Thiruvananthapuram: If the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) directive on closing down colleges with less than 30 percent admissions is implemented by 2018, around 36 colleges would be closed down in the state. The AICTE has recommended the closure of 800 colleges which did not have a minimum of 30 percent admissions for five consecutive years and lacked proper infrastructure. After the third round of allotment, the last round of allotment to private self-financing colleges, only 32 has more than 40 percent admissions in government quota. Of them, 36 had less than 30 percent intake. Most of them had been showing less than 30 percent admissions for the past five years.
Only 13 had more than 60 percent enrollment, and 11 had less than five percent. There are 149 colleges in the state including nine government, three government-aided, 25 government-controlled self-financing and 114 private self-financing colleges. The loss in demand of the engineering seats in the state as shown in the high number of vacant seats would mean that many of them would face a closure soon. There are 61 branches having not even a single applicant and 66 having only one. In 23 branches, the total number of students admitted was less than 10.
The situation was not better in government-controlled self-financing colleges. Of the total of 7544 seats there, 3066 remained vacant. AICTE chairman Anil D. Sahasrabudhe had recently made it clear that such a decision on closing down colleges with fewer admissions was taken after deliberations between council members and collating data from colleges from various states. However, they have the option of merging with a nearby college if they wish. The choices made by the colleges, whether to close down or merge, have to be submitted in the form of a report to the council. Currently, there are 6,447 engineering colleges and 171 architecture colleges in the country with a capacity of around 29 lakh seats. Of the available seats, only nearly 10 lakh gets filled.
