Colleges to cut 700 engg seats

Updated on: Thursday, June 30, 2011

The boom has clearly gone bust. For years, engineering colleges added seats in a frenzy. Now, they are rushing to shut shop.

Ahead of the admission to engineering courses, a dozen colleges have offered to close down departments — or take massive cuts in intake — as there are no takers. In all, the cabinet sub-committee headed by higher education minister V S Acharya has approved reduction of 700 seats, and has disallowed three Bangalore colleges from admitting students for the 2011-12 batch.

"While there is demand for all courses in good colleges, some colleges in rural areas are not able to attract students for some courses. Several colleges have offered to shut down information science, telecom and biotechnology courses as it is not viable to offer these programmes," S Vidyashankar, member, executive council, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), said. Of the 12 colleges, Bangalore and Mangalore have four each and Belgaum has two.

Three colleges — Nadgir Institute of Engineering Technology, Basava Academy of Engineering and Technology and Sri Belimatha Mahasamsthana Institute of Technology — will not be allowed to admit students this year due to insufficient infrastructure and inadequate faculty.

MK Panduranga Shetty, vice-president, Karnataka Unaided Professional Colleges Association, says with over 200 colleges and counting, it's a demand-driven market for technical education in the state. "If you do not have faculty and adequate infrastructure, nobody will go come to your college. Today, candidates and their parents are aware of which college to go to and what to study. They have a wide variety of colleges and courses to choose from. Colleges can no longer fool students about their academic standards — it's there for all to see," he says.

Last year, of the 76,000-odd seats, over 14,500 seats remained vacant in Karnataka. Three thousand seats went abegging in electronics and communications stream alone, widely acknowledged a popular course.

The cabinet sub-committee dealing with professional colleges on June 7 allowed five colleges — four in Bangalore and one in Mangalore — to start second-shift engineering programmes with a proposed intake of 780 seats.

Times of India

Colleges to cut 700 engg seats

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