In a post last week, we wrote about AICTE wanting to reduce 6 lakh engineering seats across India. That the need to do so is immediate and apparent is visible from the dire straits that the engineering education sector in Odisha is facing, as reported by scroll.in yesterday. Over 30,000 seats from the available 46,000 seats have gone empty. Added to that, nearly 20 colleges have admitted less than 10 students this year.

Even Tamil Nadu saw a closure of 103 courses last month, as
approved by AICTE. This closure was actually part of the larger set of 757
technical courses that the AICTE approved, of the nearly 2000 applications
it had received for this year.

Is this a harbinger of things to come? On one hand, we get stories
very regularly that the competition for engineering seats is getting out of
hand, and here, we are seeing stories of colleges and courses being shut down. One
paramount reason could be that students want to get into quality colleges only,
like those funded by the central and state governments. Here, at least, they
are assured of good lecturers and superior support infrastructure. Private colleges,
on the other hand, don’t have the required inclination or support to provide
the same level of quality that these institutes provide. Students are well
aware of these issues and prefer to avoid them altogether.

Is there a way out of this quagmire? Let us know your
thoughts in the comments.