Chennai: In what could be termed a significant decline in interest among parents and students of the state in pursuing engineering education, applications for engineering counselling is struggling to reach one lakh this year.
The last date for submitting applications for engineering counselling was Saturday. “Around 1.6 lakh students have registered online for engineering counselling. As on Saturday, the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions Committee (TNEA) has received nearly one lakh applications,” sources said.
“We expect the applications to go up as a lot of students submitted their applications on the last day. The committee has received thousands of applications by post and those applications are yet to be counted,” they added.
Last year TNEA received 1.34 lakh applications. This year the number of applications is down by around 30,000 applications.
A few years ago the engineering counselling had attracted over two lakh applications. The sharp reduction in campus placements and job cuts in IT companies are seen as the major reasons for the decline of interest among students.
