THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The trend of students deserting course midway through an academic year rendering the seats vacant has returned to haunt leading engineering colleges in the state. Delayed allotment to medical and allied courses is being partially blamed for the problem. That’s not all. Around 40%-50% seats in government and private engineering colleges in the state have remained vacant in every academic year since since 2017-18.
Many students, who secured high ranks in the state engineering entrance exam and joined the courses, leave after getting admission to medical colleges. Another student desiring admission to such seats has to face numerous hurdles. So, in effect, most of the seats falling vacant will not be filled through the remainder of the course. Lack of sync between the state engineering admission process and allotment to medical courses is mainly blamed for the vacancy issue which remains unresolved even though the Directorate of Technical Education has been repeatedly apprised of it.
For instance, in College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET), one of Kerala’s leading colleges, 125 seats fell vacant after students chose medical and allied courses last year. This year, over 25 seats have fallen vacant after just one round of NEET allotment.
“Going by last year’s trends, at least 150 seats may be empty this time, including in sought-after streams like Computer Science and Engineering and Electronics and Communication Engineering,” said a source.
Restoration of branch transfer option suggested
A full picture of vacant seats will emerge once allotment to medical and allied courses is over, said the source. “As per the guidelines of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), engineering admissions in the state have to be completed before October 26,” said Praveen A, Registrar, APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University (KTU). Recently, Karnataka had approached the Supreme Court seeking an extension of deadline. If Kerala gets a similar relief, another round of allotment can be carried out here, he said.
Meanwhile, the college transfer option applied in the third semester to fill vacant seats has resolved the issue only partially. “A student desirous of securing admission to another college has to obtain a no-objection certificate from the parent institution, which many colleges are not willing to provide,” said a source. Last year, there was a peculiar situation in which a student whose rank was above 24,000 in the entrance exam secured a seat in CSE stream in a leading college due to the college transfer option. The cut-off rank was 546 at the time of initial admission.
However, a student who secured a rank above 600 and settled for an ECE berth in the same college could not secure a CSE seat despite having a better rank. “The issue can be addressed to a great extent if KTU restores the option of branch transfers. This will ensure that an engineering seat that falls vacant upon a student’s exit is filled by another candidate of almost the same calibre from another stream of the same college,” said a faculty member.
Meanwhile, engineering colleges in the state have struggled to fill seats. In the 2017-18 and 2018-19 academic sessions, nearly 51% seats out of 55,310 and 50,051 seats, respectively, were vacant. In 2019-20, 44% seats were vacant. The number of vacant seats dropped to 39% in the 2020-21 academic year but rose slightly to 41% in the 2021-22 session.
INTAKE COMES DOWN
The approved intake has dropped by nearly 11,000 between the 2017-18 and 2020-21 academic year. Experts said the variation in annual approved intake is based on the applications submitted by colleges to AICTE seeking its nod.