Engineering courses soar despite slowdown

Notwithstanding the slowdown in the US and the subsequent fallout of Indian companies going slow on recruitments, the engineering colleges in the state are seeing an unusual demand for their courses.

The state has 537 engineering colleges and over 1,75,700 engineering seats across all streams. Of this, 127,000 seats are to be filled up by the convenor and so far about 113,000 have already been filled. The other 50,000-plus seats are the prerogative of the managements and a majority of them have been filled.

According to MD Christopher, secretary, Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education, “there is a good demand for the engineering courses irrespective of the stream or the college. It seems very likely that all seats will be filled up this year.”

Employability is one aspect that is forcing the students to look at engineering. IT and ITeS apart, sectors like civil engineering and mechanical engineering, which were seen as not-so-lucrative, are offering good employment opportunities with the entry salary pegged at about Rs 20,000 a month.

Also, there are new jobs coming up in financial, automotive, tourism and hospitality sectors. Though these are different from the mainline of study, engineers have always been considered as suitable to jobs across the sectors. Moreover, it is not uncommon for techies to arm themselves with a management degree for a mid career change, he said.

The recent policies of the state government to extend post-matric scholarships to BC and minority students along with SC and ST whose family income is less than Rs 1,00,000 annually are also attracting students to the engineering stream. “It is virtually a free engineering education to most of the students,” Christopher said, adding the government had promised to reimburse the fee. On an average, each college will get Rs 45 lakh to Rs 2 crore depending on the number of students in the first, second, third or fourth year of the engineering course.

This year, there has been an unprecedented increase of 70,000-plus students who have taken the engineering entrance test. Also, students who have not joined any engineering college are keen to get enrolled due to the fee reimbursement scheme.

The state follows a two-tier fee structure — 75 per cent of the students are charged Rs 30,000 per year and the remaining Rs 91,700 (which are management seats).

According to P Rajeshwar Reddy, general secretary of Consortium of Engineering Colleges Managements’ Association, the college managements are now hoping that the government would release the promised reimbursements early.

“We will not be able to take the financial load for long,” he said, adding that the colleges would not allow the students to sit for the first semester examinations if the fee did not come in time. The average cost of providing engineering education is about Rs 40,000 per student per year.

Every year, 5,000 to 10,000 engineering seats remain vacant. Though the number of vacant seats this year is expected to be like earlier years, the college managements are seeing it as a small number as 203 new engineering colleges have been added this year apart from many colleges increasing the intake.