Dozens of engineering colleges in Madhya Pradesh face the danger of shutdown in want of admissions to bachelor courses in various branches, including Computer, Electronics, Mechanical and Civil. Out of 211 colleges in the state, as many as 14 colleges could not even get a single admission while many others have only two to eight students.
After the admission process through online state-level counseling finished two days ago, there are over 41,000 seats vacant out of 78,000 sanctioned in various branches across the colleges. Out of 70 engineering colleges in Bhopal, only three managed fill completely fill the seats. There were no takers for 200 branches of various streams across 50 colleges.
Last year, nearly 50 per cent of total seats in engineering colleges remained vacant.
With no or just a few students seeking admissions, these colleges face the imminent closure, leading to loss of jobs for scores of teachers and employees.
Chairman of Association of Technical and Professional Institutes J.N. Chouksey said, “We did not get enough time for college-level counseling. We have asked the government to increase the duration for counseling to 10 days which will help improve admissions to colleges’’.
However, education experts and counselors believe that poor quality of educational infrastructure and reduced demand from the industry for engineers have led to this situation. Last year, only 15 per cent of students who completed engineering courses from colleges in the state manged to get jobs.
The reputation of engineering colleges in the state were affected by the poor quality of education imparted, resulting in students who are not competent enough to cope with the industry demands.
Interestingly, some engineering colleges, which also run MBA and architecture courses, did not have to face such a situation. There has been encouraging response from candidates for courses like MBA. Out of 20,000 seats, just 3,000 remain vacant.
Akhilesh Upadhyaya, a social activist involved in counseling rural students, said, “There is a general apathy among well-to-do students of state against the local colleges. Most of them migrate to big cities or Southern states for engineering as it helps them to find jobs easily.’’
“Most of the engineering colleges in the state are running on the scholarship schemes of the state government for Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and OBC students. So, except for a few colleges, they have not improved the quality too attract genuine, career-oriented students.’’
Madhya Pradesh is one among the six states in the country that houses over 200 engineering colleges. Tamil Nadu has 527 engineering colleges, followed by Maharashtra (372), Andhra Pradesh (328), Uttar Pradesh (296) and Telengana (284).