CHENNAI: A Mere 3,101 of the total 19,677 post-graduate engineering seats have been filled in common admission counselling by Anna University, which ended on Wednesday. This means a whopping 84% of seats in courses like ME, M Tech and M Arch have no takers and most of the vacant seats are in private engineering colleges that have mushroomed across the state. It is learnt that the trend has been so at least for the past five years and people in the know attribute this to decline in the recruitment of teaching faculty by private engineering colleges.
Also, there are very few alternative avenues for engineering post graduates. “The numbers were almost the same previous year too. We will surrender the vacant seats to private colleges and they are free to fill the seats themselves,” says J Indumathi, secretary of Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission. Similar to BE admissions, the common counselling for ME and MTech seats were conducted for 65 per cent of the seats that private colleges surrender towards government quota. Counselling was conducted through single-window system and it ended on Wednesday.
While seats in most of the government engineering colleges and well-known private colleges were filled, those in many private colleges had no takers. E Balagurusamy, former vice-chancellor of Anna University, said post graduation in engineering is mostly pursued by those interested in taking lectureship in colleges. As lesser and lesser students are taking BE courses, private colleges have also reduced the recruitment of lecturers.
“Many of the colleges have closed now as they are unable to pay the salaries for the faculty members. In the R&D (Research & Development) sector too, there are only a very few opportunities,” Balagurusamy said. He said nearly 200 engineering colleges did not attract even one student during this year’s BE admission counselling. “Sometimes, having an ME degree makes the student over qualified. The companies must pay a few thousand rupees more as monthly salaries for them. So the companies don’t want ME graduates,” said S Chandramohan, a professor in Anna University.
Another reason was poor quality of ME courses offered by private colleges. Chandramohan says in some cases, faculty members with BE degrees teach ME students. He stressed that AICTE must give permission only to qualified colleges. “But now many colleges are given permission to conduct PG courses even though they lack the required infrastructure.
At present, more than 50 percent of the private colleges affiliated to Anna University have PG engineering courses,” Chandramohan said. K Nagamani, head of Civil Engineering department in the College of Engineering, Guindy, says it is solely because of lack of job opportunities, students don’t pursue ME courses. “Teaching is the only opportunity for ME graduates, but there is not much scope (for career growth) in that,” she said.