It can't get worse than this. On the one hand there is a huge demand for skilled technical manpower in the country, while on the other, seats are remaining vacant at an alarming rate every year. Ironically, the situation is more or less the same all over the country. In Maharashtra, a staggering number of over 79,000 seats remained vacant in all technical faculties that included diploma, degree and postgraduate degree courses coming under Directorate of Technical Education (DTE).
Highly placed sources in DTE said that these vacant seats were from the trades like MBA/MMS, MCA, BE/BTech, BPharm, BArch, post-SSC/HSC diploma and Hotel Management and Catering Technology (HMCT) courses. Over 2.80 lakh seats were available under centralized admission process (CAP) conducted by DTE in 1,679 colleges across state. Of these, about 2.05 lakh were filled till the end of CAP fourth round.
Ironically, MBA/MMS courses seemed to be least favourite among students with nearly 50% seats remaining vacant. The case is worse in Nagpur University where 59% management seats remained vacant in 60 colleges. Though the number of MBA seats is increasing every year, the colleges are facing crunch of students, especially the new ones. Even in 2010-11 session, over 5,000 MBA seats remained vacant all over the state.
Only MCA course was in demand having 92% of its seats quota filled.
The situation is no different in other technical streams, including engineering, which is popular among all courses under DTE. In engineering degree courses, nearly 30% seats remained vacant in the state while in diploma 25% were not filled. This happened even after AICTE lowered bar for engineering admissions from 50% in class XII examination till last year to 45% (40% for reserved category) aggregate in physics, chemistry and mathematics (PCM) group. Over 2.54 lakh applicants appeared in MHT-CET in May. Still, a large number of seats remained vacant despite extending dates and lowering eligibility criterion. Other prominent streams such as BPharm, DPharm, BArch and HMCT also witnessed declining trend of students.
Though state director of technical education Subhash Mahajan was not available for comments, joint director of technical education in Nagpur Gulab Thakre attributed the trend to ever-increasing number of colleges. "Even the number of students coming to Maharashtra from other states like UP and Bihar has dropped sharply as many colleges have opened in that states."
Speaking about NU colleges, he added that students from the region prefer colleges in Mumbai and Pune due to better job opportunities. "They stand a good chance to get decent placement in these cities as compared to Vidarbha," he said, adding that the situation would normalize in a couple of years as student numbers may swell while colleges' number would remain stagnant.
Vacancy in all state colleges coming under DTE
Course----------------Colleges-------Total seats-------- Vacancy------- %
BE/BTech ---------- 348 ------------- 1,10,820 ----------- 77,182------- 69.64
Polytechnic--------617 ------------- 1,11,257 ---------- 84,512 ----- 75.96
MBA/MMS --------- 408 ------------- 33,778 ------------ 17,208 ------- 50.94
MCA ---------------- 141 -------------- 8423 --------------- 7,774 --------- 92.29
BPharm -------------147 -------------- 7,312 -------------- 5,989 --------- 81.90
BArch ---------------- 9----------------- 412 -----------------296 ------------ 71.84
HMCT ---------------- 9------------------396 ----------------222 ------------- 56.06
Vacancy in colleges coming under DTE in six districts in NU's jurisdiction
Course-----Colleges-------Total seats----- Vacancy---- %
BE/BTech ---------- 58 ------------- 23,102 ----------- 7,757------- 33.57
Polytechnic-62 ---------- 22,805 ---------- 6011 ----- 26.35
MBA ---------- 60 ---------- 4,590 ------------ 2677 ------- 58.32
MCA ---------- 20 ----------1,170 -------------- 316 --------- 27
BPharm -------19 --------- 1,110 ------------ 256 --------- 23.06
DPharm ------ 27----------- 1,620 ------------294 --------- 18.14
