Drop in placement offers and increase in demand for skill-based education were the reasons there was a drop in students enrolling for engineering courses, said college managements at the summit of presidents and management members of affiliated and autonomous colleges of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) here on Monday.
H.N. Jagannatha Reddy, Registrar, VTU, said for the 2017-18 academic year, only 68.66% of the total engineering seats (undergraduation) were filled. As many as 37,139 of the total 1,18,272 seats were vacant.
This is a steep decline compared to the previous two academic years where about 72% of the seats were filled. The situation in postgraduate courses is “worse”, said Prof. Reddy. In 2016-17, only 46.74% of the 12,020 seats were filled.
College managements have also said that vacant seats were reported after the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) counselling as students had given up engineering seats after obtaining medical or dental seats.
Division-wise analysis
A division-wise analysis for the 2017-18 academic year revealed that the highest number of 78.5% seats were filled in Belagavi division. Similarly, the lowest seats filled was in Kalaburagi division (64.05%).
K. Jairaj, chairman, BMS Institute of Technology, Yelahanka, said there was dip in placements even in reputed engineering colleges. “The curriculum is not suitable to the current times and there is a need to transform the syllabus and include internship,” he said.
With college managements admitting to being in a fight for survival, faced with huge financial losses, Suresh C. Angadi, who is chairman of the Angadi Institute of Technology, Belagavi, suggested that there was a need to ease the procedure for closing down engineering colleges that are reporting losses.
While the All-India Council for Technical Education had said that engineering colleges with more than 30% vacant seats would be closed down, Rajendra Jalappa of R.L. Jalappa Institute of Technology said if the rule could be tweaked to closing colleges with less than 50% unfilled seats, it would help save managements from losses.
Objection to CCTV cameras
While schools have installed CCTV cameras as a security measure, students of engineering colleges have taken serious objection to this. During the summit, H.N. Jagannatha Reddy, Registrar, VTU, urged college managements to install CCTV cameras in classrooms and common areas. But students opposed it. “We are college students and there is no need for managements to keep an eye on us. It is curbing our freedom and we oppose such draconian measures,” a final year student said.
NBA accreditation
An issue that was debated intensively was getting accreditation for colleges from the National Board for Accreditation (NBA). While university authorities urged colleges to apply for it, the latter said that it was a tedious process and colleges were unable to get accredited by this agency. VTU also said that NBA accreditation was mandatory for colleges if they wanted to enhance seats, open new seats or for permanent affiliation status.
College ranking
VTU plans to conduct a grading of colleges region-wise to improve quality. University authorities also told affiliated colleges not to display self-styled rankings.
