22,000 engineering seats find no takers in Karnataka.

BANGALORE: Empty classrooms will continue to haunt engineering and dental colleges in the state this year as well. Just that their numbers have got bigger.

According to information furnished by the Karnataka Examination Authority ( KEA), the number of seats that have gone abegging would come up to a whopping 13,000 seats through the Common Entrance Test (CET).

ComedK has 9,328 seats that were unfilled after their final round of counselling. In short, the number of vacant seats would be around 22,000 this year.

The curtains fell on the three-month-long seat selection process of medical and engineering seats through CET on October 2 with the pre-university supplementary candidates.

Interestingly, some 30-odd colleges did not find even a single taker through ComedK. Like Coorg Institute of Technology or Alva’s Institute of Engineering and Technology – all the 108 and 126 seats respectively remained untouched after the counselling.

Supply outstrips demand

There are around 187 engineering colleges in the state and as many as 81,432 seats available for students to pick from. The number of eligible students through CET was around 70,000.

“The supply has outnumbered the demand. There are more seats than the number of students taking the exams. The best of the students go to IITs, NITs and other top institutes. The rest of the students have plenty of choice.”

“Today, we see aspiring students and their parents visiting colleges, enquiring about the facilities available, even the number of research papers. There are colleges, this time, where no single admission took place through CET. Still people want to start new engineering colleges,” said Panduranga Shetty, vice-president, Karnataka Unaided Engineering Colleges’ Association.

Result should be announced early

K Balaveera Reddy, founding Vice-Chancellor, Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU), said: “Granting more colleges is not the issue. In fact, we need more colleges if all the students get into higher education.”

“Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have 600 and 500 colleges each. Karnataka, in that case, has grown steadily. Having less students is the problem. Our PU pass percentage is not even 50%. There was a time when CET was open to non-Karnataka students.”

“We used to get around 50,000 students from outside. Colleges need to improve their facilities. Our state can announce results early to attract students,” he explained.

Gloomy scene for dental courses too

The scene was equally gloomy for dental courses. Of the 750 government seats available for dental courses, 340 remained unwanted. ComedK had as many as 628 dental seats going abegging.

AECS Maaruti College of Dental Sciences and Research Centre has 55 seats unfilled, College of Dental Sciences, Davanagere, and PMNM Dental College and Hospital, Bagalkot, have 45 each.

Source : ET