East Vidarbha engineering colleges to face student shortfall

Updated on: Tuesday, April 05, 2011

The new academic year, 2011-12, is likely to witness huge vacancy of engineering seats in East Vidarbha region, at least the latest trends indicate so.
Last year, over 22,000 engineering seats had remained vacant in Maharashtra, of which 6,000 were in Nagpur University lone. This year, the numbers might increase, sources close to the university's Engineering Faculty said.

Nearly 18,000 forms for Maharashtra Health and Technology Common Entrance Examination (MHT-CET), to be held on May 12, have been sold from the Government Medical College and Hospital till March 31, the last day of sale of forms.

However, about 16,000 were submitted, Liaison Officer for MHT-CET 2011 from Nagpur Division S M Parate has said.

Sources disclosed that there was a likely fall in numbers of forms submitted by about 1,000 compared to last year.

Last year, 17,150 budding professionals had applied from the city for single admission test for engineering, medical, pharmacy and veterinary science courses. In 2009, 16,086 candidates had applied for the exam.

"These figures are limited only for the Nagpur city. Numbers from other district headquarters in East Vidarbha like Wardha, Gondia, Bhandara, Gadchiroli and Chandrapur will be available after April 4," Parate said.

He, however, clarified that numbers might go up later as some students might have submitted forms at other centres like Mumbai, especially those in Outside Maharashtra state (OMS) category.

A host of engineering colleges were set to open from new academic year thus giving further competition to the existing ones that were already in the red owing to drop in student numbers.

In 2009, 83,000 seats in 397 colleges were available through MHT-CET which increased to over one lakh in 519 colleges last year. This year, the numbers of colleges, particularly of the engineering faculty, will swell further.

Apart from this, some autonomous institutes like VJTI and UICT in Mumbai conduct their own entrance exams.

Every year, MHT-CET attracts over two lakh students. But new colleges will find it difficult to get students. Many new colleges in Nagpur University had planned to close down some branches when they failed to get even a single student last year.

This year over 3.91 lakh students had appeared for state board's HSC exam from science stream of which 43,545 were from Nagpur division. The results will be declared by June 14.

East Vidarbha engineering colleges to face student shortfall

More Education news