KOCHI:Despite earnest effort by the managements to woo students and relaxation in norms for admission, the future of engineering courses appears to be grim with around 1,80,000 seats remaining vacant when the admission procedure in this year is nearing completion.
Managements of self financing engineering colleges, which spent hundreds of crores to set up the college building and other amenities, are still keeping their fingers crossed over the falling number of students. On the other side, seats for arts and science courses at government and aided arts and science colleges have been filled with students who scored 80-90 percent marks in plus two examination.
According to the office-bearers of the Kerala Self Financing Engineering College Managements Association(KSFEMCA), electrical engineering, electrical and electronics engineering are the courses in which most number of seats are still vacant. But still there are moderate number of takers for computer science while mechanical engineering and civil engineering remain the most sought after.
“The trend shows that the relaxation announced by the government for admission did not have the expected effect. Students have lost interest in engineering as the job market has crumbled. We hope that the situation would change in a positive manner as mega projects are op on the pipeline,” said Professor K Sasikumar, president of the Kerala Self Financing Engineering College Managements Association (KSFEMCA).
According to the statistics of the Commissioner of Entrance Examination, as many as 20,078 out of 75,258 candidates who cleared the entrance did not submit their Plus Two mark list, which is mandatory if they are to be included in the entrance rank list. This shows the lack of interest among the students for engineering courses.