Thiruvananthapuram: All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has decided to allow private engineering colleges with less than 30 per cent enrolment in any BTech course to reduce their capacity by half next year to escape closing down.
However, if the number of intakes continued to fall, colleges would have no option other than closure.
The AICTE was considering the progressive closure policy as about 800 of 3,000 private engineering colleges offering B Tech courses across the country have enrolment percentage less than 50.
The total seats for engineering in the country are 13.56 lakh and the crisis as they increased them without considering the dema-nd-supply ratio, sources said.
Job opportunities have reduced gradually due to poor skill imparted by these colleges.
If the state government followed the AICTE directive to shut down colleges with less than 30 per cent admissions during five consecutive years and lacking in infrastructure many colleges would have to close down, sources said.
Of the total of 33,012 government quota seats in engineering colleges, 14,714 seats were allotted to engineering colleges after the third round of allotment conducted by the Commissioner for Entr-ance Examinations (CEE), the last round of allotment to private self-financing engineering colleges. This meant that there were 18,298 vacant seats, mostly in private self-financing colleges.
It should be recalled that 127 batches did not have even a single student in 59 colleges with four engineering colleges having not even a single student and three colleges with just one student.
As many as 12 engineering colleges, part of the allotment pool last year, did not feature in this year's admissions as they have either shut down or have been placed in the no-admission category.
This year, the total number of BTech seats in colleges in the state was 54,225, compared to 58,844 last year showing a drop by 4,619 seats.
Since 2016, the number of engineering seats has been on the decline across the country.
