HYDERABAD: This year’s admission season in both professional and regular degree colleges was rather unusual with no students to fill up thousands
of seats that are now lying vacant, for the first time in many years.

As the admission season ended, state colleges are not exactly dealing with teeming classrooms but analysing statistics of empty seats. Consider this: around 40,000 seats have not been filled in engineering colleges of the state and over 40 per cent of a total of 28,000 seats in MCA remain vacant. Over 1.6 lakh B A and B Sc seats are lying vacant in the state. So where did the students go?

Well, Eamcet top rankers stepped out of the state’s best engineering colleges after securing seats in IITs or Bits, Pilani. Many others chose to take admission in other states, their admission to state colleges notwithstanding. Officials from the Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education, recession has affected higher education in AP with students feeling that none of the courses offered here would land them a job.

“Students have opted for courses offered in other states including Tamil Nadu and Karnataka as they write entrances there. There are students who opt for deemed universities in Delhi,” PSN Rao, ICET convener and an academic from Andhra University told ‘TOI’. He said that most of the ICET top rankers this year have opted for IIMs this year or other deemed varsities in other states.

Besides, officials point out that students are no longer interested in IT and electronics engineering or even MCA as they think that they will not get a job. In addition, the growing apathy towards BA and B Sc courses as the courses has only worsened “as they do not open up lucrative career options,” said vice chairman, AP State Council of Higher Education, Jayaprakash.

Playing killjoy this admission season is also the new eligibility criteria with the government insisting on 25 per cent weightage for Intermediate marks in Eamcet. “There are many students who failed in the qualifying examination in spite of getting ranks in Eamcet. Hence the number who qualified the examination has come down. Amongst those who qualified, many opt for improving their ranks and hence keep away from counselling,” D N Reddy, Vice Chancellor, JNTU, Hyderabad said.

Students on their part point out that they have found a quickie solution to lucrative jobs. They say its not traditional courses but professional training that can land them a good job. According to them there are many courses including animation, instructional design, content developing and writing which one can do for two years and get a job, instead of going the engineering/BA or B Sc degree way. “I would have thought of repeating Intermediate Public Examination (IPE) and Eamcet had I not opted for a diploma in animation course. Now I am sure that I will get a lucrative job in two years. This could not have been possible with traditional education,” a student who has two backlogs in IPE, Mandapati Dinesh said.


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