Vacant Engineering Seats - a Quick glance
2019-09-16According a recent news report in the Indian Express, over 50% of engineering seats across India remain vacant after multiple rounds of seat allocation rounds. That implies that of the nearly 13.2 lac seats available in UG engineering, only about 6.6 lac seats have been filled so far.
Some statistics highlighted by the news report were that 80% of engineering seats in Odisha had no takers while 60% of seats in West Bengal were vacant. 50-55% seats in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala also remain vacant.
The report also mentions that all the seats in the 23 IITs were fully taken.
The consistent lack of demand in engineering colleges across the country has caused the shutting down of many unviable colleges. From 3400 colleges in 2014-15, the total number of colleges have decreased to 3045 in 2019-20, a decrease in 11% over 5 years!
These indicators must be a wake-up moment for students, parents and other stakeholders to seriously consider alternate, yet better options to engineering degrees. These could be in pure sciences, programs around mathematics, product & industrial design and liberal programs being offered by many government and private institutions.