Engineering colleges in Karnataka offer freebies to attract students

The college campus wears a somewhat deserted look even during lunch hours. The classrooms are half empty. In one of the classrooms, a teacher stands at the front presiding over a bunch of unusually quiet students. Once in a while, students raise their hands to ask questions, breaking the monotony. This scene from an engineering college on Bangalore’s outskirts can be replicated and applied to many of the hundreds of engineering colleges across Karnataka that are scrambling to fill vacant classroom seats and in their struggle for survival are resorting to tactics never used before—offering freebies such as discounted fees, more scholarships and free hostel to attract students.

Placement heads and principals of a number of engineering colleges conceded the magnitude of the problem and the desperate tactics being undertaken, with students choosing to stay away from these institutes disheartened by the prospect of not landing a job in the country’s $108-billion information technology (IT) sector after graduation.

India trains 1.5 million engineers every year, according to an April research report by Kotak Institutional Equities. But only about 150,000 of them will get jobs in the IT sector this fiscal year, industry lobby Nasscom has estimated.

“The admission figures are very poor. We couldn’t even get 50% of the total intake enrolled (this year),” said M. Uma Devi, Principal of Achutha Institute of Technology, located in Karnataka’s Chickballapur district. “CET (Common Entrance Test, the engineering entrance test held in Karnataka) seems to hold no value now.” She said Achutha had taken a number of steps, such as scholarships, flexible fee structures and discounted admission fees, to attract more students. The college has reduced its fees to Rs. 20,000 per semester for each course, compared with close to Rs. 40,000 last year.

Like Achutha, hundreds of engineering colleges across Karnataka, mostly the smaller and lesser-known colleges, are offering a number freebies and concessions to students, including more scholarships, free hostel accommodation, discounts and free use of library and other additional facilities, according to dozens of college officials, students and experts tracking the sector.

According to a July report in The Hindu newspaper, nearly 80,000 out of about 200,000 engineering college seats are vacant in Tamil Nadu. In Andhra Pradesh, which has the most number of engineering colleges in South India, the figure is even higher at over 100,000 seats, while Karnataka has around 20,000 vacant engineering seats, according to people directly familiar with the development, who requested anonymity. State-level engineering admission authorities in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka could not be reached immediately to confirm these figures.

“The problem we face is that the big IT companies don’t look at the II or III tier colleges for placements—they only look at the top colleges,” said Vandana Yadav, Placement Director at SCT Institute of Technology in Bangalore, which has an average intake of 60-70% of their total capacity in each batch. “And that can be demoralising for students at a college like ours.” SCT has extended benefits such as free books, free access to the college’s digital library and reduced hostel fees, Yadav said. “I don’t think such steps will help majorly. Given the slowdown in the job market, how will it make a difference?” said an 18-year-old first-year aeronautics student at SCT who did not want to be named.

The plight faced by most of these colleges is symptomatic of a larger and deeper crisis facing the country’s engineering populace—lower hiring in the face of lower demand for the country’s top technology firms, which over the years built large, plush campuses to house and train the hundreds of engineering graduates they mass-recruited from colleges across the country. Last month, Nasscom said it expected IT hiring this year to drop by up to 17% to 150,000, mainly due to an increased push towards automation and lower attrition in the sector. In 2008, the Indian IT sector hired 341,000 freshers, according to Nasscom.

“India faces a unique situation where some institutes (IITs, IIMs, etc) are intensely contested, while a large number of recently opened institutes struggle to fill seats,” said analysts Akhilesh Tilotia and Kawaljeet Saluja of Kotak Institutional Equities in their April report. “Across India less than four-fifths of the capacity is used and this spare capacity is unevenly distributed. It is not surprising that over the last couple of years, anecdotes and instances of ‘capitation fees’ at engineering colleges are not heard as much as they were earlier.” According to figures and estimates provided by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Kotak, on an average barely 78% of the 1.5 million engineering seats across the country are filled.

GSS Institute of Technology in Bangalore, too, is handing out discounts to students, said a student who did not want to be named as he didn’t want to upset the college authorities. GSSIT’s Principal Vidyashankar B.V. initially said the college extended discounts and scholarships only to students from poor backgrounds, but eventually conceded that the move was also aimed at filling up college seats.

Other second-rung engineering colleges that are struggling with huge vacancies include Nadgir Institute of Engineering and Technology, Islamiah Institute of Technology, and Bangalore Technological Institute, according to students and people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity. These and another half a dozen colleges contacted for this article conceded that they were operating classes with a strength of 50-60%, but declined to comment on whether they were offering discounts to students. H.S. Nanda, Principal of Bangalore Technological Institute, declined to comment on whether the college had offered discounts to students who were admitted this year, saying that “the management will take that decision”.

“What’s happening now is that the moment you get an engineering seat you negotiate on the fee—that is happening now. Many colleges have started handing out 20-30% discounts or they’ll give you one full year of hostel free,” said Vivek Kulkarni, former IT secretary in the Karnataka government, and founder of Brickwork India, a credit rating agency. “And this has been happening a lot in the newer colleges that have come up.”

According to experts tracking the sector, none of the engineering colleges outside the rank of the top 40 in Karnataka are running at full capacity and hence are being forced to extend freebies to students. “In Andhra (Pradesh), this has been a phenomena for the last 2-3 years or so—in Karnataka, this has become rampant this year,” said Amit Bansal, Founder and Chief Executive of PurpleLeap, which offers training programmes at engineering institutes to improve the quality of education. “Significant discounts on first year fees is a very common tool that is being used—if you look at these colleges, at 50% intake, they’re breaking even— not losing money. If you start falling below that number, you go into the red.”

