Over 2 lakh engineering seats vacant in Andhra

“You don’t need to pay even a single paisa. We will provide you free accommodation, books as well as education. All you need to do is just enroll your name. That’s enough.” This is the alluring announcement of engineering colleges of Andhra Pradesh, for the admissions of qualified students in their colleges.

Andhra Pradesh, which accounts for 20.6 percent of engineering seats of the country, is going to create a history as 2 lakh seats are going to be left vacant in various engineering branches this academic year (2012-13).

But the situation was all different just a few years back when engineering seats were scarce in the state. The students had to pay Rs. 2 lakh per seat, amid a tough competition. As a result, the students were compelled to go to the neighbouring Karnataka, Tamil Nadu states for cheaper education.

But, after scores of YSR (Y S Rajasekhar Reddy)’s vote-bank schemes, the situation changed drastically. While allowing Engineering colleges to increase engineering seats yearly, the government introduced a fee-reimbursement scheme also. Under this scheme, the all engineering colleges need was to just fill their seats with eligible students and the financial aid would be borne by the state government.

Owing to this, engineering colleges mushroomed, without taking the demand and supply principle into consideration. A decade ago the number of engineering colleges were below hundred, but, now the number has reached to 717 with 3.64 lakh seats.

A total 3.64 lakh engineering seats are available in the state, but only 2.07 lakh students attended for EAMCET, state eligibility test for engineering this year. Due to various reasons, including high court intervention, admission process got delayed. At last state higher education council issued notification inviting applications from the students. In response 1.33 lakh students got their certificates verified. It means, only these students are interested to join in the engineering courses. In other words above 2 lakh seats are going to be vacant this year. If we count in economic terms, one engineering seat, considering 4 years education plus faculty wages, costs around Rs 3 lakh. Now with these 2 lakh seats are going to be vacant for 4 years Rs 6000 crores of education value is going to be wasted.

This unprecedented trend has become a burden to both state government, which is paying thousands of crores of rupees in the name of fee-reimbursement, and the engineering colleges, which invested crores of rupees on infrastructure.

Instead of paying crores of rupees on engineering education without getting any purposeful results, government should wake up and improve the facilities in primary education.