the single-window system for entry into colleges affiliated to Anna University, the number of absentees has grown. On the first day on July 23, as many as 558 (around 20%) candidates did not attend the counselling. The number doubled the next day and by the end of the first week on Friday, it had climbed to 2,320, (over 31% of candidates called).
Last year, on day one of counselling as many as 42.68% of candidates were absent. The number dropped to 24.70% by the sixth day.
In Maharashtra, 2.84 lakh students had applied for the Common Entrance Test held across engineering colleges this year, but barely 1.19 lakh took it. This time, the State has more seats, at 1.32 lakh, than students. Of those who took the test, 1.13 lakh are from Maharashtra and the rest, from outside. The Directorate of Technical Education said nearly 30,000 seats have been slashed over the past two years. In 2016, the total seat count was 1.44 lakh, of which nearly 45% went abegging.
Tamil Nadu’s past experience shows that there could still be some uptick in the numbers.
Medical seats question
Absenteeism is usually high in the initial days, because medical counselling precedes it, and those aspirants are allotted seats in medical colleges early on. But this year, with uncertainty over medical admissions, candidates have flocked to all types of professional courses.
The first round of counselling for 320 veterinary seats and 3,000-odd agriculture and allied course seats is over and almost all have been taken by candidates who could later move to medical colleges.
The second round is to be held after the Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University completes its counselling.
Also, students may have already chosen a management quota seat in a chosen college as their cut-off marks may prove insufficient for single window counselling.
V. Balusami, a professor at PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, says this year there was a marked shift to government colleges.
(Reported by R. Sujatha in Chennai, with inputs from G. Mahadevan in Thiruvananthapuram and Aditya Anand in Mumbai)