Students from outside Tamil Nadu desirous of taking up engineering studies in the State should think many times over about their decision if the 2019 admission to engineering colleges are any indication.
Though there are 1,67,652 seats in Tamil Nadu’s engineering colleges (Government colleges, Government aided colleges and private engineering colleges put together), there were only 83,396 takers for the total seats leaving nearly 90,000 seats (89,544 to be exactly) go abegging.
This is a major setback for the State which claims itself as the educational hub of the country. Fate of many engineering colleges hang in the balance as 34 out of the 479 self-financing engineering colleges which took part in the counselling for the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission 2019 failed to get even one student. Only 22 per cent of the seats in the self financing colleges have been filled up leaving the managements in the lurch.
But elite institutions like College of Engineering, Guindy, Indian Institute if Handloom Technology, Salem, had their seats filled within days of the counselling session that has send mixed signals about the quality of engineering education imparted in the State’s engineering colleges.
“The self financing engineering colleges have failed to change ahead with the times. In addition to this, there has been a stagnation in the demand for engineering graduates over the years. Both parents and students have failed to take note of the situation,” said M Ananthakrishnan , former chairman, IIT Kanpur and former Vice Chancellor, Anna University. Though he did not tell it openly, Prof Ananthakrishnan, a widely respected educationist expressed his unhappiness over the quality of education imparted in these colleges.
Prof S P Thyagarajan, former vice-chancellor of Madras University and Professor of Eminence and Dean (Research), Sri Ramachandra University , pointed out that the proliferation of engineering colleges and the absence of a mechanism to monitor the annual performance of these colleges have led to the deterioration of their standards. “Equally important is the fact that there has been a dynamic change in skill set required by the industry from engineering graduates. The industries have changed to modern methods of production while the most of the colleges gave failed in updating the curriculum to suit the changed environment,” said Prof Thyagarajan.
He also pointed out that students from Tamil Nadu keep abreast of the quality and standard of the engineering colleges where they seek to get seats. “The new age industries in the country prefer science and commerce graduates, offer them training in the kind of skill expected from them and appoint them at lower salary scales for the work previously done by the engineering graduates at higher wages,” said Prof Thyagarajan.
Most of these self financing colleges release glossy advertisement campaigns in the newspapers and TV channels in the State which would ensure that no negative reports about their institutions make it to the public domain. Complaints are galore about the absence of faculties and laboratory facilities in these colleges.