Colleges to cut 700 engg seats

BANGALORE: The boom has clearly gone bust. For years, engineering colleges added seats in a frenzy. Now, they are rushing to shut shop.Ahead of the admission to engineering courses, a dozen colleges have offered to close down departments — or take massive cuts in intake — as there are no takers. In all, the cabinet sub-committee headed by higher education minister V S Acharya has approved reduction of 700 seats, and has disallowed three Bangalore colleges from admitting students for the 2011-12 batch.“While there is demand for all courses ingood colleges, some colleges in rural areas are not able to attract students forsome courses. Several colleges have offered to shut down information science,telecom and biotechnology courses as it is not viable to offer theseprogrammes,” S Vidyashankar, member, executive council, VisvesvarayaTechnological University (VTU), said. Of the 12 colleges, Bangalore andMangalore have four each and Belgaum has two.Three colleges —Nadgir Institute of Engineering Technology, Basava Academy of Engineering andTechnology and Sri Belimatha Mahasamsthana Institute of Technology — willnot be allowed to admit students this year due to insufficient infrastructureand inadequate faculty.MK Panduranga Shetty, vice-president,Karnataka Unaided Professional Colleges Association, says with over 200 collegesand counting, it’s a demand-driven market for technical education in thestate. “If you do not have faculty and adequate infrastructure, nobodywill go come to your college. Today, candidates and their parents are aware ofwhich college to go to and what to study. They have a wide variety of collegesand courses to choose from. Colleges can no longer fool students about theiracademic standards — it’s there for all to see,” hesays.Last year, of the 76,000-odd seats, over 14,500 seats remainedvacant in Karnataka. Three thousand seats went abegging in electronics andcommunications stream alone, widely acknowledged a popularcourse.The cabinet sub-committee dealing with professional collegeson June 7 allowed five colleges — four in Bangalore and one in Mangalore— to start second-shift engineering programmes with a proposed intake of780 seats.