Continuation of at least six self-financed engineering colleges in Anna University’s Tiruchi region hinges on the extent of admission of students in the fourth round of Tamil Nadu Engineering Counselling for which the provisional allotment will be published on October 28, it is learnt.
Barring the Anna University- BIT Campus in Tiruchi, several seats in the counselling process were not filled in most of the other colleges in the region in the earlier three rounds of counselling. The trend of admission has not been encouraging in the University's four constituent colleges as well - at Tirukuvalai in Nagapattinam district, Panrutti in Cuddalore district, Pattukottai in Thanjavur district, and in Ariyalur district, sources said.
Colleges in Tiruchi, Pudukottai, Perambalur, Ariyalur, Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam and Cuddalore districts come under Anna Unviersity's Tiruchi region.
A number of self-financing colleges reportedly bank on the scholarship accruing from the admission of first-generation and Scheduled Caste students. The practice of these colleges has been to identify potential candidates early on and guide them to make their choices in the counselling process. A first-generation graduate is entitled to a scholarship to the tune of ₹ 20,000 per year, and an SC student gets as much as ₹ 70,000 per year, under various heads. However, some of the colleges have not been able to mobilise these categories of students also.
In recent years, one engineering college was closed due to lack of patronage and another is on the verge of closure. In the absence of admissions, it is mandatory for the colleges to apply for Progressive Closure. Only the existing students will permitted to complete the course.
Unlike in previous years, the number of students with good cut-off marks has also been low this year. For instance, there were only 12,263 students for the first round of counselling with cut-off between 199.667 and 175. Likewise, there were only about 23,000 students who had qualified for the second round of counselling with cut-off between 174.75 and 145.5. Last year, there were about 35,000 students in the second round of counselling.
Most of the seats in the self-financing colleges in central districts had hoped to fill the seats this year only in the third and fourth rounds of counselling, sources said.
According to a functionary of a private college management, institutions cannot sustain without proper admissions for two continuous years.
On an average, an engineering college requires not less than ₹ 25 lakh per month to cover costs of salaries, electricity, consumables, and other expenditure, leave alone the money required to service bank loans. In the absence of admissions, closure becomes inevitable, he said.
