For every three engineering seats, just two aspirants in Maharashtra

The state is once again staring at massive vacancies in engineering colleges, with just two aspirants for every three engineering seats. The huge mismatch is attributed to the mushrooming of technical institutes across Maharashtra in the last 10 years and the flawed approach of the state government.

The Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) has received 1.07 lakh applications as against 1.57 lakh seats available for admission this year in 365 engineering institutes. This means there are no takers for a whopping 32% seats, a near 7% drop compared to previous year, according to statistics from DTE, which wrapped up the registration for the Common Admission Process on Sunday evening. A provisional merit list (rankings) was declared on Monday.

"The vacancies could be as high as 45% considering the previous year's trend as over 20,000 students leave after getting admission in the IITs, NITs and other institutes outside our purview," said a DTE official.

Rising popularity of private and foreign universities, limited seats in government-run colleges, unmet demand in courses with higher job prospects, unaffordable fee at private institutes, lack of attraction for institutes in smaller cities and decreased inflow of the students from other states are cited among reasons for huge vacancies in engineering institutes across Maharashtra.

"There is a huge demand for government colleges which offer good education at affordable cost. However, very limited seats are available with them," said an official. State has only eight state/aided engineering colleges, offering nearly 3,500 seats. This is just 2.2% of the total intake capacity and grossly insufficient.

An analysis of admission statistics of past five years also reveals that most of the state-owned/aided institutes still have their hands full despite constraints including skewed hostel facilities indicating people's continued faith in public education system.

Unfortunately, government has no extension plans for them, owing to fund crunch.

And education cost in private engineering colleges is unaffordable for many. "Middle-class students don't have any option but to go for BSc and BCom courses,"

Moreover, Computer Science, IT and Electrical engineering are considered as three most popular courses these days but most institutes usually offer equal number of seats in all branches which lead to unmet demand in three streams forcing students to look for options outside the state.

"Students want to study at colleges in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur other big cities only. No one wants to go for a college in outskirts and which lacks facilities, said the Dayanand Meshram report in 2013 that looked into the reasons behind such vacancies.

While government is yet to implement the recommendations of Mehsram and other committees, students insist they would continue to prefer courses and institutes which offer better education and job prospects.

"Amidst our shortcomings, private universities like VIT, Amity, SRM, BITS Pilani are gaining. They are drawing large number of students from Maharashtra with better planning and infrastructure and placement records," said a principal.

Meanwhile, states like UP, Bihar and MP, which used to send a good number of students to Maharashtra, are developing at a fast pace. An official said, "Now, they also have several private institutes and universities which has drastically brought down inflow of students from outside."

Alarmed by the trend of vacancies, the state recently decided to pull out from the JEE from next year and to rather conduct own entrance test for CET, a result of which is yet to be seen.

Year         Intake capacity  Applicants   Vacancy   Final vacancy

2014-15      1.56 lakh            1.18 lakh           25%             45%

2015-16      1.57 lakh            1.07 lakh           32%             -NA-

(Source: Directorate of Technical Education)

Mumbai University also faces 38% vacancy this year. There are only 2.65 lakh aspirants for a whopping 4.21 lakh seats available for Arts, Science, Commerce and five year law courses.