CHENNAI: Out of 49,134 general category candidates eligible to participate in the third round of the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) counselling, only 34,443 have filled their choices, according to data released on Sunday. Tentative seat allotment has been done only for 31,473 students.
Analysing these figures, experts expect that over 60,000 to 65,000 engineering seats will fall vacant in colleges across the State this year. It is important to mention so far, in the two rounds of the TNEA counselling, only 27,740 seats (19.9%) have been filled up in the GC category, of the 1.39 lakh seats available in the category in engineering colleges across TN.
Last year, varsities had been more upbeat as admissions were faring better. After a lull of five years, private engineering colleges managed to fill around 59% of their seats, and only 56,802 seats remained vacant after the completion of the counselling process. Otherwise, the colleges usually struggle to fill even 50% of their seats.
This year, out of 446 engineering colleges in the State, 80 colleges were not able to fill even a single seat after the second round. “Apart from computer science and IT, job opportunities in the remaining engineering streams aren’t as promising. Students are not interested in other streams. We have managed to fill only 6% of seats in our college after two rounds of counselling,” said the principal of a private engineering college in Coimbatore.
Around 31,473 candidates were allotted seats tentatively, but of this only 25,000 to 26,000 students will join the colleges, remarks career consultant Jayprakash Gandhi. “This time, students are very choosy about courses and colleges. They are opting for colleges that are equipped with the latest facilities, and have good placements. Instead of a college with poor infrastructure, students prefer deemed universities.”
The Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) asked students to confirm their tentative seats by October 17. The third-round students will be given time till October 26 to join colleges, following which provisional allotment will be released on October 29.