Updated on: Tuesday, May 15, 2012
According to the findings of a study, “Liberalisation of technical education: Has a significant increase in enrollment translated into increase in supply of engineers?", conducted by Sunil Mani and Arun M. for the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), 50% of students who join the four-year degree course in engineering either drop out, or fail in the examinations.
This can be attributed to the dearth of qualified faculty which had its reflections on the pass percentage, according to Arun.
In 2007, when the intake was about 24,000 students, the actual number of engineers graduating was only about 9,300.
The pass percentage which was almost 90 per cent for 1991 intake, had started coming down over the years, and currently stands at about 55 per cent.
Since 2008 there has been a erosion in the pass percentage due to the fact that prior to 2004, 50 percent of the seats for engineering were filled by the government for a lower fee. With the increase in fee and control for admission passing to self financing colleges many capable students got left out.