Not a single taker for 20 private engineering colleges

Chennai: Nearly 20 private engineering colleges in the state are yet to fill up even one seat in this year’s  single window counselling.  Almost 100 colleges have less than 20 seats filled. An analysis done by academician and career counsellor Jayaprakash A.Gandhi reveals that about 20 colleges, mostly started within five years or those which are not so famous among the student community, failed to attract a single student.

Representative of a private engineering college in Madurai, which did not get even a single student, on condition of anonymity, said that they were hopeful to get at least 25 students in the days to come as students with low cut-off marks could join them in the last leg of engineering counselling. He said that they would try to admit more students in the management quota.    

“This is not new in TN, we have been witnessing this in the recent past with the increase in number of new engineering colleges,” he said. Former Anna University Vice-Chancellor Prof E. Balagurusamy suggested that the state government and the university should identify private engineering colleges which are not able to attract more students and bring them under cluster college system so that they could share their resources for the benefit of students.

“If a college has less than 100 students it will not be economically viable for management to run the institution. They will not be able to pay government fixed pay scale to faculty because of which college will not get good quality faculty. This will not only compromise the quality of engineering colleges but also produce substandard engineers”,  he said.
The eminent academician also said that colleges which failed to attract students for three consecutive years should be closed down.