CHENNAI: The downward trend for engineering courses continued this year as well with more than one lakh seats lying vacant after the final day of general counselling on Thursday. Last year, after general counselling 89,662 seats were vacant. Despite trimming available seats by 8,000 this year the number of vacant seats increased by 12 per cent (11,656) to 1,01,318 seats.
Of 1,29,814 students, who were called for the counselling, only 84,352 students selected the seats and a staggering 45,005 students (34.42 per cent) were absent from the counselling this year. The absentees were 4 per cent higher this year compared to last year. “Counselling for vocational stream and supplementary counselling are yet to take place. After the entire counselling process the number of vacant seats may go up to 1.10 lakh to 1.15 lakh counselling,” said Jayaprakash A. Gandhi, educationist and career consultant.
In engineering streams, the mechanical branch was chosen by 19,409 students this year, down from 25,355 seats last year. Civil engineering also witnessed a drop in numbers at 9,344 seats from 14,303 last year. “This indicates that students are moving towards circuit branches such as Electronics and Communication Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Computer Science Engineering,” he said.
He also pointed out that in many colleges chemical engineering seats are filling up fast while ECE and mechanical are not. “ Colleges that got few students will close down as they will find it difficult to sustain,” said P. Mannar Jawahar, former vice-chancellor, Anna University. “The fact that 34 per cent of students were absent for counselling highlights the number of students choosing arts and science courses . Though we have more jobs for engineering students than ever, students remain jobless because the very high number of graduates coming out of engineering colleges,” he said.
