Kumari Palany & Co

No. of views : (3753)

Engineering colleges in TN struggling to function as the admissions dip

Posted on: 24/Jun/2019 9:57:41 AM
In the past, many students who have completed plus 2 successfully with high marks opted for engineering courses in various engineering colleges across Tamil Nadu. The interest or craze for the students to join the engineering courses has gone down so much in the last few years. As a result, more than 200 engineering colleges in TN are getting closed.  It must be taken into account that the expenditure outstrips revenue now.

There are as many as 479 engineering colleges in the state of Tamil Nadu. In this year, less than a lakh of students are set to take up engineering courses and there are totally 2.24 lakh seats available.

Recently popular Indian Overseas Bank or IOB announced that it would auction the properties of popular Tamil actor and president of DMDK party Mr. Vijayakanth to recover a loan amount of Rs 5.52 crores defaulted by Andal Azhagar Education Trust. It is well known that this trust is running an engineering college in Mamandur in Kancheepuram. It is now said that this exposes the state of the sector in the state of TN. As many as 92 engineering colleges has been penalized by Anna University for lack of faculty and infrastructure. According to the principals, the number of such colleges would be around 150 to 200.

The survival has been very difficult for many engineering colleges in TN now. The shocking information is many engineering colleges have been looking out for buyers or planning to close down the colleges. In the last 2 years of time, admission has gone down from more than 2 lakhs to around one lakh. In 2019, the number of students to get admissions after the online counselling would be less than one lakh. It would be another tough year for the engineering colleges.

It was mentioned by a engineering college principal that a college requires more than 60 percent admissions to break even. He added that in 2018, 150 engineering colleges alone got more than 50 percent admissions. Information collected is salaries account for 60 to 70 percent and it is one of the major expenditures in running a college. Another 20 percent is accounted by transport and rest by maintenance, electricity bills and security etc. Now cost cutting steps and faculty sacking procedures has been adopted by top engineering colleges and that is due to poor enrollment of the students.

It has been pointed out by a trustee belonging to a top engineering college near Chennai that 40 of their senior faculty members were sacked to cut down the cost. According to Mr. P. Selvaraj, secretary of Consortium of Self Financing Professional Arts and Science Colleges that it has been difficult to run engineering colleges as banks and government turn blind eye to the situation.