The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Over 30,000 students opted out of engineering counselling

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Aug 29, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Over 30,000 students opted out of engineering counselling

Vani Doraisamy

Largest absenteeism in the history of engineering admissions in the State

CHENNAI: An analysis of why nearly 11,000 seats remained vacant under the single window system has revealed that nearly 49.3 percent of eligible candidates — 30,532 out of the 61,829 who were issued call letters — either absented themselves from counselling or opted out. This is the largest absenteeism in the history of engineering admissions in the State.

The students stayed off as the colleges offered to them had poor infrastructure and placement prospects, a clear commentary on the private sector education in the State.

On Sunday, after special counselling for instant supplementary examinations closed, only 32,287 out of the 43,346 seats were taken. About 11,059 seats — 25.3 percent — were still vacant. Only 227 of the 320 special counselling seats were allotted.

Says Salem-based educational analyst, Jayaprakash Gandhi, who did the analysis: "The fact that 30,000 eligible students did not find any course attractive mocks the demand (by self-financing colleges) for relaxation of eligibility criteria. If anything, the criteria should be made more stringent.''

Of the 11,059 vacant seats, 1,936 were in the open category and 9,122 from reserved categories.

Students overwhelmingly preferred circuit branches such as electronics and communication engineering, computer science and information science — 76.4 percent of the seats allotted went to these branches. While there were no takers for the information technology course in 56 colleges in 2003, this year all seats were filled in 20 colleges.

The score sheet provides for interesting analysis: colleges in Coimbatore have done exceedingly well.

As many as 24 colleges (11 government and aided colleges and 13 private institutions) have filled all seats. Rajah's College, Tirunelveli, could fill just one seat under the academic stream. Twelve colleges have filled less than 10 seats each while more than 100 seats each lay vacant in 14.

Around 24 colleges have fared poorly, filling only 20 percent of seats, jeopardising their financial security. In 92 colleges, more than 50 seats each are vacant.

Fourteen colleges have done fairly well, reporting just 5 to 10 seats vacant in each.

The best reports are from 36 colleges which have less than five unfilled seats.

No chemical engineering seat has been filled in seven out of 23 colleges.

Among other courses, 11 out of 155 colleges offering mechanical engineering, 16 out of 68 offering civil engineering, 17 out of 206 offering electrical and electronics engineering, 4 out of 177 colleges offering information technology and four out of 223 offering computer science have not filled any seat.

With self-financing colleges having surrendered 7,578 seats to the single window system of counselling this year, the matrix is expected to undergo a total change next year when the recent Supreme Court ruling giving them unfettered admission rights is likely to come into effect.

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