The Hindu : A predicament of plenty

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Aug 05, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

A predicament of plenty

SOME YEARS AGO, it would have been difficult to imagine a situation in which the supply of engineering seats greatly exceeded the demand. This is precisely the situation, or rather predicament, in Tamil Nadu today. The State has about 240 engineering colleges. An astonishing one-third of the total number of seats on offer have no takers at the end of single window counselling conducted by Anna University, which was recently made the affiliating university for all the engineering colleges in the State. In addition to the 21,185 seats going abegging in the single window system (SWS), there is a large number of unfilled seats in the management quota of unaided colleges. These add up to 26,000 vacant seats. This is a clear reflection of the demand-supply position in a State that has emerged as Number One among Indian States in private engineering and technological education. It is also a reflection on the unevenness of standards among self-financing colleges that have mushroomed all over the State over the past two decades. The opening up of engineering education, which used to be a preserve of the Government, was a conscious decision by the former Chief Minister, M.G. Ramachandran, in the 1980s. Some of his senior party colleagues and legislators were among the first to be permitted to set up self-financing engineering colleges, based on the capitation fee system. Today, private engineering colleges are spread across the State. Politicians of all hues and established educational institutions have stepped into a field that was considered a sound business proposition until 2000. From then began the decline, with the problem of `surplus seats' mirroring a growing trend of unemployment and under-employment of engineers.

The situation now is painfully complex. As many as 100 of these private engineering colleges may be in serious financial trouble since the number of seats they are able to fill up is below the threshold of viability. Of these, more than 20 unaided institutions may have turned incurably sick. An analysis by this newspaper shows a strong correlation between poor academic results in these colleges last year and vacant seats this year. Some institutions have already started undercutting fees to woo eligible students who stayed away from the SWS process because the fees were beyond their means following a Supreme Court ruling on minority, self-financing institutions. But the more serious issues thrown up are quantity versus quality, standards, quality control, and infrastructure availability in these institutions. Sadly, even normally attractive courses such as Electronics and Communication Engineering, Electrical and Electronics and Mechanical Engineering have not been able to attract enough students, who are becoming more and more selective about the institutions they join.

This situation is not peculiar to Tamil Nadu. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and even Kerala, which has just opened up the education sector, may face the same problem of plenty in the near future. Until a couple of years ago, large numbers of students from these States flocked to Tamil Nadu for admission, just as students from other States went to Karnataka in search of medical college seats. It is time that the All India Council for Technical Education and the Directorate of Technical Education and Anna University in Tamil Nadu took a hard-nosed look at this predicament of plenty and thought up solutions. They are already addressing the problem of colleges without adequate facilities. There is potential in this situation for acquisitions and mergers by the established colleges that are doing well. It is unwise to continue sanctioning the opening of colleges just because the applicants promise to meet the standards. Hundreds of students are complaining about the lack of facilities and the extortionate fees in many of the colleges. While reviewing the present crisis in engineering education, the authorities must do everything in their power to get the quality and infrastructure of existing colleges improved so that students do not feel they are being taken for a ride.

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