One lakh engineering seats go vacant in AP

The state, which was at the forefront of privatisation of higher education in the nineties has been at the receiving end since the boom hit the ceiling and colleges mushroomed in every state including Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.Adding to competition is the setback in the tuition fee reimbursement subsidy scheme in the state ever since the death of former chief minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy who introduced the programme for the poor, benefiting almost 27 lakh students at a cost of Rs 2,750 crore per annum in the shape of fee reimbursement from undergraduate to professional education. But the Kiran Kumar Reddy government has put several conditions of attendance, merit and also income ceiling to get the subsidy benefit.When YSR died in 2009 the Rosaiah government halted the scheme and huge arrears of Rs 4,000 crore in 2010 grew to Rs 7,000 crore in 2012, compelling the private colleges to seek Supreme Court intervention. The year 2011 was a turbulent period for students as the private colleges even withheld their hall tickets for final exams and released them only after court intervention.The Congress government’s dilly-dallying over the scheme has had a cascading effect. The number of vacancies which was only 40,273 seats in 2009-10 (an year after YSR’s death), rose to 76,310 seats in 2011 and has now crossed  the mark of 1,00,392 seats (1.21 lakh vacancies anticipated).

Engineering College ChennaiThere are 720 engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh with nearly 3.39 lakh seats.Six colleges in Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda, Nellore and Vizianagaram districts had zero admissions while 24 colleges had less than 10 admissions and some of these are in big towns.

Engineering IndustryManagements consider that their colleges are economically viable if 35 per cent of the seats were filled and this year 253 colleges could not cross that figure. Only 262 colleges could get more than 200 admissions. In 53 colleges, admissions were between 500 and 800 and these are considered to be the good colleges.Out of the 2.10 lakh candidates eligible for admissions this year only 1.37 lakh candidates attended certificate verification of which 1,34,373 lakh students were allotted seats. Surprisingly, Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) with 22,223 seats, Computer Science Engineering (CSE) with 24,448 and Electrical and Electronics Engineering (EEE) with 16,364 contributed to the majority of vacancies. Information Technology (IT) with 11,126 seats and Mechanical Engineering with 9,428 vacant seats followed.

Source: deccanherald.com