Over 500 Engineering colleges in AP lurking to be closed

Hyderabad: With numerous Engineering colleges’ creeping up across the state of Andhra Pradesh in last few years has brought down the obsession among students to join these professional colleges as they lack proper basic facilities resulting in meager enrolments forcing several colleges to close down.

A decade back, Engineering colleges and technical institutes were found only in Hyderabad and few other cities around the capital city.  As a result, the craze among the students to join these profession colleges escalated radically. Lot of students poured into these places to carry out Under Graduation in Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacy and Computer Science at these colleges. 

But, few years later the situation changed completely with several Engineering colleges and Technical institutions coming up across the entire state that resulted in drop in enthusiasm among students to join these courses and institutions. Many students are disinclined to join most of these colleges with a drastic drop in admissions forcing the colleges to close down.

Presently, there are over 700 engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh providing over 3 lakh seats. In the last academic year, 2011-2012, there were over 1 lakh seats going vacant without any takers. Several colleges had only less than 100 students joining. As several private players constructing colleges without proper infrastructure, without proper faculties and due to lack proper laboratories and other facilities were reasons behind for students not opting for these colleges.

Another reason for the drastic downfall of admission is the due to the frequent protests on the call for a separate state Telengana. Due to this political row, many students moved on to colleges in the neighboring states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka rather than opting to study in their home state that was ripped apart due to the political turmoil.

Nearly 143 institutions from 14 states have applied to the AICTE to close down their institutions, among which 56 institutions are from Andhra Pradesh. Among these 56 institutions, 44 colleges did not even have 10 students enrolled in the last academic year.  

Apart from that, 96 colleges had 50% fewer admission than the permissible number. Furthermore, 116 colleges did not get even 100 students admitted in the last academic year, told a higher official from Andhra Pradesh State Council for Higher Education.

Due to various reasons like poor infrastructure, lack of faculties in colleges only 5 to 8 per cent of the passing out Engineering students are employable, reveals a study by Nasscom.

It was found that among the 700 Engineering and Technical institutes found in the sate of Andhra Pradesh, 500 did not have proper infrastructure, lacked proper faculties and other laboratories though the buildings are big and aloft. All these colleges are lurking to be shut down immediately.