Nagpur: Despite sharp rise in the number of engineering colleges, there are not many takers with many seats lying vacant in Maharashtra, sources here said.
With just 16 colleges and 2,642 seats in 1978, the colleges went up to 348 last year with intake capacity of over 1.33 lakh. But last year, over 25,000 seats remained vacant in the state, sources said.
The situation is worst in Nagpur University where over 7,000 engineering seats remained vacant last year. Joint Director of technical education of Maharashtra in Nagpur, Gulab Thakre attributed the trend to ever-increasing number of colleges. "Even the students coming to Maharashtra from other states like UP and Bihar have dropped sharply as many colleges opened in those states," he said.
He said students from the region prefer institutes in Mumbai and Pune due to better job prospects. "Good colleges like Ramdeobaba, Yashwantrao and Raisoni, which are autonomous, didn't face these problems. All will depend on how good facilities and faculties they are offering. Ultimately, only the fittest of colleges will survive in the competition," Thakre said.
With addition of 11 new engineering colleges this year and many more likely to come, their number would cross 360 with intake capacity all set to touch 1.40 lakh. This will only lead to even more vacant seats this year.
According to academicians, the situation was more or less same in the country with only top colleges retaining the strength while the new ones were ignored by the aspirants.
Till last year, the country had 3,393 engineering colleges with 14.86 lakh seats. This year, AICTE had already granted over 100 new colleges of which 11 were in Maharashtra.
With this, thousands of new seats would be added in the country, as per AICTE chairman S S Mantha. Sadly, the apex body for engineering education had also received closure notices from as many as 138 engineering colleges due to large number of vacancies that resulted in them facing financial crunch.
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