Engineering colleges up for grabs

HYDERABAD: With no takers for seats in 30 engineering colleges in rural areas, the managements are ready to put up their colleges for sale. The managements are ready to sell the colleges to parties which are willing to pay at least 80 per cent of the amount they had invested in establishing these colleges. "In the last few years, several colleges were set up in the state with an investment ranging from Rs 3.5 crore to Rs 5 crore.But many are now up for sale for a price — ranging from Rs 2.5 crore to Rs 4 crore," a senior official in the higher education department said. Many enterprising people have taken loans from financial institutions to set up these colleges. But their efforts to attract students to colleges in rural areas have not paid off. With a burden to clear the loans, these managements have decided to sell it off and clear loans, at least to a certain extent. Recently, two engineering colleges in Telangana were sold to relatives of a regional leader for a song. The new management took over despite the fact that they would run into losses. A rural engineering college representative told The Times of India that several managements want to sell the colleges for a variety of reasons. The prime one being, declining demand for engineering courses. Besides, they do not want to become bankrupt like several college managements in Tamil Nadu, he said.