“Also, getting additional seats from AICTE has become much easier for colleges—so every college has gone ahead and increased their capacity,” added Bansal of PurpleLeap, which has conducted a study at more than 200 engineering colleges across Karnataka to assess the quality of education and employability of the students.

On top of that, freshers’ salaries at top Indian IT firms have remained stagnant the past 4-5 years and not kept pace with the increase in fees charged by engineering colleges. “It’s not surprising to see this happen now—there’s a complete mismatch between the kind of fees the colleges charge and the kind of job opportunities that are available right now. It’s just not sustainable,” said Narendar Pani, Professor at the School of Social Sciences at the National Institute of Advanced Studies.

Source: Mint, September 17, 2013

Spurt in demand for PG engineering courses

Contrary to popular perception, the engineering education segment seems to be doing well. In the past year, the number of seats in postgraduate (PG) engineering institutes has swelled 160 per cent and there is a 100 per cent year-on-year growth in the number of new PG engineering institutes.

According to data by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the country’s technical education regulator, as many as 888 seats were added in 2012-13, compared to 342 in the previous year.
Ten postgraduate institutes were opened in 2012-13, against five last year. The new institutes were opened in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, which got two new PG engineering institutes each, and Kerala, where one institute was opened.

Industry observers say the sudden expansion in PG engineering seats is to meet the spurt in the number of students applying for such courses as numerous faculty vacancies exist across engineering colleges in these states.

In Andhra Pradesh, for instance, as many as 71,045 students applied for the PG Engineering Common Entrance Examination (PGECET) this year against 36,000 students a year ago. Besides, according to a new AICTE directive, faculty at engineering should have the minimum qualification of a postgraduate degree. Until last year, these teaching posts were largely filled with B Tech graduates.

According to industry experts, the number of students opting for postgraduate studies had come down by nearly 50 per cent over the past two decades, resulting in an acute faculty shortage in a number of education institutions. In the next academic year, in Andhra Pradesh alone, more than 700 engineering colleges will have about 70,000 posts to fill.

The new-found interest in PG engineering education is also due to the fact that from next year, even private engineering colleges will offer the sixth pay commission salaries for teaching positions. This means a basic salary of Rs. 36,000 at the entry level.

On the other hand, five PG engineering colleges shut down in 2012-13, against seven in 2011-12. The seat loss due to this stood at 342 in 2012-13, compare to 576 in 2011-12.

The Flip Side
It is a different picture for management education and under-graduate engineering. In 2012-13, the number of management institutes opened were 82, compared to 146 last year — adding 7,740 seats to the pool against 14,340 seats last year.

The number of management institutes closed this year stood at 101 against 124 last year. The number of seats lost this, however, were 6,090 against 5,602 last year.

“Opening and closing of institutes has become a game. Approval of institutes has become a racket in the country and AICTE needs to go beyond its fascination for approving management and engineering institutions left, right and centre,” says the director of a Delhi-based B-school ranked among top 10 B-schools in the country.

“AICTE’s role is a holistic one. But they are, instead, playing the role of a regulator. AICTE has forgotten its job of making technical education qualitative. AICTE keeps adding seats even when the market does not need more seats. Thus, professional education in the country is suffering,” the B-school director adds.

In the under-graduate engineering segment, about 95 engineering institutes were opened this year, against 178 last year. While the number of institutes shut down this year stood at 12 against 28 last year, the number of seats lost was 2,710 this year against 9,835 last year. The number of seats added in under-graduate engineering stood at 27,060 seats against 51,900 seats in 2011-12.

Source: Business Standard, September 27, 2012

Gujarat to set up IITRM to meet demand of infra engineers

Anticipating an increase in the demand for engineers in infrastructure development, the Gujarat government has proposed to set up an Institute of Infrastructure, Technology, Research and Management (IITRM) in the rapidly industrialising state.

To cater to need of specific demand of trained manpower in infrastructure and to provide a platform for research based institute in the field of engineering, it is considered necessary to have a dedicated autonomous institute with powers of a University, said Gujarat’s Minister for Education Ramanlal Vora, referring to setting up of IITRM. “This will lead to the development of centre of excellence in the area of infrastructure engineering and will boost technical education in the state,” he said.

“Foreseeing a demand for engineers in the infra space over the next few years the government has decided to set up a varsity on the lines of Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University (PDPU),” Gujarat’s Principal Secretary Education Department Hasmukh Adhia said. “The capital support to this proposed varsity shall be given by the government. It would charge normal fee from the students to meet its recurring expenditures from the fee structure, and gain financial autonomy,” Adhia said.

A bill to pave way for the establishment of university called — IITRM — was tabled during the budget session of the state assembly recently. The bill, if enacted and brought into operation, will involve an estimated expenditure of Rs. 18 crore (Rs. 180 million) in FY 2011-12 and a sum of Rs. 67 crore (Rs. 670 million) in FY 2012-13, of which Rs. 47 crore (Rs. 470 million) will be capital expenditure.

The institute thrusts shall be on research. It is expected to accommodate around 2,000 students in campus, once fully operational, Adhia said. Out of these, 50 per cent students will be under graduates and remaining from PG Doctoral and sponsored courses in the area of engineering and management.

In the backdrop of rapid industrialisation here, the demand for engineers in Gujarat is touted to be higher as compared to the other states. The state engineering colleges presently offer courses across 32 segments such as aviation, textile processing, automobile, amongst other at nominal fee of Rs. 3,000 to 4,000 per annum. In the recently tabled budget, the Gujarat government increased its planned expenditure by 33 per cent to Rs. 50,599 crore (Rs. 505.99 billion) in FY:2012-13 against plan size of Rs 38,000 crore (Rs. 380 billion) in the last fiscal.

Source: Press Trust of India (PTI), February 28, 2012