As many as 5,000 seats in the engineering colleges of Madhya Pradesh will remain vacant this year as students are showing no interest in taking admission to the BE courses.

This is not only bad news for the private college owners but also an intriguing trend, as far as the preferences of the students and their parents are concerned. The state has 122 engineering colleges with a total intake capacity of 18,500 students. In addition, there are 58 polytechnics with a capacity of 8,750 students.

Admission is through counselling on the basis of marks obtained in the Pre-Engineering test.Surprisingly, even after five rounds of counselling — conducted by the Rajiv Gandhi Technological University to which all the engineering and management colleges in the state are affiliated — as many as 5,000 seats still remain vacant.
In the fifth and final round of counselling held on Tuesday, students simply did not turn up.

Five years back, engineering was a much sought-after course in the state. There were only six engineering colleges — all government — and barely 800 seats.

Then, the government decided to allow private colleges to come up and soon there was a flood of applicants. Everyone who was anyone decided to open an engineering college, keen to cash in on the craze for engineering courses.