Andhra Engg colleges sell seats by SMS

 While cut- off percentages in Delhi University have hit 100 per cent in some instances, the situation has been reversed in Andhra Pradesh, where hundreds of engineering colleges are now desperately pursuing aspirants in a bid to fill up seats.

Students lured with free books & fee concessions to fill vacancies

“ No admission fee, no library fee and free transportation from your doorstep to the college. Please admit your ward into any engineering branch of your choice under the management quota at a fee prescribed by the government” — SMSes of this kind are flooding the mobile phones of parents of engineering aspirants in Andhra Pradesh.

While cut- off percentages in Delhi University have hit 100 per cent in some instances, the situation has been reversed in Andhra Pradesh, where hundreds of engineering colleges are now desperately pursuing aspirants in a bid to fill up seats.

Students – and their parents — have never had it so good. With private engineering colleges virtually beseeching parents to admit their children into the institutes, incentives are flying thick and fast.

Hefty concessions in tuition fees are on offer. Some colleges are also offering the waiver of special fees, while others are dangling everything from free books and notebooks to free laptops.

The reason: a drought of applicants, which is threatening the very existence of several of these private engineering colleges.

After a wave of students from the states started migrating to the US, and with the boom in tech jobs in the 1990s, there was a virtual explosion in the number of engineering colleges in the state.

There are now a staggering 640 of them, which have as many as three lakh seats on offer.

But the number of students who managed to qualify in the engineering entrance test conducted by the state government this year was only 2.03 lakh.

This means nearly one lakh of seats will go a- begging this year.

What is worse, the All India Council for Technical Education ( AICTE), the apex body which controls technical education in the country, has tentatively approved the creation of another 40,000 to 50,000 seats this year in various branches in some of the reputed — and sought after — engineering colleges across the state.

This has left a huge question mark over many of the newer colleges, most of which are not known for their academic excellence.

Students are likely to opt for admissions in colleges with a better reputation and a good placement record, observers say.

“ This will result in lack of admissions in newly- established engineering colleges, which are still struggling to make a mark for themselves,” lamented the correspondent of a recentlyfounded engineering college in the Nalgonda district.

If the AICTE gives the final approval for increasing the number of seats in the “ better” colleges, the total number of vacant seats in the engineering colleges might even go up to 1.5 lakh.

Every private engineering college is allowed to fill up 30 per cent of the seats under its management quota, charging at least Rs 70,000 per year from each student, irrespective of whether the student qualifies in the entrance test or not.

This is against Rs 30,000 prescribed by the government for the students who are admitted through the centralised admission process according to the rank obtained in the entrance test.

“ Of the total three lakh seats, nearly 2.1 lakh seats have to be filled by students under the government quota. But the number of students who have qualified in the entrance test is itself 2.03 lakh. When the government quota is not filled up, where is the question of filling up the management quota?” a private engineering college official asked.

Even under the government quota, not all students end up actually joining the colleges.

Last year, nearly 40,000 students who qualified in the engineering entrance test, did not actually join, as they did not get the course or college of their choice.

Many students now prefer joining regular undergraduate courses instead, rather than an engineering degree programme, which does not have much value in the job market.

As a result, many engineering college managements have become virtually bankrupt, so much so that they are not in a position to even pay salaries to their teaching staff.

This explains the frantic hard sell currently underway to try and lure students.

“ Most such private engineering colleges which are not able to attract students are from the rural areas, which lack proper academic and infrastructure facilities,” said an official in the AP State Council of Higher Education, the nodal agency for admissions into engineering colleges.

Till last year, the private engineering colleges managed to survive because of the fee reimbursement scheme introduced by the late Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy for students of the weaker sections.

This year, the government has tightened the norms for the scheme, making it mandatory for the students to furnish details of the Aadhar card — the unique identification card (UID) introduced by the central government.

The state government is strictly enforcing this UID project for all the citizens, so as to ensure that various welfare schemes being implemented in the state reach only the real beneficiaries.

With the government insisting on a copy of the UID card, many students without one are opting out, a college official said.